The Idea of 'Karma': What is the Law of Cause and Effect?

[JackDaydream]

The idea of 'karma' is one in Eastern philosophy primarily, often associated with the idea of reincarnation in Hinduism. However, at the basic level it is simply about thr law of cause and effect in the principle, 'As you sow, so shall you reap'. The idea may involve a sense of there being some underlying process of natural justice in the universe or, simply about the complexity of the nature of cause and effect which are experienced in daily life.

The concept of karma does include both matter and mind in the picture of causation. It may also be related to the idea of the law of attraction, spoken of by many writers, including Esther and Jeremy Hicks. This is based on the notion that what becomes manifest in life is linked to intention, consciously and subconsciously. Both the idea of karma and the law of attraction present a view of causation which involves consciousness and the invisible aspects of causation.

To what extent do such ideas make sense in an explanatory way or are they a form of magical thinking and superstition. I have mixed feelings because I can see that the idea of karma can be a way of justifying the status quo, and placing the responsibility on those who experience bad circumstances. Also, is there any natural justice in life? That is because 'bad' people thrive often while 'good' people often experience misfortunes. However, on an intuitive level, in daily experience, both the ups and downs, I often see my own experiences as being part of a learning curve based on past action, my intentions, including conflicts below the surface of my conscious wishes. What are your thoughts on the processes of cause and effect in life and, to what extent is consciousness inherent in the processes?

[ernestm]

Well thats really a question about pop religion, not philosophy, except in some very specific Buddhist thought called 'dependent origination' which is about a necessary cycle of cause and effect leading to the four noble truths, and you can read all about it here. The necessary cycles are called nidanas and their specific forms vary across Hinduism and Buddhism but it gets alot more technical than pop religion. Sorry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%A ... tp%C4%81da

[Consul]

Owen Flanagan distinguishes between "tame karmic causation" and "untame karmic causation":

QUOTE>
"What I have been calling the tame interpretation of karmic causation involves the conjunction of three uncontroversial ideas: (i) that sentient beings exist; (ii) that these beings engage in mentally initiated purposeful action, and (iii) that all the actions of sentient beings (intentional and unintentional) have abundant effects. If (i)-(iii) are uncontroversial, one might wonder why it is worth distinguishing karmic causation from ordinary physical causation at all. One reason is this: Even if sentient-being causation (= tame karmic causation) is not ontologically distinctive, it is epistemically and explanatorily interesting and informative to mark it off as a distinctive subtype. It depicts the causal intricacies of the lives of sentient beings, especially when they act intentionally, in the right way.

According to the theory of evolution, sentience is a biologically emergent feature of non-sentient biological life. Sentient beings constitute a subset of living things. Vegetables and unicellular organisms are alive but not sentient. Sentient beings that can consciously control their own thoughts, feelings, and actions are a subset of sentient life. Some think that the relevant powers are possessed only by Homo sapiens; others think that all mammals, possibly some or all birds, amphibians, even reptiles possess the relevant capacities to some degree, at least the capacity to act to get what they want. Thus the idea of karmic causation makes sense, at the right level of analysis, of the operation of sentient beings. Understood in this way, it could just be called 'sentient-being causation'—a subtype of ordinary causation. (...)

But the less tame interpretation would run like this: Karmic causation_(untame) is intended to do more work than expressing (i)-(iii). It names an ontologically unique kind of causation that accounts for how the psyches of future beings are determined by a set of causal processes that involve more than the environmental plus psycho-social-political-economic effects of previous occupants of the Earth. What is meant by the idea of 'the law of karma, by which an intentional act will reap certain fruits' is this: my conciousness does not die when my body does, it goes on and reaps in the next and possibly many (many) future lives what it sows in each antecedent life. This, one might say, is simply what all eschatologies say in one form or another. So in order to make clear what makes karmic causation_(untame) especially distinctive, one might add: immaterial properties of sentient beings produce causal effects in the natural world, upstream, down the road, in the future.

