Karma in Buddhism

Karma (Sanskrit: कर्म, Pāli: kamma) is a Sanskrit term that literally means "action" or "doing". In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to action driven by intention (cetanā) which leads to future consequences. Those intentions are considered to be the determining factor in the kind of rebirth in samsara, the cycle of rebirth.

Etymology

Karma (Sanskrit, also karman, Pāli: kamma, Tib. lasTemplate:Sfn) is a Sanskrit term that literally means "action" or "doing". The word karma derives from the verbal root kṛ, which means "do, make, perform, accomplish."Template:Sfn

Karmaphala (Tib. rgyu 'brasTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn) is the "fruit",Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn "effect"Template:Sfn or "result"Template:Sfn of karma. A similar term is karmavipaka, the "maturation"Template:Sfn or "cooking"Template:Sfn of karma:

The remote effects of karmic choices are referred to as the 'maturation' (vipāka) or 'fruit' (phala) of the karmic act."Template:Sfn

The metaphor is derived from agriculture:Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

One sows a seed, there is a time lag during which some mysterious invisible process takes place, and then the plant pops up and can be harvested.Template:Sfn

Buddhist understanding of karma

File:Sera Monastery Lhasa Tibet China 西藏 拉萨 色拉寺 - panoramio (3).jpg

Tibetan Bhavacakra or "Wheel of Life" in Sera, Lhasa.

Karma and karmaphala are fundamental concepts in Buddhism.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The concepts of karma and karmaphala explain how intentional actions keep one tied to rebirth in samsara, whereas the Buddhist path, as exemplified in the Noble Eightfold Path, shows us the way out of samsara.Template:Sfn

Rebirth

Rebirth,Template:Refn, is a common belief in all Buddhist traditions. It says that birth and death in the six realms occur in successive cycles driven by ignorance (avidyā), desire (trsnā), and hatred (dvesa). The cycle of rebirth is called samsāra. It is a beginningless and ever-ongoing process.Template:Sfn Liberation from samsāra can be attained by following the Buddhist Path. This path leads to vidyā (knowledge), and the stilling of trsnā and dvesa. Hereby the ongoing process of rebirth is stopped.

Karma

The cycle of rebirth is determined by karma,Template:Sfn literally "action".Template:Refn In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to actions driven by intention (cetanā),Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind, which leads to future consequences.Template:Sfn The Nibbedhika Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 6.63:

Intention (cetana) I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect.Template:Refn

According to Peter Harvey,

It is the psychological impulse behind an action that is 'karma', that which sets going a chain of causes culminating in karmic fruit. Actions, then, must be intentional if they are to generate karmic fruits.Template:Sfn

And according to Gombrich,

The Buddha defined karma as intention; whether the intention manifested itself in physical, vocal or mental form, it was the intention alone which had a moral character: good, bad or neutral [...] The focus of interest shifted from physical action, involving people and objects in the real world, to psychological process.Template:Sfn

According to Gombrich, this was a great innovation, which overturns brahmanical, caste-bound ethics. It is a rejection of caste-bound differences, giving the same possibility to reach liberation to all people, not just Brahmanins:Template:Sfn

Not by birth is one a brahmin or an outcaste, but by deeds (kamma).Template:SfnTemplate:Refn

How this emphasis on intention was to be interpreted became a matter of debate in and between the various Buddhist schools.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn

Karmaphala

Karma leads to future consequences, karma-phala, "fruit of action".Template:Sfn Any given action may cause all sorts of results, but the karmic results are only those results which are a consequence of both the moral quality of the action, and of the intention behind the action.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn According to Reichenbach,

[T]he consequences envisioned by the law of karma encompass more (as well as less) than the observed natural or physical results which follow upon the performance of an action.Template:Sfn

The "law of karma" applies

...specifically to the moral sphere[.] [It is] not concerned with the general relation between actions and their consequences, but rather with the moral quality of actions and their consequences, such as the pain and pleasure and good or bad experiences for the doer of the act.Template:Sfn

