The Gita according to Gandhi 19

The Gita according to Gandhi -Mahadev Desai

B. THE GITA VIEW 3. KARMA AND REBIRTH Closely allied to the doctrine of guna is the doctrine of karma and rebirth which the Gita accepts as axiomatic and which has come in for a lot of criticism from Western thinkers. Let us see what it means and what part it plays in the Hindu view of life. We know for a fact that, although sometimes action is but 'the movement of a muscle this way or that', its consequences are infinite and untraceable beyond a certain point. If the consequences cannot thus be followed out, the roots of what apparently appears as the cause must also be too deep and hidden to trace back. For actions are not merely "things done that take the eye and have the price". "All instincts immature, All purposes unsure That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount; Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped All I could never be All men ignored in me, This I was. worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped." These lines from Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra seem to me to bring out the content of karma in a striking manner. It is He, working through His law, that takes into account "all men ignore" in men.