Karma: Universal and Buddhist Interpretations

The word karma, in its simplest sense, means action. In a broader context, it features the causal relationships brought about by the action, likened to seeds awaiting to ripen in the future. Karma is generally understood as the sum-total of one's activities and their latent effects, weaving a complex causal web leaving even the wisest perplexed over matters of predetermination and free will.

The exact course and formation of causal relationships can be hard to decipher.

The concept has been broadly popularized in the West by Buddhist and Hindu teachers over the past century. The Buddhist tradition has excelled particularly in its presentation of the underlying ethics, while the Hindus, and in particular the Vedantic tradition, have done some interesting groundwork in estimating the subconscious mechanics of karmic ripening.

A comprehensive gloss on the treatment of karma in Buddhism and Hinduism, along with Jainism and Sikhism, the other two main dharmic religions, is beyond the scope of this article. In the following, I hope to first distill the essentials of what determine the nature of the effect arising from a particular cause, and then gloss the Buddhist ethical analysis of action and offence as applied in their old monastic code.

A number of universal factors affect the causal content of each action.

Universal Karma

Karma is the sum total of several variables instead of the outcome of a single factor. Cause here means all direct and indirect, often far-reaching consequences born from the action. First and foremost, karma is born of the desire and intent of the doer. The consequence befalling each action are defined, among others, by the following:

1) Intention. Was the intent positive or negative, good or evil? Was the act done impulsively, with contemplation or by accident?
2) Implementation. Was the act fulfilled in accordance with the intention, or to a contrary result? Was the good or evil act brought to a conclusion?
3) Effects. Are the factual effects of the act positive, negative or mixed, individually as well as collectively?
4) Object. Was the object of a good deed particularly wanting or without need? Was the object of an evil deed helpless and innocent, equal and neutral, or greater and evil itself?
5) Circumstances. Was the act done out of a real need, or whimsically? Was the doer in a forced situation or faced with a free choice?
6) Atonement. Did the doer of an evil act try to make amendments by attempting to correct its consequences? Was the repentance superficial or genuine?

We can all form examples of the above for ourselves, the principles ought to be clear enough. In examining the factual consquence of the act and its effect on its object, the collective effect of the transformation effected in the object, and the underlying intents, we all begin to fathom just how complex the network of cause and effect really is.

I would assume the above to be largely universal, and for the most part also applicable in a court of law as in ethical measurement, even if it is evident that analysis and interpretation of the variables involved is an inherently subjective venture. Religions have certainly all had their say on the matter, and particularly so among Indic religions, where extensive theories of personal causation have evolved.

Buddhist monks of Thai and Tibetan traditions gathered in Lumbini, Nepal.

In Buddhist Monasticism

The ancient Buddhist monastic rules (vinaya) make for a particularly fascinating read in this context. This owes largely to the excessively detailed and thorough philosophy of offense featured in the commentarial tradition, primarily assessing an offense against the criteria of motivation and implementing act. The system of Vinaya Pitaka doesn't discuss the variables of the offense with regards to its possible consequences; its sole intent is to judge whether an offense has occured, and if so, at which degree of severity.

There are four parajika-offenses or unforgivables for the Buddhist monks, committing which a monk is unconditionally exiled from the monastic community for the remainder of his life. They are as follows: 1) sexual intercourse, 2) homicide, 3) theft, and 4) exaggeration of spiritual status. These offences are applicable at this severity only while living as an ordained monk; should the monk for example be unable able to control his sexual urge, he may forsake monkhood and live in a relationship for as long as he wishes, and later in his life again become a monk. However, having sex while still ordained is unforgivable.

The monastic tradition, rich in its abundance of rules, naturally gives the bulk of its attention to these four severest offences. As an example, the tradition defines theft by four criteria:

1) Object: Anything belonging to another or a group of people.
2) View: The object is understood as belonging to another or a group of people.
3) Intention: One decides to steal the object.
4) Effort: One steals the object.

In the above, in absence of factor 2) no ethical violation has occured. (The object accidentally stolen must of course be returned once understood as such.) In absence of factor 3), where the thief has accidentally stolen an object he has contemplated on stealing, a full offense is not committed, neither is it in absence of factor 1) where the thief has stolen no-man's property or something of his own. Additionally the value of the object is in direct proportion to the severity of the crime.

Homicide, in turn, is judged according to the following criteria:

1) Object: A living human being. (Commentarial tradition includes featus here; the rule was born consequent to abortion medicines administered to nuns.)
2) Intention: To knowingly, with understanding, contemplation and intention wish to terminate a person's life. "Knowingly" also includes the following:
3) View: A perception of an object as a living human being.
4) Effort: Whatever may be done in order to terminate an individual's life.
5) Outcome: Life is terminated as a direct consequence of the act.

