Move your house to firm soil, work on that which dietH not; improve your soul, free yourself from sins, errors and superstitions. Gr. Scovoroda,
4. The child is not yet aware of his soul and cannot find himself in the predicament of the adult, who hears two conflicting voices within,—one saying: "Eat of it yourself," and the other "give him to eat who asks;" one says "avenge;" the other: "forgive." One says "believe what is told you," the other: "think for yourself."
,t The older a man grows the more frequently he hears these two conflicting voices, one the voice of the body, the other the voice of the spirit. Happy is the man who has trained himself to hear the voice of the spirit, and not the voice of the body.
5. Some men base their life on the indulgence of their belly, others on sexual lust, some on power, others on worldly fame, and they dissipate their energy upon the attainment of these objects, but one thing, and one only is needful, namely to cultivate their soul.
This alone gives them true happiness, that happiness which no one can take away from them.
6. No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew VI, 2A.
7. You cannot at the same time pay heed to your soul and to worldly blessings. If you would have worldly blessings, give up your soul; if you would save your soul, give up worldly blessings. Otherwise you will only wobble between the two, and fail to attain either the one thing or the other.
8. Men would attain freedom by safeguarding their
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THE PATHWAY OF LIFE 99
body against anything that might curb it or hinder it from carrying out its will. Therein is a grievous error. The very safeguards they use to preserve their body from all hindrances: wealth, honor, and glory fail to give them the freedom they crave, but on the contrary they bind them all the more securely. In order to attain greater liberty, men build themselves a prison out of their own sins, errors and superstitions, and confine themselves therein of their own free will.
9. The purpose of our life in this world is twofold: first to bring our soul to a full growth, second to establish the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth. Both purposes arc attained by the same means: by releasing within ourselves that light of the spirit which was put into our soul.
10. The true path is straight and free, and you cannot sttunble if you walk therein. The moment you feel that your feet are enmeshed in the cares of earthly life; know by this same token that you have strayed from the true path.
II.
What are Sins?
1. According to the teachings of the Buddhists there are five principal commandments: First, do not wittingly slay a living creature; second, do not appropriate that which another person believes to be his; third, be chaste; fourth, do not speak untruth; fifth, do not stupefy yourself with intoxicating drink or fumes. Therefore the Buddhists count the following as sins: murder, theft, adultery, drunkenness, lying.
2. According to the teaching of the Gospels there are only two commandments of love: "A lawyer asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" ; i. .
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Matthew ХХП, 35-39.
Therefore in accordance with the Christian doctrine sin is all that is out of harmony with these two commandments.
3. Men are not punished for their sins, but by the sins themselves. And this is the severest and the surest punishment.
It may be that a cheat or a bully lives all his life and dies in luxury and honors, but this does not mean that he has escaped the punishment of his sins. This punishment will not be imposed somewhere where nobody has ever been or ever will be, but it has been exacted right here. Right here is the punishment of man inasmuch as each new sin removes him further and further away from true happiness, which is love, and decreases his joy more and more. Even so a drunkard, whether men punish him for drunkenness or not, is always punished by his drunkenness,— for in addition to his headaches and woes of sobering up, the more he drinks, the more his body and soul deteriorate.
4. If people imagine that in this life they can be free from sin, they are greatly in error. Man may be more or less sinful, but he can never be sinless. A living man cannot be without sin, because the entire life of man consists in ridding himself of sin, and only in this deliverance from sio i$:tHe true blessedness of life.
III.
Errors and Superstitions
1. Man's business in life is to fulfill the will of God. The will of God is to have man augment love in his soul and to manifest it in the world. What can man do to manifest love within himself? Just this one thing: eliminate everything from within that may hinder its manifestation. What hinders the manifestation of love? Sins hinder the manifestation of love.
Thus only one thing is needful for man to fulfill the will of God: to rid himself of sins.
2. To sin is human, to seek excuses for sins is the work of the devil.
3. While a human being has no reason, he lives like an animal, and whether what he does is good or evil, he is blameless. But the time comes when he acquires the capacity of judging what he ought and what he ought not to do. And then it happens that instead of realizing that reason has been granted him to recognize the things which he ought and which he ought not to do, he uses it to find excuses for the evil deeds which yield him pleasure, and to which he has accustomed himself.
This is the thing that leads men into the errors and superstitions from which the world suffers.
4. It is bad for a man to think that he is without sin and does not need to labor with himself. But it is just as bad for him to think that he had been altogether bom in sin and will die in sins, and therefore, there is no need for him to labor with himself. Both delusions are equally harmful.
5. It is bad if man who lives among sinful men fails to see his own sins or the sins of others, but still worse is the
state of man who sees sins of the people among whom he lives, but fails to perceive his own.
6. In the early part of a man's life the body alone develops. And he considers this body to be his own self. Even when the consciousness of his soul awakens within him, he continues to fulfill the desires of his body, which are contrary to the desires of his soul, and thereby he harms himself, falls into error and sin. But the longer he lives, the more loudly speaks his soul, and the further diverge the desires of his body and of his soul. And the time comes when his body ages, its desires grow less and less, but the spiritual "I" grows more and more abundantly. And then the men who had been in the habit of serving their body, in order not to give up their old habit of life, invent errors and superstitions which permit them to keep on sinning. But no matter how much men try to protect their body from their spiritual "I," the latter always conquers, though it be in the last moments of life.
7. Each mistake, each sin committed for the first time, binds you. But at first it binds as lightly as a cobweb. When you commit the sin again the cobweb becomes a thread, then a rope. Constantly repeated, the sin binds you with strong cords and later with chains.
Sin is at first a stranger in your soul, then a guest, and when you have made a habit of it, it becomes the master.
8. That condition of soul under which man fails to realize the evil nature of his deeds prevails when man instead of employing his reason to examine his conduct employs it to excuse his acts when he falls into errors and the superstitions associated therewith.