On both the tame and the untame interpretation, the world evolves as it does, in some significant measure, due to the effects of how humans live. But according to the law of karma (untame) the actual psyches of future beings are juiced by a karmic reward and punishment system. This is the crux, I think, of why the Dalai Lama expresses misgivings with both the randomness and lack of directionality in evolution: 'As the American biologist Ursula Goodenough aptly put it at a Mind and Life conference in 2002, 'Mutation is utterly random, but selection is extremely choosy!' From a philosophical point of view, the idea that these mutations, which have such far-reaching implications, take place naturally is unproblematic, but that they are purely random strikes me as unsatisfying. It leaves open the question of whether this randomness is best understood as an objective feature of reality or better understood as indicating some kind of hidden causation.'

I interpret the 'hidden kind of causality' referred to here as an aspect of karmic causation_(untame) that gives direction to future worlds by way of the system of laws that govern karmic payoffs in future rebirths. Something more than the efficient causation warranted by the concepts of ordinary causation and karmic causation_(tame) is being introduced. And non-efficient causes are looked upon with suspicion by science."

(Flanagan, Owen J. The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. pp. 79-80)
<QUOTE

[ernestm]

Owen Flanagan distinguishes between "tame karmic causation" and "untame karmic causation":

That's a very nice fantasy, but really it has nothing at all to do with Eastern philosophy. Dependent origination is the ONLY acknowledged concept of causation in Buddhist philosophy.

Nor really much to do with the religion of Hinduism, which regards the Western obsession with the concept of Karma as an amusing proof of Western stupidity. Brahmins talk about Karma as something to help make children under 10 behave better, and otherwise, consider it about as frivolous as Grimm's Fairy Tales.

If you are interested in VEDIC PHILOSOPHY, rather than children's myths in Hinduism, there is a discussion of Vedic versions of the Nidana in the above link I supplied.

[JackDaydream]

Well thats really a question about pop religion, not philosophy, except in some very specific Buddhist thought called 'dependent origination' which is about a necessary cycle of cause and effect leading to the four noble truths, and you can read all about it here. The necessary cycles are called nidanas and their specific forms vary across Hinduism and Buddhism but it gets alot more technical than pop religion. Sorry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%A ... tp%C4%81da

I have looked at the link, which is useful, but I am not sure if the idea of karma is simply an aspect of pop religion and, it has been a common theme in 'new age' circles. My own understanding is that it originates in esoteric thinking, including Hinduism. Of course, in some ways it can be seen as problematic as a way of justifying the caste system, but I am not sure that it is simply that. It is also possible that some esoteric forms of Christianity may have held ideas about karma. So, there is an underlying question as to where pop and esoteric ideas emerge.

As I understand it there may be a lot more technicalities and I should probably research these more, but, at the same time, it is not just about the ideas are presented in scriptures of the comparative religious but about understanding of how causation works as a process, which may is likely to involve the physical, but it may not be simply physical.

[ernestm]

Also, is there any natural justice in life? That is because 'bad' people thrive often while 'good' people often experience misfortunes. However, on an intuitive level, in daily experience, both the ups and downs, I often see my own experiences as being part of a learning curve based on past action, my intentions, including conflicts below the surface of my conscious wishes. What are your thoughts on the processes of cause and effect in life and, to what extent is consciousness inherent in the processes?

To answer your other question, no current religion outside Judaism and Christianity states there is any natural justice in life, and both of those had to add an afterlife to make any justice at all. Both of them base it on ancient Egyptian myths.

Other than those two, no other religions at all take any life after death seriously either, except for Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism does describe how to reincarnate, but the process has nothing to do with how you actually choose to behave in life. AFTER YOU DIE, there are a series of ordeals and you have choices to make, which are described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and probably originate from another extinct religion called Bon.

Unless it is trying to raise money, all religions are particularly concerned not with what happens when you die, but in how you choose to behave in response to problems in this life. There is no concept of divine justice otherwise. None at all.

People in India tell children if they don't behave better they will reincarnate as a frog. At some point around puberty they get the talk 'look all those stories about Vishnu and Rama and reincarnation were just to help you figure out for yourself how to be good to other people. They aren't real."

And there is a huge amount of nonsense in the USA by people on drugs about it all.

The fact I have to spell things like that out in a philosophy forum says alot about the pitiful state of the modern Western mind.

