Karma

Chapter 4: Karma and Philosophy Karma and Buddhist Philosophy - Karma and the Brahmanical Philosophies - The Theoretical Appropriation of Karma in Jainism - Theoretical Difficulties and Their Solutions

ChaPter 4 Karma and Philosophy Accepting the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution is one thing. Understanding how and why it works is another. This problem confronted all of those who accepted this belief and particularly those who thought these topics were open to rational inquiry. This covered most of the intellectual elite of Jainism, Buddhism, and Brahmanism, especially from the early centuries C.E. onward. From that date onward a philosophical tradition established itself in the subcontinent, which developed systems of thought meant to explain the world we live in and in particular those aspects that concern us humans. This philosophical tradition, in its various manifestations, also dealt with questions relating to rebirth and karmic retribution. Two questions in particular occupied the minds of the thinkers concerned . The first one was about liberation: how is liberation possible? By and large it can be said that most philosophical schools had this question at their core, for a very understandable reason. The attainment of liberation was most often thought of as accompanied by, or as depending upon, a special insight into the nature of the world and humanity’s place in it. The philosophical systems of classical India present themselves frequently as being expressions of the insight required to attain liberation. They paid at least lip-service (sometimes more) to the idea that a thorough understanding of the respective philosophies was a precondition for liberation. The insight required differed from school to school, each one claiming that only they provided the knowledge without which liberation would remain out of reach. 56 karma The second question was more general. Besides an understanding of the solution (liberation from rebirth and karmic retribution), Indian philosophical thinkers were not completely uninterested in the problem: How does karmic retribution work in the case of those who are not close to and perhaps not even interested in liberation? What is the mechanism that is responsible for the fact that acts committed in this life will find retribution in a future one? This problem has two sides. Both take for granted that deeds leave traces. These traces are most commonly assumed to remain attached to the person or to that part of the person that transmigrates from one life to the next. The first side of the problem needs, therefore, an answer in terms of what it is in the person that transmigrates and in what form the traces of acts carried out earlier move along with that person. This side of the problem is relatively straightforward. There is another side to the problem. Even if one finds an answer to the question of how earlier actions leave traces that give rise to results in a future life, this does not yet answer the question of what mechanism guarantees that these results will be of a moral nature . What is it that makes good deeds have agreeable consequences and bad deeds, disagreeable ones? This question, once one thinks it through, reveals itself as being much more difficult to answer than one might be inclined to think at first sight. It is therefore not surprising that various texts state in so many words that karmic retribution is a problem that is beyond the intellectual capacities of human beings. The Devibhagavata Purana (6.10.34), a Brahmanical text of uncertain date, states, for example: “The course of karma in a breathing creature tied to a body is deep and mysterious, hard even for the gods to comprehend; so how could men understand it?” The Mahabharata (3.32.33) puts it this way: “The fruition of acts, both good and bad, their origin and disappearance, are the mysteries of the gods.” The Buddha, too, according to the Abhidharmakosha of Vasubandhu, had said: “Karmic retribution of living beings is incomprehensible.” This second side of the problem, then, constituted a major challenge for Indian philosophical thinkers of the early Common Era, who were not yet ready to easily admit defeat. It raised the issue of teleology , of goal-directed mechanisms in and around the human being . The retribution of acts does not always correspond to the goals of Karma and Philosophy 57 the person who has carried them out (a bad person does not normally aspire to be punished), so that the question does not concern goaldirected behavior of human beings. Indeed, who would consciously look for the negative consequences that result from their bad deeds? Some other factors must be...