"TITTER YE NOT"
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Have you heard about the new restaurant called Karma?
There’s no menu; you get what you deserve.
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How people treat you is their karma;
how you react is yours.
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Karma comes after everyone eventually.
You can't get away with screwing people over your whole life, I don't care who you are. What goes around comes around. That's how it works.
Sooner or later the universe will serve you the revenge that you deserve.
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If you're really a mean person you're going to come back as a fly and eat Dog Shite.
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INSTANT KARMA
Karma means action, work, or deed; it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect, where
the intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). Good
intent and good deed contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deed
contribute to bad karma and future suffering. Karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in
many schools of Asian religions. In these schools, karma in the present affects one's future in the
current life, as well as the nature and quality of future lives- one's saṃsāra.
With origins in ancient India, karma is a key concept in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and
Karma is the executed "deed", "work", "action", or "act", and it is also the "object", the "intent".
Wilhelm Halbfass explains karma (karman) by contrasting it with another Sanskrit word, kriya. The
word kriya is the activity, along with the steps and effort in action, while karma is the executed action
as a consequence of that activity, as well as the intention of the actor behind an executed action or a
planned action (described by some scholars as metaphysical residue left in the actor). A good action
creates good karma, as does good intent. A bad action creates bad karma, as does bad intent.
Karma also refers to a conceptual principle that originated in India, often descriptively called the
principle of karma, sometimes as the karma theory or the law of karma. In the context of theory,
karma is complex and difficult to define. Different schools of Indologists derive different definitions
for the karma concept from ancient Indian texts; their definition is some combination of causality that
may be ethical or non-ethical, ethnicization, that is, good or bad actions have consequences, and
rebirth. Other Indologists include in the definition of karma theory that which explains the present
circumstances of an individual with reference to his or her actions in past. These actions may be
those in a person's current life, or, in some schools of Indian traditions, possibly actions in their past
lives; furthermore, the consequences may result in current life, or a person's future lives. The law of
karma operates independently of any deity or any process of divine judgment.
Difficulty in arriving at a definition of karma arises because of the diversity of views among the
schools of Hinduism; some, for example, consider karma and rebirth linked and simultaneously
essential, some consider karma but not rebirth essential, and a few discuss and conclude karma and
rebirth to be flawed fiction. Buddhism and Jainism have their own karma precepts. Thus karma has
not one, but multiple definitions and different meanings. Itis a concept whose meaning, importance, and scope vary be Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and other traditions that originated in India, and various schools in each of these traditions. O'Flaherty claims that, furthermore, there is an ongoing debate regarding whether karma is a theory, a model, a paradigm, a metaphor, or a metaphysical stance. Karma theory, as a concept across different Indian religious traditions, shares certain common themes:
causality, ethnicization, and rebirth.
A common theme to theories of karma is its principle of causality. One of the earliest associations of karma to causality occurs in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of Hinduism. For example, at 4.4.5-6, it states:
Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he
be; a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad; he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds; And here they say that a person consists of desires, and as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap. — Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 7th Century BCE
The relationship of karma to causality is a central motif in all schools of
Hindu, Jainism, and Buddhist thought. The theory of karma as causality
holds that executed actions of an individual affect the individual and the
life he or she lives, and the intentions of an individual affect the individual
and the life he or she lives. Disinterested actions, or unintentional actions,
do not have the same positive or negative karmic effect as interested
and intentional actions. In Buddhism, for example, actions that are
performed, or arise, or originate without any bad intent, such as
covetousness, are considered non-existent in karmic impact or neutral in
influence on the individual.
Another causality characteristic, shared by Karmic theories, is that like
deeds lead to like effects. Thus, good karma produces a good effect on
the actor, while bad karma produces a bad effect. This effect may be
material, moral or emotional — that is, one's karma affects one's
happiness and unhappiness. The effect of karma need not be immediate; the effect of karma can be later in one's current life, and in some schools it extends to future lives.