In the above, in absence of factor 2), for example in an accidental shot, no ethical violation punishable as homicide has occured. In absence of factor 3), for example in the accidental killing of an animal or another human instead of the object (not however if the other is viewed upon as the object), a full offense has not been committed. In absence of factor 4) a full offence has also not been committed, for the transition from will to action has not occurred. A death caused without intention, and thereby also without effort, does not lead to an ethical violation.

Those interested in the Vinaya-tradition may want to study Thanissaro Bhikkhu's Introduction to the Patimokkha Rules and Buddhist Monastic Code, freely employed in this article. In the latter, particularly the fourth chapter discussing the parajika-offences makes a thorough study of ethics, coupled with illustrative examples.

Continued in The Banishment of the Watch-Maker...

Metric Soul and Divided Minds & Divinities

"A one-hundredth part of a hair's tip, and again split into hundred,
this fragment is the living self or soul, also conceived of as endless."
(Svetasvatara Upanisad, 5.9)

The following text is drawn and expanded from my reply to a friend's query on the Upanisadic descriptions of the soul being the size of a ten-thousandth of the tip of the hair, and at the same time pervade the body; in general, the diverse depictions of the soul to be of a particular measure can come across as confusing. The second half of the post discusses the greater "divided spirit" issue of God and soul.

Oxymoron of Metric Soul

The soul, if we choose to believe in one that is, being an immaterial spirit-substance, cannot have a scale of comparison with matter. It is no more the size of a proton than it is the size of a hamburger or a Polish truck-driver. It is neither proportionate nor disproportionate to the object it appears to animate, for it has no proportion in common with inanimate matter.

Of course one might compare the soul to a lamp and the pervading of the body to its rays in a room, and that's a rather appropriate analogy as long as we forget about our attempts to pin it out on the metric scale. Both the lamp and the rays are finite objects, as are the individual jiva-soul and his field of awareness; hence the metaphor works in this application.

Technically speaking, the soul pervades and animates the body through the conscious mental functions (citta) filtered through the medium of ahankara conjointly with Antaryamin, the Inner Regulator or the so-called "super-soul" (paramatman). The antaryamin is variously identified as Ishvara (Supreme God) or Atman (Supreme Self) in differing schools of thought.

Atisayokti - Literary Exaggeration

Everything in the scriptures is a mixture of literal and metaphorical. There is svabhavokti or statement (ukti) reflecting or object's own (sva) nature (bhava), and there is atisayokti or excessive (atisaya) statement. All the four standard atisayoktis in the alankara-shastra (e.g. Alankara-kaustubha: 8.23), or the classical Indian corpus of books on  literary composition and criticism, feature departures from the literal or face-value meaning.

The third excessive metaphorical statement, where the impossible is being stated, is the one we are primarily after at the moment, for the soul has no material scale. Therefore, the statement of comparison is an impossibility. The two first atisayoktis are comparisons to other objects (and I suppose taking this as a hyperbolic diminutive would be every bit as valid), the other overt and the other covert, and the fourth features effect as simultaneous with or preceding the cause.

If we were to indeed indeed pursue this literally, as fundamentalists frequently do, we would have to first ask whether this proverbial hair is Afro-American, French or Vedic Indian — perhaps the sage in question split his own hair tip into 10,000 pieces and compared it to his soul, discovering it was an exact match under his microscope? Did he split it with a Vedic hair-splitter? Perhaps everyone's soul is 10,000 tip of their own hair? This again is problematic for men with thinning hair or baldness; their souls must be approaching limbo...

God and Souls - Divided Minds

A related field of paradox is in the supposed division that exists between the Jiva-Atman and the all-pervasive Brahman or ultimate God. From where I look at things, Advaita-vedanta is quite right in insisting that the atman (which is equated in the realization-stage with the brahman although brahman and brahman alone was the atman was all along) cannot be factually divided into individual soul-units, and that the individuality in question is only a temporary illusion rooted in Avidya or primal ignorance. This is naturally solved with the acquisition of Jnana or knowledge proper.

Let us assume the presence of an individual "soul fragment", a separate conscious unit. Fragments by definition cannot have the same quality as an unbreakable whole, for they differ in the quality of being fragmentable. Again, if the great whole can be divided into fragments, a second is thereby posited next to the non-dual, leading to a number of questions on the unique nature of the supposed one and the greatest non-dual spirit proclaimed across the Upanishads.