Good moral actions lead to wholesome rebirths, and bad moral actions lead to unwholesome rebirths.Template:SfnTemplate:RefnTemplate:Refn The main factor is how they contribute to the well-being of others in a positive or negative sense.Template:Sfn Especially dāna, giving to the Buddhist order, became an increasingly important source of positive karma.Template:Sfn

How these intentional actions lead to rebirth, and how the idea of rebirth is to be reconciled with the doctrines of impermanence and no-self,Template:SfnTemplate:Refn is a matter of philosophical inquiry in the Buddhist traditions, for which several solutions have been proposed.Template:Sfn In early Buddhism no explicit theory of rebirth and karma is worked out,Template:Sfn and "the karma doctrine may have been incidental to early Buddhist soteriology."Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In early Buddhism, rebirth is ascribed to craving or ignorance.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

In later Buddhism, the basic idea is that intentional actions,Template:Sfn driven by kleshas ("disturbing emotions"), cetanā ("volition"),Template:Sfn or taṇhā ("thirst", "craving")Template:Sfn create impressions,Template:Refn tendencies or "seeds" in the mind. These impressions, or "seeds", will ripen into a future result or fruition.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn If we can overcome our kleshas, then we break the chain of causal effects that leads to rebirth in the six realms. The twelve links of dependent origination provides a theoretical framework, explaining how the disturbing emotions lead to rebirth in samsara.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn

Complex process

The Buddha's teaching of karma is not strictly deterministic, but incorporated circumstantial factors, unlike that of the Jains.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn It is not a rigid and mechanical process, but a flexible, fluid and dynamic process,Template:Sfn and not all present conditions can be ascribed to karma.Template:SfnTemplate:RefnTemplate:Refn There is no set linear relationship between a particular action and its results. The karmic effect of a deed is not determined solely by the deed itself, but also by the nature of the person who commits the deed, and by the circumstances in which it is committed.Template:Sfn

Karma is also not the same as "fate" or "predestination". Karmic results are not a "judgement" imposed by a God or other all-powerful being, but rather the results of a natural process.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn Certain experiences in life are the results of previous actions, but our responses to those experiences are not predetermined, although they bear their own fruit in the future.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Unjust behaviour may lead to unfavorable circumstances which make it easier to commit more unjust behavior, but nevertheless the freedom not to commit unjust behavior remains.Template:Sfn

Liberation from samsāra

The real importance of the doctrine of karma and its fruits lies in the recognition of the urgency to put a stop to the whole process.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Acintita Sutta warns that "the results of kamma" is one of the four incomprehensible subjects,Template:Sfn subjects that are beyond all conceptualizationTemplate:Sfn and cannot be understood with logical thought or reason.Template:Refn

According to Gombrich, this sutra may have been a warning against the tendency, "probably from the Buddha's day until now", to understand the doctrine of karma "backwards", to explain unfavorable conditions in this life when no other explanations are available.Template:Sfn Gaining a better rebirth may have been,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and still is, the central goal for many people.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The adoption, by laity, of Buddhist beliefs and practices is seen as a good thing, which brings merit and good rebirth,Template:Sfn but does not result in Nirvana,Template:Sfn and liberation from samsāra, the ultimate goal of the Buddha.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Within the Pali suttas

According to the Buddhist tradition, the lord Buddha gained full and complete insight into the workings of karma at the time of his enlightenment.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn According to Bronkhorst, these knowledges are later additions to the story,Template:Sfn just like the notion of "liberating insight" itself.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn

In AN 5.292, the lord Buddha asserted that it is not possible to avoid experiencing the result of a karmic deed once it has been committed.Template:Sfn

In the Anguttara Nikaya, it is stated that karmic results are experienced either in this life (P. diṭṭadhammika) or in future lives (P. samparāyika).Template:Sfn The former may involve a readily observable connection between action and karmic consequence, such as when a thief is captured and tortured by the authorities,Template:Sfn but the connection need not necessarily be that obvious and in fact usually is not observable.

