Children are the chessmen of the future. From this vantage point, one must say: we live as though borrowing a world from generations yet unborn. What inheritance they receive depends entirely on us. Yet this responsibility extends not only to material wealth but to the realm of thought as well. By thought, I do not mean merely our relation to objects, but our relation to life itself. In childhood, a child does not think in abstractions. Moreover, it cannot yet distinguish good from bad. It absorbs the attitudes of those around it like a sponge. And whatever it absorbs becomes natural to it.
All the knowledge we have acquired could be arranged in harmony with the education of children. On one hand, we cling to what we have in some measure "created"—and this is right indeed, for as the offspring of love, it too is part of us; and on the other hand, we bear responsibility for how it is "nurtured" or "informed"—that is, responsibility for what is born through us and matures within us.
Just as a child in time descends into the world's paths and lives freely, acting on its own initiative, so too what is created within us gradually separates and spreads outward into the world. I regard this as a kind of fundamental rebirth—where we ourselves are not reborn, but rather our attitudes run through the river of time.
I am not speaking of rebirth across many lifetimes; I do not actually see its practical form in reality. It seems to me sufficient to regard this life as it is. There is transformation and change enough here. At least, I find nothing in the past that is not somehow present now; in truth, these are merely patterns of generational change. Yes, rebirth happens here and now.
The way we transform the elements of our life determines the shapes that form, the circumstances that arise. This is reflected not only within us but organizes itself in the external world around us. This creative power is linked to the depth of will; it generates reality from here and from there.
How the various circumstances around us take shape depends largely upon us. In this sense, we are instruments of "fate"; through the direction we give to the possibilities within ourselves, we are sustained. This creates us and makes us worthy, and on this basis we are placed in our proper role.
From the perspective of Buddhist Yogācāra, spontaneous harmony occurs in nature—not by means of the individual, but by more fully sustaining the "canvas" and "impressions" of life itself. From the Śaiva perspective, the manifestation of potential power is the foundation; and Śiva, according to his station of consciousness, his level, and his inner substance, unfolds that potential. Together with this, the triad of will–knowledge–action (icchā–jñāna–kriyā) is the source of our vision. Its common translation is "intention–knowledge–action"; but at a deeper level, "will" here is not human conscious purpose, but rather a "direction" that moves subtly and grows cyclically until it becomes "will." This collective growth occurs through projecting and emanating multiple elements within oneself and sustaining them—as when the great cosmos burst forth from a central void and created universes.
This triad itself is a cycle. That "direction" aligns visible things with itself; its effect is that in that cycle, all things are bound in a kind of "chain of attraction and grasping." In this way it takes definite form, and on this basis, step by step, a new cycle dependent on "direction" begins—from cycle to cycle more and more elements are drawn in.
Desire is the foundation of all vibration and resonance, from which humans draw forth everything that can be created.