..续本文上一页of living beings. For us it is of the utmost importance to know what we can do to further our own progress along the scale of spiritual evolution — to advance to higher levels of attainment during the course of our earthly life, to secure a rebirth conducive to spiritual growth in the life to come, and ultimately to transcend this repetitive cycle of birth and death and attain Nibbana, the supreme and irreversible deliverance.

　　The answer to this problem begins with the fact that kamma pides itself, according to its moral quality, into two types — the unwholesome (akusala) and the wholesome (kusala). Unwholesome kamma is action — physical, verbal or mental — that springs from the three unwholesome roots of action: greed (lobha), hatred (dosa) and delusion (moha). Any action grounded in these roots is spiritually detrimental and morally defective. It destroys the higher faculties, entails suffering as its consequence, and causes a plunge into lower states of existence; in short, it brings decline along the scale of spiritual evolution and deeper immersion in the mire of phenomenal existence. Wholesome kamma, on the other hand, is action springing from the three contrary wholesome roots — non-greed (alobha), non-hatred (adosa) and non-delusion (amoha), finding positive expression in the qualities of charity, loving-kindness and wisdom, respectively. Wholesome action functions in a way diametrically opposite to its dark counterpart. It is spiritually beneficial and morally commendable, stimulates the unfolding of the higher faculties, and entails happiness both in the present and in time to come. Consistently practiced, it promotes progress along the evolutionary scale, leading to higher states of existence in successive life-spans, and finally to the realization of deliverance.

　　On ultimate analysis, life is a self-regenerating sequence of occasions of experience, comprising occasions of action and occasions of reception. Action is volition, and volition inevitably involves decision or choice — a selection from the welter of possibilities open to the will of that alternative most, conformable to the inpidual”s purpose, a selection even, at a higher level, of the purposes themselves. Every moment of morally significant action, therefore, confronts us with the call for a decision, with the necessity for choice. Choice must work within the gamut of options open to the will, and these options, despite their great differences of qualitative character, necessarily fall into one of two classes according to their ethical nature — into the wholesome or the unwholesome. The one leads to progress, the other to decline.

　　Thence progress or decline depends entirely upon our choice, and not upon any external agency whether conceived in spiritualistic or materialistic garb. Through our fleeting, momentary decisions, accumulated over long periods, we model our fortune and chisel out of the unshaped block of futurity the destiny that will befall us in the span of time to come. Each call for a decision may be depicted as a ladder, one end leading upward to unknown heights, and the other extending downward into forbidding depths, while our successive decisions may be taken as the steps that lead us up or down the ladder”s graded rungs. Or again, each moment of action may be compared to a crossroad at which we stand, a forked road one side of which leads to a city of bliss and the other to a swampland of misery and despair. The two roads stand, fixed and silent, awaiting our choice, and only our decision determines whether we shall reach the one destination or the other.

　　In sum, then, it is our kamma that precipitates our destiny, for it is kamma that brings about manifestation of all the destinations (gati) or realms of sentient existence, and kamma …

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