The Samyutta Nikaya makes a basic distinction between past karma (P. purānakamma) which has already been incurred, and karma being created in the present (P. navakamma). Therefore, in the present one both creates new karma (P. navakamma) and encounters the result of past karma (P. kammavipāka). Karma in the early canon is also threefold: Mental action (S. manaḥkarman), bodily action (S. kāyakarman) and vocal action (S. vākkarman).Template:Sfn

Within Buddhist traditions

Various Buddhist philosophical schools developed within Buddhism, giving various interpretations regarding more refined points of karma. A major problem is the relation between the doctrine of no-self, and the "storage" of the traces of one's deeds,Template:Sfn for which various solutions have been offered.

Early Indian Buddhism

Origins

The concept of karma originated in the Vedic religion, where it was related to the performance of ritualsTemplate:Sfn or the investment in good deedsTemplate:Sfn to ensure the entrance to heaven after death,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn while other persons go to the underworld.Template:Sfn

Pre-sectarian Buddhism

The concept of karma may have been of minor importance in early Buddhism.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Schmithausen has questioned whether karma already played a role in the theory of rebirth of earliest Buddhism,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn noting that "the karma doctrine may have been incidental to early Buddhist soteriology."Template:Sfn Langer notes that originally karma may have been only one of several concepts connected with rebirth.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Tillman Vetter notes that in early Buddhism rebirth is ascribed to craving or ignorance.Template:Sfn Buswell too notes that "Early Buddhism does not identify bodily and mental motion, but desire (or thirst, trsna), as the cause of karmic consequences."Template:Sfn Matthews notes that "there is no single major systematic exposition" on the subject of karma and "an account has to be put together from the dozens of places where karma is mentioned in the texts,"Template:Sfn which may mean that the doctrine was incidental to the main perspective of early Buddhist soteriology.Template:Sfn

According to Vetter, "the Buddha at first sought, and realized, "the deathless" (amata/amrtaTemplate:Refn), which is concerned with the here and now.Template:Refn Only after this realization did he become acquainted with the doctrine of rebirth."Template:Sfn Bronkhorst disagrees, and concludes that the Buddha "introduced a concept of karma that differed considerably from the commonly held views of his time."Template:Sfn According to Bronkhorst, not physical and mental activities as such were seen as responsible for rebirth, but intentions and desire.Template:Sfn

The doctrine of karma may have been especially important for common people, for whom it was more important to cope with life's immediate demands, such as the problems of pain, injustice, and death. The doctrine of karma met these exigencies, and in time it became an important soteriological aim in its own right.Template:Sfn

Vaibhāṣika-Sarvāstivādin tradition

The Vaibhāśika-Sarvāstivāda was widely influential in India and beyond. Their understanding of karma in the Sarvāstivāda became normative for Buddhism in India and other countries.Template:Sfn According to Dennis Hirota,

Sarvastivadins argued that there exists a dharma of "possession" (prapti), which functions with all karmic acts, so that each act or thought, though immediately passing away, creates the "possession" of that act in the continuum of instants we experience as a person. This possession itself is momentary, but continually reproduces a similar possession in the succeeding instant, even though the original act lies in the past. Through such continual regeneration, the act is "possessed" until the actualization of the result.Template:Sfn

The Abhidharmahṛdaya by Dharmaśrī was the first systematic exposition of Vaibhāśika-Sarvāstivāda doctrine, and the third chapter, the Karma-varga, deals with the concept of karma systematically.Template:Sfn

Another important exposition, the Mahāvibhāṣa, gives three definitions of karma:

1. action; karma is here supplanted in the text by the synonyms kriya or karitra, both of which mean "activity";
2. formal vinaya conduct;
3. human action as the agent of various effects; karma as that which links certain actions with certain effects, is the primary concern of the exposition.Template:Sfn