[JackDaydream]

Owen Flanagan distinguishes between "tame karmic causation" and "untame karmic causation":

QUOTE>
"What I have been calling the tame interpretation of karmic causation involves the conjunction of three uncontroversial ideas: (i) that sentient beings exist; (ii) that these beings engage in mentally initiated purposeful action, and (iii) that all the actions of sentient beings (intentional and unintentional) have abundant effects. If (i)-(iii) are uncontroversial, one might wonder why it is worth distinguishing karmic causation from ordinary physical causation at all. One reason is this: Even if sentient-being causation (= tame karmic causation) is not ontologically distinctive, it is epistemically and explanatorily interesting and informative to mark it off as a distinctive subtype. It depicts the causal intricacies of the lives of sentient beings, especially when they act intentionally, in the right way.

According to the theory of evolution, sentience is a biologically emergent feature of non-sentient biological life. Sentient beings constitute a subset of living things. Vegetables and unicellular organisms are alive but not sentient. Sentient beings that can consciously control their own thoughts, feelings, and actions are a subset of sentient life. Some think that the relevant powers are possessed only by Homo sapiens; others think that all mammals, possibly some or all birds, amphibians, even reptiles possess the relevant capacities to some degree, at least the capacity to act to get what they want. Thus the idea of karmic causation makes sense, at the right level of analysis, of the operation of sentient beings. Understood in this way, it could just be called 'sentient-being causation'—a subtype of ordinary causation. (...)

But the less tame interpretation would run like this: Karmic causation_(untame) is intended to do more work than expressing (i)-(iii). It names an ontologically unique kind of causation that accounts for how the psyches of future beings are determined by a set of causal processes that involve more than the environmental plus psycho-social-political-economic effects of previous occupants of the Earth. What is meant by the idea of 'the law of karma, by which an intentional act will reap certain fruits' is this: my conciousness does not die when my body does, it goes on and reaps in the next and possibly many (many) future lives what it sows in each antecedent life. This, one might say, is simply what all eschatologies say in one form or another. So in order to make clear what makes karmic causation_(untame) especially distinctive, one might add: immaterial properties of sentient beings produce causal effects in the natural world, upstream, down the road, in the future.

On both the tame and the untame interpretation, the world evolves as it does, in some significant measure, due to the effects of how humans live. But according to the law of karma (untame) the actual psyches of future beings are juiced by a karmic reward and punishment system. This is the crux, I think, of why the Dalai Lama expresses misgivings with both the randomness and lack of directionality in evolution: 'As the American biologist Ursula Goodenough aptly put it at a Mind and Life conference in 2002, 'Mutation is utterly random, but selection is extremely choosy!' From a philosophical point of view, the idea that these mutations, which have such far-reaching implications, take place naturally is unproblematic, but that they are purely random strikes me as unsatisfying. It leaves open the question of whether this randomness is best understood as an objective feature of reality or better understood as indicating some kind of hidden causation.'

I interpret the 'hidden kind of causality' referred to here as an aspect of karmic causation_(untame) that gives direction to future worlds by way of the system of laws that govern karmic payoffs in future rebirths. Something more than the efficient causation warranted by the concepts of ordinary causation and karmic causation_(tame) is being introduced. And non-efficient causes are looked upon with suspicion by science."

(Flanagan, Owen J. The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. pp. 79-80)
<QUOTE

Thanks for the passage which you give, as it does draw out some of the important philosophical issue relating to the concept of causation and the concept of karma. In thinking about the sentient aspects, I do wonder if it phenomenological tradition, such as Husserl's emphasis on intentionality, is important. This does look at the role of consciousness, but not in a detached way as being disembodied, but more as being imminent as the seat of consciousness itself.

I did write a previous thread about randomness but the nature of randomness in the universe and in daily lives is a little different because it involves the more specific as opposed to cosmic aspects. The issue of determinism is part of it but it also involves the question of the depths of consciousness as a spectrum. What I mean is that there may be a role of subconscious process going on in life events. For example, if a person has committed an act of injustice to another there may be a knowledge of this in the depths of the subconscious which leads the person to experiences which make this apparent.

The idea of karma is often in the context of future lives but it can also be present in this one, especially in the concept of 'Instant Karma', like the John Lennon song. Personally, I have felt that I have experienced instant karma on several occasions, meaning that effects of actions seem to occur in a matter of days. Also, the idea of karma involves relationships between people and the potential aspects of how treatment of others is played out. Whether as a religious or as a scientific matter causation may be like ripple vibrations at the level of energy as both body and mind.