The consequences or effects of one's karma can be described in two forms:
phalas and samskaras. A phala (literally, fruit or result) is the visible or invisible effect that is typically immediate or within the current life. In contrast, samskaras are invisible effects, produced inside the actor because of the karma, transforming the agent and affecting his or her ability to be happy or unhappy in this life and future ones. The theory of karma is often presented in the context of samskaras. Karmic principle can be understood, suggests Karl Potter, as a principle of psychology and habit. Karma seeds habits (vāsanā), and habits create the nature of man. Karma also seeds self-perception, and perception influences how one experiences life
events. Both habits and self-perception affect the course of one's life.
Breaking bad habits is not easy:
It requires conscious karmic effort. Thus,
psyche and habit, according to Potter and others, link karma to causality
in ancient Indian literature. The idea of karma may be compared to the
notion of a person's "character", as both are assessments of the person
and determined by that person's habitual thinking and acting.
The second theme common to karma theories is ethnicization.
This begins with the premise that every action has a consequence, which
will come to fruition in either this or a future life; thus, morally good acts
will have positive consequences, whereas bad acts will produce negative
results. An individual's present situation is thereby explained by reference
to actions in his present or in previous lifetimes. Karma is not itself
"reward and punishment", but the law that produces consequences.
Halbfass notes, good karma is considered dharma and leads to punya (merit), while bad karma is considered a dharma and leads to pāp (demerit, sin).
Reichenbach suggests that the theories of karma are an ethical theory.
This is so because the ancient scholars of India linked intent and actual
action to merit, reward, demerit, and punishment. A theory without ethical
premises would be a pure causal relation; the merit or reward order of
merit or punishment would be the same regardless of the actor's intent.
In ethics, one's intentions, attitudes, and desires matter in the evaluation
of one's actions. Where the outcome is unintended, the moral
responsibility for it is less on the actor, even though causal responsibility
may be the same regardless. A karma theory considers not only the
action, but also the actor's intentions, attitude, and desires before and
during the action.
The karma concept thus encourages each person to seek and live a moral life, as well as avoid an immoral life. The meaning and significance of karma is thus as a building block of an ethical theory.
The third common theme of karma theories is the concept of reincarnation or the cycle of rebirths (saṃsāra). Rebirth is a fundamental concept of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The concept has been intensely debated in ancient literature of India, with different schools of Indian religions considering the relevance of rebirth as either essential, or secondary, or unnecessary fiction. Karma is a basic concept, rebirth is a derivative concept, so suggests Creel; Karma is a fact, asserts Yamunacharya, while reincarnation is a hypothesis; in contrast, Hiriyanna suggests rebirth is a necessary corollary of karma.
Rebirth, or saṃsāra, is the concept that all life forms go through a cycle of reincarnation, that is, a series of births and rebirths. The rebirths and consequent life may be in a different realm, condition, or form. The karma theories suggest that the realm, condition, and form depend on the quality and quantity of karma. In schools that believe in rebirth, every living being's soul transmigrates (recycles) after death, carrying the seeds of Karmic impulses from life just completed, into another life and lifetime of karmas. This cycle continues indefinitely, except for those who consciously break this cycle by reaching moksa. Those who break the cycle reach the realm of the gods; those who don't continue in the cycle.
The theory of "karma and rebirth" raises numerous questions—such as how, when, and why the cycle starts in the first place, what is the relative Karmic merit of one karma versus another, and why, and what evidence is there that rebirth actually happens, among others. Various schools of Hinduism realized these difficulties, debated their own formulations, some reaching what they considered as internally consistent theories, while other schools modified and de-emphasized them, and a few schools in Hinduism, such as
Carvakas, Lokayatana abandoned the "karma and rebirth" theory altogether. Schools of Buddhism consider the karma-rebirth cycle as integral to their theories of soteriology.
The Vedic Sanskrit word kárman- (nominative kárma) means "work" or "deed", often used in the context of Srauta rituals. In the Rigveda, the word occurs some 40 times. In Satapatha Brahmana 1.7.1.5, sacrifice is declared as the "greatest" of works; Satapatha Brahmana 10.1.4.1 associates the potential of becoming immortal (amara) with the karma of the agnicayana sacrifice.
The earliest clear discussion of the karma doctrine is in the Upanishads. For example, the causality and ethnicization are stated in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.2.13 ("Truly, one becomes good through good deeds, and evil through evil deeds.")