The 4th century philosopher Vasubandhu compiled the Abhidharma-kośa, an extensive compendium which elaborated the positions of the Vaibhāṣika-Sarvāstivādin school on a wide range of issues raised by the early sutras. Chapter four of the Kośa is devoted to a study of karma, and chapters two and five contain formulations as to the mechanism of fruition and retribution.Template:Sfn This became the main source of understanding of the perspective of early Buddhism for later Mahāyāna philosophers.Template:Sfn

Dārṣṭāntika-Sautrāntika

The Dārṣṭāntika-Sautrāntika school pioneered the idea of karmic seeds (S. Bīja) and "the special modification of the psycho-physical series" (S. saṃtatipaṇāmaviśeṣa) to explain the workings of karma.Template:Sfn According to Dennis Hirota,

[T]he Sautrantikas [...] insisted that each act exists only in the present instant and perishes immediately. To explain causation, they taught that with each karmic act a "perfuming" occurs which, though not a dharma or existent factor itself, leaves a residual impression in the succeeding series of mental instants, causing it to undergo a process of subtle evolution eventually leading to the act’s result. Good and bad deeds performed are thus said to leave "seeds" or traces of disposition that will come to fruition.Template:Sfn

Theravādin tradition

Canonical texts

In the Theravāda Abhidhamma and commentarial traditions, karma is taken up at length. The Abhidhamma Sangaha of Anuruddhācariya offers a treatment of the topic, with an exhaustive treatment in book five (5.3.7).Template:Sfn

The Kathāvatthu, which discusses a number of controverted points related either directly or indirectly to the notion of kamma."Template:Sfn This involved debate with the Pudgalavādin school, which postulated the provisional existence of the person (S. pudgala, P. puggala) to account for the ripening of karmic effects over time.Template:Sfn The Kathāvatthu also records debate by the Theravādins with the Andhakas (who may have been Mahāsāṃghikas) regarding whether or not old age and death are the result (vipāka) of karma.Template:Sfn The Theravāda maintained that they are not—not, apparently because there is no causal relation between the two, but because they wished to reserve the term vipāka strictly for mental results--"subjective phenomena arising through the effects of kamma."Template:Sfn

In the canonical Theravāda view of kamma, "the belief that deeds done or ideas seized at the moment of death are particularly significant."Template:Sfn

Transfer of merit

The Milindapañha, a paracanonical Theravāda text, offers some interpretations of karma theory at variance with the orthodox position.Template:Sfn In particular, Nāgasena allows for the possibility of the transfer of merit to humans and one of the four classes of petas, perhaps in deference to folk belief.Template:Sfn Nāgasena makes it clear that demerit cannot be transferred.Template:Sfn One scholar asserts that the sharing of merit "can be linked to the Vedic śrāddha, for it was Buddhist practice not to upset existing traditions when well-established custom was not antithetic to Buddhist teaching."Template:Sfn

The Petavatthu, which is fully canonical, endorses the transfer of merit even more widely, including the possibility of sharing merit with all petas.Template:Sfn

Mahayana tradition

Indian Yogācāra tradition

In the Yogācāra philosophical tradition, one of the two principal Mahāyāna schools, the principle of karma was extended considerably. In the Yogācāra formulation, all experience without exception is said to result from the ripening of karma.Template:Sfn Karmic seeds (S. bija) are said to be stored in the "storehouse consciousness" (S. ālayavijñāna) until such time as they ripen into experience. The term vāsāna ("perfuming") is also used, and Yogācārins debated whether vāsāna and bija were essentially the same, the seeds were the effect of the perfuming, or whether the perfuming simply affected the seeds.Template:Sfn The seemingly external world is merely a "by-product" (adhipati-phala) of karma. The conditioning of the mind resulting from karma is called saṃskāra.Template:Sfn The Treatise on Action (Karmasiddhiprakaraṇa), also by Vasubandhu, treats the subject of karma in detail from the Yogācāra perspective.Template:Sfn According to scholar Dan Lusthaus,

Vasubandhu's Viṃśatikā (Twenty Verses) repeatedly emphasizes in a variety of ways that karma is intersubjective and that the course of each and every stream of consciousness (vijñāna-santāna, i.e., the changing individual) is profoundly influenced by its relations with other consciousness streams.Template:Sfn

