Karma

Concluding Comments Developments Outside the Indian Subcontinent - What Does It All Mean?

Concluding Comments Developments Outside the Indian Subcontinent Belief in reincarnation was known in ancient Greece. Herodotus claimed that this belief originally came from Egypt, but in this he was no doubt mistaken. The belief is frequently ascribed to Pythagoras , while the Orphic traditions, too, were associated with it. Plato argues for the prior existence and immortality of the soul, and may have believed in reincarnation. The later Pythagorean tradition maintained that Pythagoras had been a recipient of Indian wisdom, but this may be a more recent invention. Pythagoras lived in the sixth century B.C.E., well before the Buddha and Mahavira (who appear to have lived in the fifth century B.C.E.), and presumably even longer before the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution spread in India beyond its homeland in Greater Magadha. Indian notions of rebirth and karmic retribution did travel westward , and the religion called Manichaeism was certainly one of its principal means of transport. The founder of this religion, Mani (third century C.E.), is known to have spent time in northwest India, and his religion contains elements that he borrowed from Buddhism. It may be through Manichaeism that these notions found their way into some forms of Jewish Kabbala, Christian Gnosticism (including the more recent Cathars), and Shiite Islam. The most important manner in which the notion of rebirth and karmic retribution traveled beyond its Indian homeland was as part of the religious spread of Brahmanism and Buddhism. Brahmanism traveled to Southeast Asia in particular, and even though Brahmanism should here primarily be thought of as a sociopolitical ideology, it was normally accompanied by religious elements, such as the worship of Shiva or Vishnu. Rebirth and karmic retribution were often part of the package of beliefs and ideas that settled in those faraway lands. In the case of Buddhism, its link with rebirth and karmic retribution was even closer, and this belief presented itself wherever Buddhism gained a foothold. 118 Concluding Comments However, belief in rebirth and karmic retribution was a so far unknown element in many of the countries where Brahmanism and Buddhism were introduced, and some regions were less prepared than others to adopt it. An example is Bali, where we find an interesting mixture of religions in which Brahmanical and Buddhist elements are prominently present, but which is yet devoid of the belief in karmic retribution. Others do not reject the belief but tend to interpret it metaphorically. This is particularly true of certain authors from modern Buddhist countries, including Sri Lanka and Japan. What Does It All Mean? In a general way one could say that the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution presupposes that morality is part of the structure of the universe. All those who accept this belief in one form or another are convinced that good deeds will be rewarded and bad deeds punished. This conviction did not need a god, even though the supervision of karmic retribution came to be attributed to an accountant God by some in the Brahmanical tradition. The acceptance of a supreme God sometimes had the opposite effect: rather than explaining and strengthening the process of karmic retribution, God might provide shortcuts, preferably to those who were devoted to Him. The moral side of karmic retribution deserves some further reflection . The morality that accompanied this belief was not always the same. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ascetically oriented religious movements—most notably Jainism and Buddhism—considered deeds “good” if they were as close as possible to the ascetic life-style. Numerous abstentions—from stealing, from sexuality, and from much else—were believed to lead to agreeable results in future lives, and lack of restraint almost guaranteed a disagreeable outcome. The Brahmanical tradition, as so often, was less uniform in its ideas about morality. Those most taken in by ascetical ideals had rather similar notions as the Jainas and the Buddhists about what is good and what is not. Most Brahmins, however, linked the belief in karmic retribution to their vision of what constitutes the correct order of society . The Brahmanical vision of society gave all individuals a fixed place and expected from them that they would behave accordingly. In this vision, the best anyone could do was to act in accordance with Concluding Comments 119 his or her position in life, and this, inevitably, was presented in Brahmanical circles as the most reliable or even only way to obtain a good rebirth. It...