"For one who has reached such an age," I said, "you seem very strong."
"The signs are that' I shall live some years longer," replied the old man, "though I wish to live only long enough to finish my history. Then, as I am helpless and cannot move about, I want to die so as to get a new body. I suppose I must have committed some fault in a former life, to be crippled as I am. But I am glad to feel that I am nearing the Shore."
"He means the shore of the Sea of Death and Birth," says my interpreter. "The ship whereby we cross, you know, is the Ship of the Good Law; and the farthest shore is Nehan,—Nirvana."
"Are all our bodily weaknesses and misfortunes," I asked, "the results of errors committed in other births?"
"That which we are," the old man answered, "is the consequence of that which we have been. We say in Japan the consequence of mangō and ingō,—the two classes of actions."
"Evil and good?" I queried.
"Greater and lesser. There are no perfect actions. Every act contains both merit and demerit, just as even the best painting has defects and excellences. But when the sum of good in any action exceeds the sum of evil, just as in a good painting the merits outweigh the faults, then the result is progress. And gradually by such progress will all evil be eliminated."
"But how," I asked, "can the result of actions affect the physical conditions? The child follows the way of his fathers, inherits their strength or their weakness; yet not from them does he receive his soul."
"The chain of causes and effects is not easy to explain in a few words. To understand all you should study the Dai-jō or Greater Vehicle; also the Shō-jō, or Lesser Vehicle. There you will learn that the world itself exists only because of acts. Even as one learning to write, at first writes only with great difficulty, but afterward, becoming skillful, writes without knowledge of any effort, so the tendency of acts continually repeated is to form habit. And such tendencies persist far beyond this life."
"Can any man obtain the power to remember his former births?"