According to Bronkhorst, whereas in earlier systems it "was not clear how a series of completely mental events (the deed and its traces) could give rise to non-mental, material effects," with the (purported) idealism of the Yogācāra system this is not an issue.Template:Sfn

In Mahāyāna traditions, karma is not the sole basis of rebirth. The rebirths of bodhisattvas after the seventh stage (S. bhūmi) are said to be consciously directed for the benefit of others still trapped in .Template:Sfn Thus, theirs are not uncontrolled rebirths.Template:Sfn

Mādhyamaka philosophy

Nāgārjuna articulated the difficulty in forming a karma theory in his most prominent work, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way):

If (the act) lasted till the time of ripening, (the act) would be eternal. If (the act) were terminated, how could the terminated produce a fruit?Template:Refn

The Mūlamadhyamakavṛtty-Akutobhayā, also generally attributed to Nāgārjuna,Template:Sfn concludes that it is impossible both for the act to persist somehow and also for it to perish immediately and still have efficacy at a later time.Template:Refn

Tibetan Buddhism

In Tibetan Buddhism, the teachings on karma belong to the preliminary teachings, that turn the mind towards the Buddhist dharma.Template:Sfn

In the Vajrayana tradition, negative past karma may be "purified" through such practices as meditation on Vajrasattva because they both are the mind's psychological phenomenon.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The performer of the action, after having purified the karma, does not experience the negative results he or she otherwise would have.Template:Sfn Engaging in the ten negative actions out of selfishness and delusions hurts all involved. Otherwise, loving others, receives love; whereas; people with closed hearts may be prevented from happiness.Template:Sfn One good thing about karma is that it can be purified through confession, if the thoughts become positive.Template:Sfn Within Guru Yoga seven branch offerings practice, confession is the antidote to aversion.

East Asian traditions

Zen

Dōgen Kigen argued in his Shobogenzo that karmic latencies are emphatically not empty, going so far as to claim that belief in the emptiness of karma should be characterized as "non-Buddhist," although he also states that the "law of karman has no concrete existence."Template:Sfn

Zen's most famous koan about karma is called Baizhang's Wild Fox (百丈野狐). The story of the koan is about an ancient Zen teacher whose answer to a question presents a wrong view about karma by saying that the person who has a foundation in cultivating the great practice "does not fall into cause and effect." Because of his unskillful answer the teacher reaps the result of living 500 lives as a wild fox. He is then able to appear as a human and ask the same question to Zen teacher Baizhang, who answers, "He is not in the dark about cause and effect." Hearing this answer the old teacher is freed from the life of a wild fox. The Zen perspective avoids the duality of asserting that an enlightened person is either subject to or free from the law of karma and that the key is not being ignorant about karma.

Tendai

The Japanese Tendai/Pure Land teacher Genshin taught a series of ten reflections for a dying person that emphasized reflecting on the Amida Buddha as a means to purify vast amounts of karma.Template:Sfn

Nichiren Buddhism

Nichiren Buddhism teaches that transformation and change through faith and practice changes adverse karma—negative causes made in the past that result in negative results in the present and future—to positive causes for benefits in the future.Template:Sfn

Modern interpretations and controversies

Social conditioning

Buddhist modernists often prefer to equate karma with social conditioning, in contradistinction with, as one scholar puts it, "early texts [which] give us little reason to interpret 'conditioning' as the infusion into the psyche of external social norms, or of awakening as simply transcending all psychological conditioning and social roles. Karmic conditioning drifts semantically toward 'cultural conditioning' under the influence of western discourses that elevate the individual over the social, cultural, and institutional. The traditional import of the karmic conditioning process, however, is primarily ethical and soteriological—actions condition circumstances in this and future lives."Template:Sfn

Essentially, this understanding limits the scope of the traditional understanding of karmic effects so that it encompasses only saṃskāras—habits, dispositions and tendencies—and not external effects, while at the same time expanding the scope to include social conditioning that does not particularly involve volitional action.Template:Sfn