Some authors state that the Samsara (transmigration) and Karma doctrine may be non-Vedic, and the ideas may have developed in the "shramana" traditions that preceded Buddhism and Jainism. Others state that some of the complex ideas of the ancient emerging theory of karma flowed from Vedic thinkers to Buddhist and Jain thinkers. The mutual influences between the traditions are unclear, and likely co-developed.
Many philosophical debates surrounding the concept are shared by the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions, and the early developments in each tradition incorporated different novel ideas. For example, Buddhists allowed karma transfer from one person to another and sraddha rites, but had difficulty defending the rationale. In contrast, Hindu schools and Jainism would not allow the possibility of karma transfer.
The concept of karma in Hinduism developed and evolved over centuries. The earliest Upanishads began with the questions about how and why man is born, and what happens after death. As answers to the latter, the early theories in these ancient Sanskrit documents include pancagni vidya (the five fire doctrine), pitryana (the cyclic path of fathers), and devayana (the cycle-transcending path of the gods). Those who do superficial rituals and seek material gain, claimed these ancient scholars, travel the way of their fathers and recycle back into another life; those who renounce these, go into the forest and pursue spiritual knowledge, were claimed to climb into the higher path of the gods. It is these who break the cycle and are not reborn. With the composition of the Epics - the common man's introduction to Dharma in Hinduism - the ideas of causality and essential elements of the theory of karma were being recited in folk stories. For example:
As a man himself sows, so he himself reaps; no man inherits the good or evil act of another man. The fruit is of the same quality as the action.
— Mahabharata, xii.291.22
In the thirteenth book of the Mahabharata, also called the Teaching Book (Anushasana Parva), the sixth chapter opens with
Yudhishthira asks Bhishma:
"Is the course of a person's life already destined, or can human effort shape one's life?" The future, replies Bhishma, is both a function of current human effort derived from free will and past human actions that set the circumstances.
Over and over again, the chapters of the Mahabharata recite the key postulates of karma theory. That is:
intent and action (karma) have consequences; karma lingers and doesn't disappear; and all positive or negative experiences in life require effort and intent. For example:
Happiness comes due to good actions, and suffering results from evil actions. By actions, all things are obtained. By inaction, nothing whatsoever is enjoyed.
If one's action bore no fruit, then everything would be of no avail,
if the world worked from fate alone, it would be neutralized.
— Mahabharata, xiii.6.10 & 19
Over time, various schools of Hinduism developed many different definitions of
karma, some making karma appear quite deterministic, while others make
room for free will and moral agency. Among the six most studied schools of
Hinduism, the theory of karma evolved in different ways, as their respective
scholars reasoned and attempted to address the internal inconsistencies,
implications, and issues of the karma doctrine. According to Halbfass,
The Nyaya school of Hinduism considers karma and rebirth to be a
central school of thought. With some Nyaya scholars, such as Udayana,
suggesting that the Karma doctrine implies that God exists.
The Vaisesika school does not consider the karma from past lives
The doctrine is very important. The Samkhya school considers karma to be of secondary importance (prakrti is primary). The Mimamsa school gives a negligible role to karma from past lives, disregards Samsara and Moksa. The Yoga school considers karma from past lives to be secondary; one's behavior and psychology in the current life are what have consequences and lead to entanglements.
According to Professor Wilhelm Halbfass, the Vedanta school acknowledges the karma-rebirth doctrine, but concludes it is a theory that is not derived from reality and cannot be proven, considers it invalid for its failure to explain evil inequality other observable facts about society, treats it as a convenient fiction to solve practical problems in Upanishadic times, and declares it irrelevant; in the Advaita Vedanta school, actions in current life have moral consequences and liberation is possible within one's life as jivanmukti (self-realised person).
The above schools illustrate the diversity of views, but are not exhaustive. Each school has sub-schools in Hinduism, such as the Vedanta school's nondualism and dualism sub-schools. Furthermore, there are other schools of Hinduism, such as Carvaka, Lokayata (the materialists), who denied the theory of karma-rebirth as well as the existence of God; to this school of Hindus, the properties of things come from the nature of things. Causality emerges from the interaction, actions, and nature of things and people, determinative principles such as karma or God are unnecessary.
