powerful, suffer from misery, and are enabled with great difficulty to
obtain a livelihood; and that every man is thus helpless, overcome by
misery and illusion, and again and again tossed and overpowered by the
powerful current of his own actions (karma). If there were absolute
freedom of action, no creature would die, none would be subject to decay,
or await his evil doom, and everybody would attain the object of his
desire. All persons desire to out distance their neighbours (in the race
of life), and they strive to do so to the utmost of their power; but the
result turns out otherwise. Many are the persons born under the influence
of the same star and the same auspices of good luck; but a great
diversity is observable in the maturity of their actions. No person, O
good Brahmana, can be the dispenser of his own lot. The actions done in a
previous existence are seen to fructify in our present life. It is the
immemorial tradition that the soul is eternal and everlasting, but the
corporeal frame of all creatures is subject to destruction here (below).
When therefore life is extinguished, the body only is destroyed, but the
spirit, wedded to its actions, travels elsewhere.'

"The Brahmana replied, 'O best of those versed in the doctrine of karma,
and in the delivery of discourses, I long to know accurately how the soul
becomes eternal.' The fowler replied, 'The spirit dies not, there being
simply a change of tenement. They are mistaken, who foolishly say that
all creatures die. The soul betakes itself to another frame, and its
change of habitation is called its death. In the world of men, no man
reaps the consequences of another man's karma. Whatever one does, he is
sure to reap the consequences thereof; for the consequences of the karma
that is once done, can never be obviated. The virtuous become endowed
with great virtues, and sinful men become the perpetrators of wicked
deeds. Men's actions follow them; and influenced by these, they are born
again.' The Brahmana enquired, 'Why does the spirit take its birth, and
why does its nativity become sinful or virtuous, and how, O good man,
does it come to belong to a sinful or virtuous race?' The fowler replied,
This mystery seems to belong to the subject of procreation, but I shall
briefly describe to you, O good Brahmana, how the spirit is born again
with its accumulated load of karma, the righteous in a virtuous, and the
wicked in a sinful nativity. By the performance of v