ish this prospect. They
may be willing to struggle until death, but they wish for
repose--conscious repose of course--afterwards. The idea that one just
dead has not entered into his rest, but is beginning another life with
similar struggles and fleeting successes, similar sorrows and
disappointments, is not satisfying and is almost shocking[45]. We do not
like it, and not to like any particular view about the destinies of the
soul is generally, but most illogically, considered a reason for
rejecting it[46].

12.

It must not however be supposed that Hindus like the prospect of
transmigration. On the contrary from the time of the Upanishads and the
Buddha to the present day their religious ideal corresponding to
salvation is emancipation and deliverance, deliverance from rebirth and
from the bondage of desire which brings about rebirth. Now all Indian
theories as to the nature of transmigration are in some way connected
with the idea of _Karma_, that is the power of deeds done in past
existences to condition or even to create future existences. Every deed
done, whether good or bad, affects the character of the doer for a long
while, so that to use a metaphor, the soul awaiting rebirth has a
special shape, which is of its own making, and it can find re-embodiment
only in a form into which that shape can squeeze.

These views of rebirth and karma have a moral value, for they teach that
what a man gets depends on what he is or makes himself to be, and they
avoid the difficulty of supposing that a benevolent creator can have
given his creatures only one life with such strange and unmerited
disproportion in their lots. Ordinary folk in the East hope that a life
of virtue will secure them another life as happy beings on earth or
perhaps in some heaven which, though not eternal, will still be long.
But for many the higher ideal is renunciation of the world and a life of
contemplative asceticism which will accumulate no karma so that after
death the soul will pass not to another birth but to some higher and
more mysterious state which is beyond birth and death. It is the
prevalence of views like this which has given both Hinduism and Buddhism
the reputation of being pessimistic and unpractical.

It is generally assumed that these are bad epithets, but are they not
applicable to Christian teaching? Modern and medieval Christianity--as
witness many popular hymns--regards this world as vain and transitory, a
vale of tears a