Buddhist Doctrine of Karma

The Buddhist doctrine of karma ("deeds", "actions"), and the closely related doctrine of rebirth, are perhaps the best known, and often the least understood, of Buddhist doctrines. The matter is complicated by the fact that the other Indian religious traditions of Hinduism and Jainism have their own theories of Karma and Reincarnation. It is in fact the Hindu versions that are better known in the West. The Buddhist theory of karma and rebirth are quite distinct from their other Indian counterparts.

In Buddhism the law of karma is the moral law of causation - good actions give good results and vice versa. It is the quality of an act, which determines its consequences. But what determines the karmic quality of a deed? In Hinduism it is the correct performance of a person's "duty", especially his caste duties that counts. Early Buddhism, which recognized no caste distinctions, evaluates the karmic quality of an act in terms of moral and ethical criteria. In particular it is the mental factors, which accompany the commission of deed that determines its consequences or "fruits" (vipвka). All negative karma (i.e. those leading to bad consequences) arise from the three roots of unwholesomeness. These are greed (lobha), aversion (dosa), and delusion (moha). Accordingly good karmic results follow from deeds that spring from generosity (caga), loving-kindness (mettв) and wisdom (vijjв). The Buddha emphasized that it is the mental factors involved rather than the deeds themselves that determine future consequences. Thus the same deed committed with different mental factors will have different consequences. Likewise purely accidental deeds may have neutral consequences, however if the accident occurred because insufficient mindfulness was exercised it could have adverse results for the person responsible for it.

The theory of karma presupposes that individuals have "free will". Everything that happens to an individual is not the fruit of some past karma. In fact the experiences that involve an individual may be of three kinds: some are the result of past action, some are deliberately committed free acts; and the remainder could be due to chance factors operating in the environment. The doctrine of karma is not a theory of predestination of any kind. One common misunderstanding is not to distinguish between the action and its results - between karma and vipвka. It must also be mentioned that the fruiting of an act may be postponed, and that it is possible to reach enlightenment - the goal of the Buddha's path - before all the previous karmas have yielded their results.

The Buddhist theory of rebirth asserts that the fruits of some karma may manifest themselves in "future lives". This brings us to the Buddhist theory of rebirth. Similar concepts occur in other religious systems - e.g. the Platonic theory of the "pre-existence of the soul" and the Hindu-Jain theory of re-incarnation. Such reincarnation theory involves the transmigration of a soul. In Buddhism, however, it is the unripened karmic acts outstanding at the death of an individual, which conditions a new birth. The last moment of consciousness too is also a conditioning factor, but it is the store of unripened karma generated by volitional acts (the sankhвras) of previous existences which generates the destiny of the new individual. A newly born individual needs not only the genetic blueprint derived from the genes of the natural parents, but also a karmic blueprint derived from the volitional acts of a deceased person.

The question has been posed whether the new individual is the same as the old individual whose karma it has inherited. The Buddha's answer to this question was somewhat enigmatic: "It is not the same, yet it is not another" (na ca so, na ca aссo). To understand the Buddha's reply we have to investigate the criteria, which establish personal identity. Is the child the same as the adult it later becomes? In the Buddhist sense we are making two observations at two points of time in a constantly changing psychophysical entity. For legal and conventional purposes some arbitrary criteria are used, such as physical continuity over time, or the retention of memory. These define only a conventional person. Just as it is a conventional or "fictional" person who lasts continuously from birth to death, so it is just such a conventional person who persists from one life to another. In the Buddhist view of rebirth the only links between two successive lives is the karmic residue carried over and an element of consciousness, called the re-linking consciousness: (paisandhi viссвna), which momentarily links the two lives. In Buddhism there is no conception of a transmigrating soul which inhabits successive material bodies until it unites with God.

Buddhism uses the Pali term sasвra to denote the "round