Author Description

Excerpt from The Dhamapada or the Path of Righteousness No man is responsible for the mistakes of others; therefore, if the expression Birth and Death in its original meaning has been perverted into the dogma of metempsychosis or re-embodiment by those who through human weakness have fallen by the wayside of right presentation, the truth cannot be affected through such action in the least, and, therefore, realizing the poetical imagery of the Oriental Mind, the Author only sees in the oft-repeated expression of Birth and Death (which is to be met with so frequently in all Oriental literature) only again the embodiments of our own knowledge, in the laws of Involution and Evolution, the Positive and Negative Forces, the elements of Creation and Destruction, and the Finite and the Infinite, which, metaphorically speaking, represent Birth and Death the same to-day as it did then. Again, the World of Desires and its conquest must not be taken for the destruction of desires, but for, rather, a growth from desires, for nowhere can there be found an authority for teaching otherwise. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.