Abstract
According to the law of karma, our actions have consequences which affect not only our dispositions and tendencies (saṃskāras), but also the non-dispositional aspects of our being (for example, our genetic make-up, our physical characteristics, our social status at birth, our length of life) and our environment. The environment is affected in such a way that in some future life it will be instrumental in rewarding or punishing us according to the merit or demerit resulting from our acts. For example, a person might be mauled by a grizzly bear either in retribution for a particular violent act he committed or because of his pool of accumulated karmic residues.
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Notes
For a detailed description, see Wilhelm Halbfass, ‘Karma, Apūrva, and “Natural” Causes: Observations on the Growth and Limits of the Theory of Samsāra’ in Wendy D. O’Flaherty (ed.), Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 273–84.
For a discussion of the various degrees of units of intensity of karmic matter, see Nathmal Tatia, Studies in Jaina Philosophy (Benares: Jain Cultural Research Society, 1951), pp. 235–8.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy I (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1923), p. 319.
Samyutta-Nikāya, XII, 2, 20; quoted in David Kalupahana, Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1975), p. 55.
‘Because of the epistemological standpoint he adopted, the Buddha was able to formulate an empiricist theory of causality without getting involved in either of these [Sāṅkhya and Sarvāstivāda vs. Vaiśeṣika and Sautrāntika] metaphysical doctrines.’ The former emphasized the identity of cause and effect, while the latter held to their difference. David Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), p. 29.
T.W. Rhys Davids, ‘On Nirvāna, and on the Buddhist Doctrines of the “Groups,” the Sahskāras, Karma and the “Paths,”’ Contemporary Review 29 (1877), p. 258.
Edward Conze [Buddhist Thought in India (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1967), p. 149]
The avijñapti was also introduced to resolve another problem. In particular, it was invoked to explain how an act which had results which were separated in time and space from the agent’s volition (for example, where person A willed the murder of another and commanded it, but where it was carried out later by person B) affected the agent. It was held that an avijñapti was created when the volition of the agent culminated in the act and that this caused the appropriate disposition in the agent of the volition. See Surama Dasgupta, Development of Moral Philosophy in India (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1961), pp. 153–4
The Pali Jātaka, 222; quoted in D.T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), p. 184.
‘The solution of the contradiction lies in the fact that there is no separate efficiency, no efficiency in superaddition to existence, existence itself is nothing but causal efficacy, the cause and the thing are different views taken of one and the same reality. … If we identify reality and causal efficiency, we can say that every reality is at the same time a cause.’ F. Th. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic I (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), pp. 125–6.
Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1951), p. 156.
This, of course, is a philosophical thesis, based on the claim of the sufficiency of the law of karma to resolve the problem of evil and good. In popular practice both Hindus and Buddhists often trace the cause of their pleasure and pain to something other than their past karmic deeds. They appeal to natural causes, other human agents working directly or through sorcery, the anger of spirits and divinities, and astrological conditions. Whether this is to be taken as evidence that they deny the universality of the karmic thesis is debated. The answer depends upon the relation of karma to these other conditions. One view is that, for some at least, it is one explanation among others or a final resort which might be invoked on rare occasions when no other explanation suffices. [Charles F. Keyes, ‘Merit-Transference in the Kammic Theory of Popular Theravāda Buddhism’, in Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel (eds), Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 266–7.]
Ursula Sharma, ‘Theodicy and the Doctrine of Karma’, Man 8 (1973), p. 358.
Perhaps the recognition of this is part of the reason some Buddhists deny that all pleasure and pain result from past karmic deeds, or affirm that karma is subjective and hence does not cause material conditions, only the pleasure and pain that we experience. [For a discussion of this in the Kathāvatthu and Milindapanha, see James McDermott, ‘The Kathāvatthu Kamma Debates’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 95 (1975), pp. 426–8
‘[The existence of God can be inferred] from dependence,—from eternity,—from diversity,—from universal practice,—and from the apportionment to each individual self,—mundane enjoyment implies a supernatural cause.’ Udayana Acārya, Kusumāñjali 1,4; in Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles Moore (eds), A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 380–1.
Kewal Krishna Anand, Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1982?), pp. 342–3.
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© 1990 Bruce R. Reichenbach
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Reichenbach, B.R. (1990). Karma, Causation and Divine Intervention. In: The Law of Karma. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11899-1_6
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