Karma and karmap. Hala are fundamental concepts in Buddhism. The concept of karma and karmaphala explains how our intentional actions keep us tied to rebirth in samsara, whereas the Buddhist path, as exemplified in the Noble Eightfold Path, shows us the way out of samsara.
Karmaphala is the "fruit", "effect," or "result" of karma. A similar term is karmavipaka, the "maturation" or "cooking" of karma. The cycle of rebirth is determined by karma, literally "action". In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to actions driven by intention (cetanā), a deed done deliberately through body, speech, or mind, which leads to future consequences.
The Nibbedhika Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 6.63:
Intention (cetana), I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect.
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, is a matter of philosophical inquiry in the Buddhist traditions, for which several solutions have been proposed. In early Buddhism, no explicit theory of rebirth and karma is worked out, and the karma doctrine may have been incidental to early Buddhist soteriology.
Buddhist soteriology. In early Buddhism, rebirth is ascribed to craving or ignorance. The Buddha's teaching of karma is not strictly deterministic, but incorporates circumstantial factors, unlike that of the Jains. It is not a rigid and mechanical process, but a flexible, fluid, and dynamic process. 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. Karmaphala is not a "judgement" enforced by a God, Deity, or other supernatural being that controls the affairs of the Cosmos. Rather, karmaphala is the outcome of a natural process of cause and effect. Within Buddhism, 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. The Acintita Sutta warns that "the results of kamma" is one of the four incomprehensible subjects, subjects that are beyond all conceptualization and cannot be understood with logical thought or reason.
In Jainism, "karma" conveys a totally different meaning from that commonly understood in Hindu philosophy and Western civilization.
Jain philosophy is the oldest Indian philosophy that completely separates body (matter) from the soul (pure consciousness). In Jainism, karma is referred to as karmic dirt, as it consists of very subtle particles of matter that pervade the entire universe. Karmas are attracted to the karmic field of a soul due to vibrations created by the activities of the mind, speech, and body, as well as various mental dispositions. Hence, the karmas are the subtle matter surrounding the consciousness of a soul. When these two components (consciousness and karma) interact, we experience the life we know at present. Jain texts expound that seven tattvas (truths or fundamentals) constitute reality. These are:
Jīva - the soul, which is characterized by consciousness.
Ajīva - the non-soul
Āsrava - inflow of auspicious and evil karmic matter into the soul.
Bandha (bondage ) - mutual intermingling of the soul and karmas.
Samvara (stoppage) - obstruction of the inflow of karmic matter into the soul.
Nirjara (gradual dissociation) - separation or falling off of part of karmic matter from the soul.
Mokṣha (liberation) - complete annihilation of all karmic matter (bound with any particular soul).
According to Padmanabh Jaini,
This emphasis on reaping the fruits only of one's own karma was not restricted to the Jainas; both Hindus and Buddhist writers have produced doctrinal materials stressing the same point. Each of the latter traditions, however, developed practices in basic contradiction to such a belief. In addition to shrardha (the ritual Hindu offerings by the son of the deceased), we find among Hindus widespread adherence to the notion of divine intervention in one's fate, while Buddhists eventually came to propound such theories as boon-granting bodhisattvas, transfer of merit, and the like. Only Jainas have been absolutely unwilling to allow such ideas to penetrate their community, despite the fact that there must have been a tremendous amount of social pressure on them to do so.
The key points where the theory of karma in Jainism can be stated as follows:
Karma operates as a self-sustaining mechanism as a natural universal law, without any need for an external entity to manage them (absence of the exogenous "Divine Entity" in Jainism)
Jainism advocates that a soul attracts karmic matter even with the thoughts, and not just the actions. Thus, to even think evil of someone would incur a karma-bandha or an increment in bad karma. For this reason, Jainism emphasises developing Ratnatraya
(The Three Jewels):
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samyak darśana (Right Faith), samyak jnāna (Right Knowledge), and samyak charitra (Right Conduct). In Jain theology, a soul is released from worldly affairs as soon as it is able to emancipate from the "karmabandha." In Jainism, nirvana and moksha are used interchangeably. Nirvana represents the annihilation of all karmas by an individual soul, and moksha represents the perfect blissful state (free from all bondage). In the presence of a Tirthankara, a soul can attain KevalaJnana
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(omniscience) and subsequently nirvana, without any need for intervention by the Tirthankara. The karmic theory in Jainism operates endogenously. Even the Tirthankaras themselves have to go through the stages of emancipation to attain that state.
