Karma | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

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Karma Summary

Karma

Karma (Sanskrit, karman; literally, "deed," "action") is an adjunct in Indian religious thought to the doctrine of Reincarnation. In one form or another, it is part of the beliefs of Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. The actions of a living being are regarded as having a special class of causal effects that determine his future spiritual condition, both in this life and in succeeding ones. These effects are known as the "fruits" of the action. Good deeds lead to progress toward liberation (mokṣa, nirvana); bad ones, to regress from this goal. Usually caste status, disease, prosperity, and so forth are thought to be the consequences of actions in previous lives. Thus, karma is an ethically oriented causal law; and although some Hindus regard karma as the work of God, the concept does not necessitate this interpretation, and the award of deserts is as often regarded as an automatic process in nature.

The archaic notion of karma seems to have been that action as such binds men to the world (and thereby to suffering and ignorance); hence, liberation must involve suspension of all activity. Thus, in Jainism, which represents a very ancient strand in Indian religion, even a good action, although inducing an influx of meritorious karma, ties the person to matter. Indeed, karma, as the force determining rebirth, is itself regarded as a subtle form of matter. Also—and hence the emphasis on "noninjury" (ahiṃsā)—especially evil effects follow from a person's destroying life, even microorganisms. Such ideas lay behind the heroically quietistic Jain ideal of suicide by self-starvation. Moreover, the concept of karma in Vedic literature had the meaning of ritual act, so that combined with the need to refrain from activity there runs through much Indian ascetic thought the notion that even religious acts, although they may bring heavenly rewards, bind men to the cosmos and to rebirth: heaven is part of the cosmos and itself must be transcended.

These ideas presented a number of problems to speculative and religious thinkers: (1) How can liberation ever be achieved if even the effort to be inactive, and inactivity itself, may be forms of binding action? (2) How can the ordinary man, involved in his worldly duties and concerns, have any hope of escaping rebirth? (3) By what mechanism does karma operate on future births? (4) Why, if karma is what keeps empirical life going, does the saint (jīvanmukta), who has attained serenity and release in this life, keep on living? (5) How can there be any human initiative or free will if our present state is inexorably determined by past karma?

Various answers to these questions were given, among them the following: (1) The Jains hold that karmic matter can be annihilated by austerities, so that gradually it can be totally removed from an individual. On the other hand, Buddhism transformed the notion of karma by holding that motives, rather than the acts themselves, are what count and that karma needs craving (taṇhā) as a necessary condition of its effectiveness. Hence, by removing craving through the purification of one's motives, one can find release from rebirth. For the Hindu theologian Śankara, the power of karma depends on ignorance, so that the contemplative knowledge that the Self is the sole reality brings liberation from the continuing effects of karma.

(2) On the one hand, the ordinary man can hope to become a recluse, monk, or holy man in a future life. On the other hand, theistic ideas introduced grace as a countervailing means of liberation. Thus, in the Bhagavad Gītā it is stressed that a man, in performing his duties without regard to their fruits and in sole reliance upon the Lord, can escape the bonds of karma. Likewise, in Mahāyāna Buddhism the theory of the transfer of merit involves the belief that the otherwise unworthy individual can be given merit by a bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) out of the latter's infinite store, acquired through many lives of heroic self-sacrifice on behalf of living beings; thereby the individual qualifies for rebirth in paradise (where the conditions for attaining nirvana are peculiarly favorable). Thus the operation of karma is short-circuited by grace and faith.

(3) It is commonly held that karma is adṛṣṭa, an invisible force, so that the need to postulate an observable mechanism is evaded. However, among some schools the doctrine that the soul is all-pervasive (and not localized) helps to explain the concept of karmic action-at-a-distance. Traditional medical writings (first or second century) affirm that a person's characteristics are not derived solely from his parents (in this, there is an incipient conflict between modern genetics and the theory of karma).

(4) It is generally held that there is a limited continuance of karmic effects, like the running on of a potter's wheel after the potter has stopped turning it—but when the saint's death occurs, there will be no further rebirth for him.

(5) Various positions are adopted concerning the question of free will. The Buddha, for instance, was clearly impressed by the principle that knowledge of causes gives one the opportunity to determine the future, so that a proper understanding of karma and its causality should in no way involve fatalistic conclusions. He attacked Makkhali Gosāla, a contemporary teacher, for holding a fatalistic predestinationism, allied to extreme asceticism (which was in no sense a cause of final release, but merely symptomatic of one's progress). The Jains held that theoretically, in its pure state, the life monad or soul is capable of any kind of effort: Because of this "omnipotence" it never needs to be subservient to karma.

Although some schools argued that, since the effects of karma are morally regulated, one must presuppose a conscious regulator, namely God, atheistic and agnostic proponents of karma theory held that the difficulties of belief in God are as great as, or greater than, those inherent in assuming the automatic operation of karma. Moreover, belief in God generally involves the notion that unworthy people can short-circuit karma through calling on God in faith, and this cuts against the concepts of moral responsibility and self-help.