Karma theory and social justice

Some western commentators and Buddhists have taken exception to aspects of karma theory, and have proposed revisions of various kinds. These proposals fall under the rubric of Buddhist modernism.Template:Sfn

The "primary critique" of the Buddhist doctrine of karma is that some feel "karma may be socially and politically disempowering in its cultural effect, that without intending to do this, karma may in fact support social passivity or acquiescence in the face of oppression of various kinds."Template:Sfn Dale S. Wright, a scholar specializing in Zen Buddhism, has proposed that the doctrine be reformulated for modern people, "separated from elements of supernatural thinking," so that karma is asserted to condition only personal qualities and dispositions rather than rebirth and external occurrences.Template:Sfn

Loy argues that the idea of accumulating merit too easily becomes "spiritual materialism," a view echoed by other Buddhist modernists,Template:Refn and further that karma has been used to rationalize racism, caste, economic oppression, birth handicaps and everything else.Template:Sfn

Loy goes on to argue that the view that suffering such as that undergone by Holocaust victims could be attributed in part to the karmic ripenings of those victims is "fundamentalism, which blames the victims and rationalizes their horrific fate," and that this is "something no longer to be tolerated quietly. It is time for modern Buddhists and modern Buddhism to outgrow it" by revising or discarding the teachings on karma.Template:Sfn

Other scholars have argued, however, that the teachings on karma do not encourage judgment and blame, given that the victims were not the same people who committed the acts, but rather were just part of the same mindstream-continuum with the past actors,Template:Sfn and that the teachings on karma instead provide "a thoroughly satisfying explanation for suffering and loss" in which believers take comfort.Template:Sfn

See also

Buddhism

• Paṭṭhāna
• Anantarika-karma
• Consciousness (Buddhism)
• Development of Karma in Buddhism
• Index of Buddhism-related articles
• Karma
• Merit (Buddhism)
• Pratitya-samutpada (Dependent Origination)
• Samsara (Buddhism)
• Secular Buddhism
• Twelve Nidanas

Indian religions

• Karma in Hinduism
• Karma in Jainism

Other

• Myth of Er (Plato)

Quotes

Subnotes

Sources

Printed sources

Sutta Pitaka

Buddhist teachers

Scholarly sources

Further reading

Scholarly sources

• Gethin, Rupert (1998). Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Template:ISBN.

Journal

• The Buddha's Bad Karma: A Problem in the History of Theravada Buddhism Jonathan S. Walters, Numen, Vol. 37, No. 1 (June 1990), pp. 70–95

Primary sources

• Dalai Lama (1992). The Meaning of Life, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins. Wisdom.
• Geshe Sonam Rinchen (2006). How Karma Works: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising. Snow Lion
• Khandro Rinpoche (2003). This Precious Life. Shambala
• Ringu Tulku (2005). Daring Steps Toward Fearlessness: The Three Vehicles of Tibetan Buddhism. Snow Lion.

External links

General

• Buddhist Philosophy, Kamma, Surendranath Dasgupta, 1940
• What is Karma?, by Ken McLeod
• Essential Points on Karma, by Jeffrey Kotyk
• What Is Reincarnation?, by Alexander Berzin
• Understanding Karma Template:Webarchive, by Reginald Ray

Sarvastivada

• Alexis sanderson, The Sarvastivada and its critics: Anatmavada and the Theory of Karma

Theravada

• Karma by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
• Misunderstandings of the Law of Kamma by Prayudh Payutto
• Dhammapada Verse 128 Suppabuddhasakya Vatthu Story about the Buddha and Suppabuddha, father of the Buddha's former wife Yashodhara

Yogacara

• Richard King (1998), Vijnaptimatrata and the Abhidharma context of early Yogacara, Asian Philosophy, Vol. 8 No. 1 Mar.1998.

Nyingma

• Longchenpa (1308–1364), Karma, Cause, and Effect, Chapter IV of The Great Chariot