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Jainism treats all souls equally, inasmuch as it advocates that all souls have the same potential of attaining nirvana. Only those who make effort, really attain it, but nonetheless, each soul is capable on its own to do so by gradually reducing its karma.
In Sikhism, all living beings are described as being under the influence of Maya's three
qualities. Always present together in varying mix and degrees, these three qualities of maya
bind the soul to the body and to the earth plane. Above these three qualities is the eternal time.
Due to the influence of three modes of Maya's nature, jivas (individual beings) perform
activities under the control and purview of the eternal time. These activities are called "karma".
The underlying principle is that karma is the law that brings back the results of actions to the
person performing them.
This life is likened to a field in which our karma is the seed. We harvest exactly what we sow;
no less, no more. This infallible law of karma holds everyone responsible for what the person is
or is going to be. Based on the total sum of past karma, some feel close to the Pure Being in
this life, and others feel separated. This is the Gurbani's (Sri Guru Granth Sahib) law of karma.
Like other Indian and oriental schools of thought, the Gurbani also accepts the doctrines of
karma and reincarnation as facts of nature.
Interpreted as Musubi, it is recognized in Shintoism, the view of karma as a means of
enriching, empowering, and life-affirming is observed.
Karma is an important concept in Taoism. Every deed is tracked by deities and spirits.
Appropriate rewards or retribution follow karma, just like a shadow follows a person. The karma doctrine of Taoism developed in three stages. In the first stage, causality between actions and consequences was adopted, with supernatural beings keeping track of everyone's karma and assigning fate (ming). In the second phase, the transferability of karma ideas from Chinese Buddhism was expanded, and a transfer or inheritance of Karmic fate from ancestors to one's current life was introduced. In the third stage of karma doctrine development, ideas of rebirth based on karma were added. One could be reborn either as another human being or another animal, according to this belief. In the third stage, additional ideas were introduced; for example, rituals, repentance, and offerings at Taoist temples were encouraged as they could alleviate the Karmic burden.
Ownby (2008) claims that Falun Gong differs from Buddhism in its definition of the term "karma" in that it is taken not as a process of reward and punishment, but as an exclusively negative term. The Chinese term "de" or "virtue" is reserved for what might otherwise be termed "good karma" in Buddhism. Karma is understood as the source of all suffering - what Buddhism might refer to as "bad karma". Li says, "A person has done bad things over his many lifetimes, and for people this results in misfortune, or for cultivators it's karmic obstacles, so there's birth, ageing, sickness, and death. This is ordinary karma."
Falun Gong teaches that the spirit is locked in the cycle of rebirth, also known as samsara, due to the accumulation of karma. This is a negative, black substance that accumulates in other dimensions, lifetime after lifetime, by doing bad deeds and thinking bad thoughts. Falun Gong states that karma is the reason for suffering, and what ultimately blocks people from the truth of the universe and attaining enlightenment. At the same time, it is also the cause of one's continued rebirth and suffering. Li says that due to the accumulation of karma, the human spirit upon death will reincarnate over and over again, until the karma is paid off or eliminated through cultivation, or the person is destroyed due to the bad deeds he has done.
Ownby regards the concept of karma as a cornerstone to individual moral behaviour in Falun Gong, and also readily traceable to the Christian doctrine of "one reaps what one sows". Others say Matthew 5:44 means no unbeliever will not fully reap what they sow until they are judged by God after death in Hell. Ownby says Falun Gong is differentiated by a "system of transmigration" though, "in which each organism is the reincarnation of a previous life form, its current form having been determined by karmic calculation of the moral qualities of the previous lives lived." Ownby says the seeming unfairness of manifest inequities can then be explained, at the same time allowing a space for moral behaviour in spite of them. In the same vein as Li's monism, matter and spirit are one, and karma is identified as a black substance that must be purged in the process of cultivation.