The Theory of Simultaneous Difference-Nondifference

Gaudiya Vaishnavism proposes an inconceivable symbiotic difference-cum-non-difference solution to the issue under the heading of acintya-bheda-abheda. Aristoteles would insist things either are or are not, for they cannot be both. A follower of Jiva Goswami's would then employ the acintya-shakti defence: You need to believe that God has the power to not make sense to make headway with the dilemma.

All too often, the inconceivability card is a handy answer to each and every equation that doesn't exactly add up because a transcendent object is beyond logical derivation and accessible perception. This leaves me wondering whether this God does not become irrelevant altogether, stretching entirely out of our objective human grasp and contact as he does.

Of course we also have the standard explanation with the shakti-vada and the nonduality between the energy (shakti) and the energetic (shaktiman), the former of which would include all of us and the inanimate world. Not the least of the problems is the fact that shakti-vada has nothing to do with Vedanta and everything to do with the tantric tradition.

Setting aside doctrinal purism and strict Vedanta interpretation for a moment, the tradition of Kashmiri Saivism which is the root of the shakti theory also features an extensive existential grid, in many ways unique, and in many others parallel to the Vedic Sankhya and its model of causal derivation.

All of that notwithstanding, the problem of evidently divided consciousness between us and God remains. I for one do not possess all the knowledge of God, indicating we are clearly separate units of consciousness. There is little practicality to the proposal of the every-day experience of me being one with a personal and actively omniscient God.

Like Sun and Sunshine?

Omniscience indicates a flawless and all-pervading entity or state of being. This one, all-knowing and all-encompassing God is all that is. Shakti cannot be classified as a second separate unit, even as dependent and subordinate, for this would be introducing dualism, the existence of a second beside God; assuming the non-duality of God and creation, one would expect us souls to share of the same pristine strata of undivided and omniscient existence.

The simile of the sun and the sunshine should be understood for what it is: a simile. A simile does not constitute proof in and of itself, it is a manner of illustrating a more abstract principle. The problems we run into applying this to the case at hand are manifold.

The most obvious of all is the fact sun and sunshine do not feature a known conscious property, whether unified or divided; both are mechanical, passive factors incapable of decision-making, unlike soul and god. Independent decision-making and limited or unlimited fields of awareness, in turn, are the very factors begging the question to begin with.

If a simile is employed in illustrating simultaneously one and different consciousness(es), and especially in the capacity of proof, it should be a comparison of strict equals.

A Monistic Angle

There is a very vivid and distinct duality here, indicating we need to either admit to the non-reality of duality and divided consciousness, labeling them as a mere illusion (and moreover an illusion occuring in Brahman with no existence to its occurence), or do away with an undivided and omniscient, yet eeriely antropomorphic God.

Advaita-siddhanta considers Isvara (personal god) to be the most you can see of the nondual absolute through the veil of maya; as ajnana or individual ignorance is dispelled, the ignorance concerning duality is dispelled, and the one atman alone remains aglow. The doctrine of atman then becomes a de-facto doctrine of anatman, for there was no everlasting individual soul to begin with.

Neither duality nor nonduality are entirely satisfactory for a philosophical answer. I don't have an exact answer for the way all stuff works, though I do have some cool ideas I need to explore a bit further. The citta-matram doctrine of the Yogacara-school of Buddhism, the theory of an unified mind-field and repository consciousness or alaya-vijnana, comes across as rather fascinating to me, and also correlates with some of my experiences.

Summa Summarum

My preferred approach to the question, independent of any scriptures, is to conceive of a single mental field in which both the Ishvara and the jivas are fluctuation in greater or smaller degrees. The only factual omniscient potential is in the universal mind-field, an uninvolved, egoless all-containing entirety, where no catalyst (ahankara) for individuality exists; hence seeing without a seer is actualized. The concept appears to make seamless sense to me, independent of conformance to any ancient or contemporary theories.

In the end, fiddling with lofty philosophical formulations amounts to little more than an entertaining mind-game fulfilling our intellectual urges. Otherwise, assumptions of mastery of a theory may help one to comfort himself and bring order into the surrounding chaos, or to command and conquer existence through comprehension.

Nirvana and God remain lurking in the fabric of the harmony, peace, clarity and joy of an independent nature we discover within ourselves through personal experience, introspection and natural immersion. Even if we all have our respective philosophies and mythologies with diverging particulars, it really doesn't matter a damn thing as long as you arrive at the conclusive non-dual One-Zero paradox at the end.


Related satire from Dissociated Press: Hare Krishna Swami Loses Soul - Downtown Helsinki (DP)