..續本文上一頁as e.g. flint and steel. Fuel only proffers an opportunity to the process to continue.

　　The application to the process of kamma will be clear. The actual origin of life is not the sexual act of a male and a female; they only provide the opportunity for a ter­minating life-kamma to take a new lease. As a wick, though dipped and drenched in oil, will not give light unless a flame is applied to it—like visible objects, though coming into focus will not be seen by the eye, if there is no conscious­ness—so also “it is by the conjunction of three things that conception comes about. If there be the coition of the parents and it is the mother”s proper period, but if there is not the necessity of generation, then no conception takes place” (MN 38).

　　Now, this necessity of generation or rather re-genera­tion is in oriental fashion poetically described as a heavenly musician presiding over child conception (gandhabbo). It is clear, of course, that here is meant that karmic energy, which in its natural tendency of craving seeks to lay hold of new matter as sustenance in its process of action, of life.

　　A flame which was burning on the wax of a candle, may continue to burn on the oil of a lamp, on the cloth of the curtains, on the furniture of the room, on the wood­work of the whole house This does not mean that wax has become in succession oil, cloth, wood; for these were only the fuel which kept the flame alive; not so much as actively feeding the flame, but as being grasped by the flame passively.

　　An electric current may produce light in an electric bulb, or music in a radio set, or motion in an electric fan or heat in a stove. But, once more, this does not mean that light has become in succession music, motion and heat; for the bulb, the radio set, the fan, the stove, were only the means through which the electric current could express itself.

　　In a similar way the different modes of life, as well as the constant modifications in life are only different means of expression of kamma. Thus in the ultimate sense one ought not to say that Buddhism teaches evolution in the sense of Darwinism, though Darwin was probably right when he taught the Origin of Species. He taught evolu­tion in the biological, physiological sense, i.e. he traced the originating series of the matter through which life ex­presses itself, as one might trace the origin of a candle to the wax manufactured by the bees without explaining thereby how the candle became alight. Like fire cannot be traced by following the series of fuel dependent on which the process of combustion continued uninterrupted, so the gene­alogy of man is not shown by tracing the evolution of the body in the series of vertebrates, even though that probably be correct. It is kamma as a process of craving which gives the “impulse,” the “élan vital,” as Bergson calls it. In this process, however, it is not the mind and matter which are involved; their evolution belongs to a different type. In this process it is the evolution of kamma that causes rebirth (cf. Milinda Pa.thaa, 11.2–6), and as an evolution the different phases of expression of that kamma, be it even in different lives, bear the common responsibility.

　　This process of kammic evolution is not necessarily progress. Progress can only be considered from a fixed standpoint outside the process, but such a standpoint there is not. Process of evolution, however, could be retrogres­sion as well as progress, because it is mere change or growth; and even degeneration, deterioration, is still a process of growth. Even in the physical sense the decay of one means the growth of another.

　　The frequently repeated question whether it is possible for a man to be born as an animal is really incorrect from a Buddhist point o…

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