Li says that "Human beings all fell here from the many dimensions of the universe. They no longer met the requirements of their given levels in the universe and thus had to drop down. Just as we have said before, the heavier one's mortal attachments, the further down one drops, with the descent continuing until one arrives at the state of ordinary human beings." He says that in the eyes of higher beings, the purpose of human life is not merely to be human, but to awaken quickly on Earth, a "setting of delusion", and return. "That is what they really have in mind; they are opening a door for you. Those who fail to return will have no choice but to reincarnate, with this continuing until they amass a huge amount of karma and are destroyed."
Ownby regards this as the basis for Falun Gong's apparent opposition to practitioners' taking medicine when ill; they are missing an opportunity to work off karma by allowing an illness to run its course (suffering depletes karma) or to fight the illness through cultivation. Benjamin Penny shares this interpretation. Since Li believes that "karma is the primary factor that causes sickness in people", Penny asks:
"If disease comes from karma and karma can be eradicated through cultivation of xinxing, then what good will medicine do?" Li himself states that he is not forbidding practitioners from taking medicine, maintaining that "What I'm doing is telling people the relationship between practicing cultivation and medicine-taking". Li also states that "An everyday person needs to take medicine when he gets sick." Schechter quotes a Falun Gong student who says, "It is always an individual choice whether one should take medicine or not."
One of the significant controversies with the karma doctrine is whether it always implies destiny and its implications for free will. This controversy is also referred to as the moral agency problem; the controversy is not unique to karma doctrine, but also found in some form in monotheistic religions.
The free will controversy can be outlined in three parts:
(1) A person who kills, rapes or commits any other unjust act, can claim all his bad actions were a product of his karma, he is devoid of free will, he can not make a choice, he is an agent of karma, and that he merely delivering necessary punishments his "wicked" victims deserved for their own karma in past lives. Are crimes and unjust actions due to free will, or because of the forces of karma?
(2) Does a person who suffers from the unnatural death of a loved one, or rape or any other unjust act, assume a moral agent, gratuitous harm, and seek justice? Or, should one blame oneself for bad karma over past lives, or assume that the unjust suffering is fate?
(3) Does the karma doctrine undermine the incentive for moral-education because all suffering is deserved and a consequence of past lives? Why learn anything when the balance sheet of karma from past lives will determine one's actions and sufferings?
The explanations and replies to the above free will problem vary by the specific schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. The schools of Hinduism, such as Yoga and Advaita Vedanta, that have emphasized current life over the dynamics of karma residue moving across past lives, allow free will. Their argument, as well as other schools, is threefold:
(1) The theory of karma includes both the action and the intent behind that action. Not only is one affected by past karma, but one also creates new karma whenever one acts with intent - good or bad. If intent and act can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, new karma can be proven, and the process of justice can proceed against this new karma. The actor who kills, rapes, or commits any other unjust act must be considered as the moral agent for this new karma and tried.
(2) Life forms not only receive and reap the consequence of their past karma, but together they are the means to initiate, evaluate, judge, give, and deliver consequences of karma to others.
(3) Karma is a theory that explains some evils, not all.
Other schools of Hinduism, as well as Buddhism and Jainism, which do consider the cycle of rebirths central to their beliefs, and that karma from past lives affects one's present, believe that both free will (Cetanā) and karma can co-exist; however, their answers have not persuaded all scholars.
Another issue with the theory of karma is that it is psychologically indeterminate, suggests Obeyesekere.
That is:
(1) If no one can know what their karma was in previous lives.
(2) If the karma from past lives can determine one's future, then the individual is psychologically unclear about what, if anything, he or she can do now to shape the future, be happier, or reduce suffering. If something goes wrong - such as sickness or failure at work - the individual is unclear if karma from past lives was the cause, or the sickness was caused by a curable infection, and the failure was caused by something correctable.
This psychological indeterminacy problem is also not unique to the theory of karma; it is found in every religion with the premise that God has a plan, or in some way influences human events. As with the karma and free will problem above, schools that insist on the primacy of rebirths face the most controversy. Their answers to the psychological indeterminacy issue are the same as those for addressing the free will problem.
