PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

SORTS OF RELIGION 27

achieving enlightenment) and karma (that one’s right actions will be
rewarded and one’s wrong actions will be punished, without exception, save
as this is qualified in some varieties of Vedanta by a doctrine of divine
grace). Thus for each of these perspectives a religion should tell you how to
‘escape the wheel’ or stop the otherwise endless sequence of births and
deaths.
From the perspective of a reincarnation/karma view, there might seem to
be a highly attractive alternative open to us all. By living morally decent
lives, according to this perspective, we can guarantee that we are reborn in
pleasant circumstances; there is no necessary end to this process. Thus by
living according to a decent moral code, we can look forward to an
unending travel program under positive circumstances. Why isn’t this a
recommended alternative?
One reason is that on the relevant perspective one cannot, in this
lifetime, make a decision that is irrevocably effective over one’s future
lifetimes; perhaps in the very next lifetime one will opt for drunken
stupors and drug trips over endeavor for enlightenment. But there is also a
deeper reason.
A Hindu text^10 reads as follows:

In this ill-smelling body, which is a conglomerate of bone, skin,

muscle, marrow, flesh, semen, blood, mucus, tears, rheum, feces,

urine, wind, bile, and phlegm, what is the good of enjoyment of

desires?... In this body, which is afflicted with desire, anger,

covetousness, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, separation from

the desirable, union with the undesirable, hunger, thirst, senility,

disease, sorrow, and the like, what is the good of the enjoyment

of desires?... we see that this whole world is decaying... In

this sort of cycle of existence, what is the good of the enjoyment

of desires, when after a man has fed on them there is seen re-

peatedly his return here to earth?... in this cycle of existence I

am a frog in a waterless well.

A Theravada text^11 says:

What then is the Holy Truth of Ill? Birth is ill, decay is ill, sick-

ness is ill, death is ill. To be disjoined from what one likes means

suffering. Not to get what one wants also that means suffering.

In short, all grasping at any of the five Skandas [the elements of

personality] involves suffering.

Being a frog in countless waterless wells, or suffering in endless cosmic
variety, in these views, only prolongs a problem to which religion should