[ernestm]

Oh, I should have mentioned, there is no divine justice in Islam either. It should be obvious. The whole point of 'Arabian Nights' is that Sinbad has to make the best he can of good and bad fortune as it happens. If you look up Islamic philosophy on wikipedia, there isn't a single mention of any afterlife there either. The whole thing about terrorists getting seven vestal virgins as a reward for sacrificing their lives is another Western fabrication on the whole, that is, I never heard any Islamic person say anything about an afterlife, Im sure some do, just like nutcases in the USA invent entire fabrications about what karma means in the East lol.

If you want to add your name to the loonybin list, that's your prerogative.

OK that was my turn. Now the flat earth types can say how wrong I am, which Ive learned to ignore unless they actually show some empirical evidence for their statements. Have a nice day )

[Consul]

QUOTE>
"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed."
—Wilhelm Halbfass (see below!)

"Karma (Skt.; Pali, kamma, action). The doctrine of karma states the implications for ethics of the basic universal law of Dharma, one aspect of which is that freely chosen and intended moral acts inevitably entail consequences (Pali, kamma-niyama). It is impossible to escape these consequences and no one, not even the Buddha, has the power to forgive evil deeds and short-circuit the consequences which inevitably follow. A wrongful thought, word, or deed, is one which is committed under the influence of the three roots of evil (akusala-mula), while good deeds stem from the opposites of these, namely the three 'virtuous roots' (kusala-mula). These good or evil roots nourished over the course of many lives become ingrained dispositions which predispose the individual towards virtue or vice. Wrongful actions are designated in various ways as evil (papa), unwholesome (akusala), demeritorious (apunya), or corrupt (samklista), and such deeds lead inevitably to a deeper entanglement in the process of suffering and rebirth (samsara). Karma determines in which of the six realms of rebirth one is reborn, and affects the nature and quality of individual circumstances (for example, physical appearance, health, and prosperity). According to Buddhist thought the involvement of the individual in samsara is not the result of a 'Fall', or due to 'original sin' through which human nature became flawed. Each person, accordingly, has the final responsibility for his own salvation and the power of free will with which to choose good or evil."

(Keown, Damien. Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 137-8)

"Buddhism is founded on the understanding that all life in the universe is subject to moral causality, a process that links present actions to future consequences, both in this life and in lives to come. This force is karma, a word meaning 'deeds', but also their consequences, the individual's cumulative balance of punya ('merit', or what is familiarly called 'good karma') and papa ('demerit', or 'bad karma'). Buddhists regard all intentional acts of the body, speech, and mind as producing 'karmic' consequences. Karma primarily determines the nature of every rebirth after death, ruling one's destiny until, and unless, one realizes nirvana and eliminates karma."

(Trainor, Kevin, ed. Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 60)

"The movement of beings between rebirths is not a haphazard process but is ordered and governed by the law of karma, the principle that beings are reborn according to the nature and quality of their past actions; they are 'heir' to their actions. It is said that acts of hatred and violence tend to lead to rebirth in a hell, acts bound up with delusion and confusion tend to lead to rebirth as an animal, and acts of greed tend to lead to rebirth as a ghost. A person's actions mould their consciousness, making them into a certain kind of person, so that when they die their outer form tends to correspond to the type that has been developed. (...) All intentional actions, good or bad, matter; for they leave a trace on the psyche which will lead to future results.

The law of karma is seen as a natural law inherent in the nature of things, like a law of physics. It is not operated by a God, and indeed the gods are themselves under its sway. Good and bad rebirths are not, seen as 'rewards' and 'punishments', but as simply the natural results of certain kinds of action. Karma is often likened to a seed, and the two words for a karmic result, 'vipaka' and 'phala', respectively mean 'ripening' and 'fruit'. An action is thus like a seed which will sooner or later, as part of a natural maturation process, result in certain fruits accruing to the doer of the action. What determines the nature of a karmic 'seed' is the will or intention behind an act: 'It is will ('cetana'), O monks, that I call karma; having willed, one acts through body, speech or mind.' It is the psychological impulse behind an action that is 'karma', that which sets going a chain of causes culminating in a karmic fruit."

(Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. pp. 39-40)

"The Buddha did not hold that the 'reborn' is the same as the being who died. Thus strictly speaking this is not a case of rebirth. Likewise the 'reborn' being is not different from the being that died, at least if by 'different' we mean completely different in the way that, say, you and I are different. The reborn being is linked to the being that died by a causal process. Let us call the one who dies A, and the reborn being B. Then B is not the same as A. For example, B is not the same person as A (this, at least, seems to me uncontroversial). B occurs in causal dependence (of the right sort) on A. Among the relevant causal factors here are morally wholesome, or unwholesome, actions (karman) performed by A (in the sense understood above) in the past (or even by A's previous incarnations as X, Y, and Z, back theoretically to infinity). Thus at death these factors in complex ways enter into the causal process ('karmic causality') which leads to another embodied individual occurring, in direct dependence upon actions performed by A in one ore more of his lives. Therefore the link between the 'reborn being' and the 'being that died' is also explained in terms of causal dependence, where karmic causation is held to be a central factor in holding the whole process together. With causation there is absolutely no need for a Self to link A and B. This is why one speaks of causal dependence 'of the right sort'. At death the psychophysical bundle reconfigures. One figuration breaks down and another figuration takes place. The bundle is a bundle of the aggregates, but each aggregate taken as a whole is a bundle of momentary impermanent components that form members of that aggregate-class. Thus the person is reducible to the temporary bundle of bundles where all constituents are radically impermanent, temporarily held together through causal relationships of the right sort. All this is in accordance with causal laws (notably of the karmic sort). Because there is the right sort of causal dependence, we cannot say of B that he or she is totally different from A either."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 69-70)

"[F]or the Buddha karman is essentially volition (intention) which leads to actions of body, speech, or mind. Wholesome and unwholesome karmic intentions entail (in this life or in future lives) pleasant and unpleasant experiences, feelings, as their karmic results, together with the particular psychological organism that is capable of undergoing those feelings. Whereas wholesome and unwholesome intentions are by definition morally virtuous or unvirtuous, the results—while pleasant and painful—in themselves are neither wholesome nor unwholesome. A pain in itself has no moral quality. But it is the result of unwholesome karmic intention(s). Thus for a feeling to be unpleasant is not as such for it to be morally wrong. A volition or intention of hatred or greed (produced by ignorance) as a mental response to what is unpleasant, on the other hand, is morally wrong (i.e. unwholesome, not conducive to following the path to liberation). For the Buddha this is all underpinned by the impersonal lawlike behaviour of causality. Thus an unwholesome intention because it is a cause that brings about a feeling of pain as a result. A feeling of pain (like all in samsara) must be a result, and therefore it must be the result of its cause, an unwholesome intention. And the feeling of pain, as resulting, occurs (by definition) in the same causal continuum as the unwholesome intention occurred as cause. This is why, the Buddhist wants to claim, even with an impermanent psychological continuum and without a Self there is no 'causal confusion' or 'confusion of continua'. Even without a Self, the karmic results occur in the same continuum in which occurred the unwholesome intentions. Feelings of pain are therefore brought about not by others (other persons, God or gods) but by oneself, in the sense that in everyday speech we use 'oneself' to refer to events in the same causal continuum. This is a situation of 'total responsibility' (Gombrich). Richard Gombrich has commented that 'just as Being lies at the heart of the Upanishadic world view, Action lies at the heart of the Buddha's. 'Action', of course, is 'kamma'; and primarily it refers to morally relevant action'."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 72-3)

"BUDDHISM: In the oldest extant sources of Buddhism, there is far less ambiguity about karma and rebirth than in the Upanishads, not to mention the older Vedic texts. In the legendary accounts of his enlightenment, the Buddha himself (ca. 500 BC) is credited with the discovery of a pervasive causality and with the realization that living beingsd are causal series of acts and results which extend over countless successive existences. Although the number of older canonical texts which deal with the doctrine in greater detail is relatively small, its central significance cannot be questioned. It is, in fact, inseparable from the quintessential Buddhist formula of 'dependent origination' ('pratityasamutpada'; Pali: 'paticcasamuppada'). In the emergent sectarianism, debates on karma play an important role; different conceptions and interpretations of karma are among those factors that define the doctrinal identity of the various schools. The basic contributions of ancient Buddhism to the development of the karma theory relate, above all, to the following five areas:

1. a stricter notion of causality which postulates a pervasive coherence of karmic events, but insists on the feasibility of choice and responsibility, that is, of acts which are not themselves karmic effects (thus avoiding the karmic determinism associated with the Ajivika school);
2. a notion of agency which defines the act as rooted in, or even as essentially identical with, volition and decision ('cetana') and interprets its vocal or physical implementation as a secondary phenomenon;
3. a process ontology which interprets the connection between act and experienced result strictly and exclusively as causal continuity and tries to avoid the assumption of an identical subject or substrate of act and result;
4. a comprehensive ethicization which replaces Vedic-Brahmanic notions of ritual correctness and caste-bound aptitude with more open and universal ideas of moral obligation and value;
5. a more radical notion of final liberation ('nirvana'/'nibbana') and the commitment to achive it by eliminating the roots of karmic existence, that is, selfish desire and the illusion of the self.

All these areas leave room for further analysis and debate. What, more precisely, is the nature of the mental act or intention, and how does it relate to speech and physical action? How is karmic causality transmitted, and how does it interact with other causes? Is there an intermediate existence between death and rebirth? How does the karma influence the external, material world, and how does it determine the physiological or psychological constitution of sentient beings? What is the special karmic situation of a 'buddha' or an 'arhat', whose selfish desire has been eliminated? Such and similar issues are discussed in detail in the Abhidharma texts and the commentarial literature of the Theravada tradition, and analysed in the context of their complex theories of causal conditions ('pratyaya'/'paccaya') and the ultimate constituents of reality ('dharma'/'dhamma'). The Kathavatthu defends the Theravada views against numerous alternatives. Among the other great schools of Buddhist thought, Sarvastivada made significant and influential contributions to the dharma theory, the classification of causal factors, and the analysis of the person as a 'series' ('santana') of dharmas. Its reifying conception of 'acquisition' ('prapti') is supposed to explain the way the series is affected by the moral and karmic implications of decisions and actions. It also deals with the relation between mental acts and their vocal and physical manifestations and in general with the question of how latent actions ('avijnapti') relate to their manifest counterparts ('vijnapti'). To provide a basis for causality and especially for the durable retributive power of acts in an impermanent world, Sarvastivada developed its distinctive theory of time, which postulates an irreducible state of nonactual being or subsistence for past and future entities, side by side with the actual existence of present entities.

In the teachings of the Vatsiputriya-Sammatiya school, we find the peculiar and seemingly 'heterodox' concept of a durable 'person' ('pudgala'), that is, a common basis of act and result. However, this pudgala is described, in a somewhat elusive fashion, as neither different from nor identical with the impersonal factors that are supposed to constitute the person. It should not be identified with the Hindu notion of the 'soul' or 'self' ('atman').

The Sautrantika school adds various qualifications to the Sarvastivada analysis of volition, action and the transition from the initial impetus to the intended act itself ('cetayitva karman'). But most significant is its explanation of the process that leads from the act to the retributive result: any intentional act or decision affects the subsequent series of mental events ('cittasantana') in a particular fashion and impregnates it with a certain potential. It initiates, in collaboration or competition with other acts, a process of evolution or transformation ('parinama') within the series which will lead to a mental state of fruition or retribution. It is a kind of mental seed or germ ('bija') which is transformed into its appropriate fruit.