Some schools of Asian religions, particularly Buddhism, allow the transfer of karma merit and demerit from one person to another. This transfer is an exchange of non-physical quality, just like an exchange of physical goods between two human beings. The practice of karma transfer, or even its possibility, is controversial. Karma transfer raises questions similar to those with substitutionary atonement
and vicarious punishment. It defeats the ethical foundations, dissociates the causality and ethicalization in the theory of karma from the moral agent. Proponents of some Buddhist schools suggest that the concept of karma merit transfer encourages religious giving, and such transfers are not a mechanism to transfer bad karma from one person to another (that is, demerit). In Hinduism, Sraddha rites during funerals have been labelled as karma merit transfer ceremonies by a few scholars, and disputed by others. Other schools in Hinduism, such as the Yoga and Advaita Vedantic philosophies and Jainism, hold that karma can not be transferred.
There has been an ongoing debate about karma theory and how it answers the problem of evil and the related problem of
theodicy. The problem of evil is a significant question debated in monotheistic religions with two beliefs:
(1) There is one God who is absolutely good and compassionate (omnibenevolent).
(2) That one God knows absolutely everything (omniscient) and is all-powerful (omnipotent). The problem of evil is then stated in formulations such as, "Why does the omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God allow any evil and suffering to exist in the world"? Max Weber extended the problem of evil to Eastern traditions.
The problem of evil, in the context of karma, has been long discussed in Eastern traditions, both in theistic and non-theistic schools; for example, in Uttara Mīmāṃsā Sutras Book 2 Chapter 1 the 8th century arguments by Adi Sankara in Brahmasutrabhasya where he posits that God cannot reasonably be the cause of the world because there exists moral evil, inequality, cruelty and suffering in the world; and the 11th century theodicy discussion by Ramanuja in Sribhasya. Epics such as the Mahabharata, for example, suggest three prevailing theories in ancient India as to why good and evil exist:
One being everything is ordained by God, the second being karma, third being chance events. The Mahabharata, which includes Hindu deity Vishnu in the form of Krishna as one of the central characters in the Epic, debates the nature and existence of suffering from these three perspectives, and includes a theory of suffering as arising from an interplay of chance events (such as floods and other events of nature), circumstances created by past human actions, and the current desires, volitions, dharma, a dharma and current actions (purusakara) of people. However, while karma theory in the Mahabharata presents alternative perspectives on the problem of evil and suffering, it offers no conclusive answer.
Other scholars suggest that nontheistic Indian religious traditions do not assume an omnibenevolent creator, and some theistic schools do not define or characterize their God(s) as monotheistic Western religions do, and the deities have colourful, complex personalities; the Indian deities are personal and cosmic facilitators, and in some schools, conceptualized like Plato’s Demiurge. Therefore, the problem of theodicy in many schools of major Indian religions is not significant, or at least is of a different nature than in Western religions. Many Indian religions place greater emphasis on developing the karma principle for the first cause and innate justice with Man as focus, rather than developing religious principles with the nature and powers of God and divine judgment as focus. Some scholars, particularly of the Nyaya school of Hinduism and Sankara in Brahmasutra bhasya, have posited that karma doctrine implies the existence of god, who administers and affects the person's environment given that person's karma, but then acknowledge that it makes karma as violable, contingent, and unable to address the problem of evil. Arthur Herman states that karma-transmigration theory solves all three historical formulations of the problem of evil while acknowledging the theodicy insights of Sankara and Ramanuja.
Some theistic Indian religions, such as Sikhism, suggest that evil and suffering are human phenomena and arise from the karma of individuals. In other theistic schools, such as those in Hinduism, particularly its Nyaya school, karma is combined with dharma, and evil is explained as arising from human actions and intent that is in conflict with dharma. In nontheistic religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, and the Mimamsa school of Hinduism, karma theory is used to explain the cause of evil as well as to offer distinct ways to avoid or be unaffected by evil in the world.
Those schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism that rely on karma-rebirth theory have been critiqued for their theological explanation of suffering in children by birth, as the result of his or her sins in a past life. Others disagree and consider the critique as flawed and a misunderstanding of the karma theory.
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The material on this site does not reflect the views of What If? Tees.
The Images and Text are not meant to offend but to Promote Positive Open Debate and Free Speech.