The Yogacara-Vijnanavada school adopts these and other Sautrantika ideas and develops them in the contexts of its 'consciousness only' theory, a subjective idealism which reduces reality to states of awareness or mental occurrences. Reality in this sense, as mental and experienced reality, is eo ipso a medium of retribution. As a basis and matrix for the generation of retributive—favourable or unfavourable—experiences, the school postulates a 'warehouse consciousness' ('alaya-vijnana'), which contains the potential, or the stored 'seeds', for all actual awareness ('pravrttivijnana').
The most radical treatment or rather transcendence of karma and rebirth is found in the Madhyamika school of Nagarjuna. Here (as centuries later in Sankara's Advaita Vedanta), karma and rebirth are relegated to the level of provisional, pragmatic and conventional truth ('samvrti' or 'vyavahara'), to an understanding of oneself and the world which needs to be transcended. Neither the accumulation of good karma nor the attempt to eliminate all karma will lead to nirvana. Karma is inseparable from a false commitment to means and ends, to acquisition, ownership and selfhood. From the standpoint of absolute truth, it is as essenceless and 'void' ('sunya') as the self or soul ('atman') itself. Realizing this voidness is liberation.
In general, the transfer of karmic merit plays a much greater role in the Mahayana schools than in old Buddhism; it is a defining characteristic of the 'bodhisattva' ideal."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 213-5)

"Exemplary modernist statements on karma and rebirth may be found in the works of such Neo-Hindu thinkers as Vivekananda (1863-1902), Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) and Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). Numerous authors continue to debate in contemporary India, both in English and in Indian vernaculars. The most distinctive features of the modernist interpretation can be described as follows:

1. Karma is, more or less radically, dissociated from the traditional mythological implications of 'samsara', which include heavens, hells and other transempirical realms of existence; rebirth itself is treated as a less essential adjunct of karma.
2. Karma is presented as a fundamentally scientific notion, a comprehensive 'law' and principle of explanation, which supersedes all merely physical causality and regularity.
3. There is a stronger commitment to empirical evidence, to 'case studies', to the collection and analysis of 'reports' and personal claims concerning rebirth; research in this sense if foreign to the traditional treatment of karma and rebirth.
4. The doctrine is associated with modern Western concepts of evolution and progress; the world of karma and rebirth appears not so much as the realm of aimless wandering ('samsara') which calls for transcendence and ultimate liberation ('moksa'), but rather as a sphere of potential self-perfection and spiritual growth.
5. In response to European criticism, any fatalistic implications of karma are strongly and passionately rejected, and its compatibility with action, initiative and social responsibility is emphasized.
6. The notions of 'collective karma', 'group karma' or even 'national karma', which have no place in traditional thought, but seem to be taken for granted in theosophy, emerge in Neo-Hindu thought and discourse, although their uses are somewaht elusive and in some cases merely rhetorical."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. p. 216)

"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed. The expression 'the doctrine of karma and rebirth' is only a convenient label. To be sure, there are certain shared premises—above all, the twin postulates that there should be no undeserved suffering or wellbeing and that no effect of a past deed should be lost. But apart from such rather formal premises (which may be derived from the even more fundamental postulate that justice should be inherent in the universe), there has been a wide variety of interpretations and manifestations and much room for debate. The twin postulates themselves may be applied more or less strictly. In fact, their rigid implementation would hardly be compatible with the element of freedom and initiative which is implied in the notion of karmic action.

Furthermore, the familiar association and correlation of karma and rebirth is itself problematic. While the two concepts have become virtually inseparable in the idea of 'samsara', their historical roots may, in fact, be quite different. There are also significant conceptual differences between karma and rebirth, and their relation is not a symmetrical one. While karma requires rebirth as the condition of its own inescapability, rebirth does not require karma. It could just be a merely factual condition of existence, without subjection to retributive justice. In this sense, and in spite of its wide-ranging mythical ramifications, the concept of rebirth would, in principle at least, be more easily compatible with a 'scientific' worldview which understands the universe in terms of facts, not values or judicial standards. A world in which rebirth had a place could still be our 'natural' world, the domain of science, while a world in which karma operated would have to be a structurally different universe. Explanations in such a universe would involve justification in the sense of 'theodicy' or rather 'cosmodicy'.

However, karmic causality does not always imply a judicial order of deeds and corresponding rewards or punishments. There is also an ancient and recurrent tendency to explain the functioning of karma as a natural sequence of mental states and events, a psychological, not retributory or quasi-legal, process which links acts and decisions with the formation of dispositions, instincts, character attributes or other internal modes of being. This may, indeed, be the case in some of the oldest statements on karma, which appear in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. Here, Yajnavalkya does not propose reward and punishment (that is, pleasant and painful experience) as the result of karma, but the formation of a good or bad person. Similar ideas are documented in ancient Buddhism. Most later schools distinguish the formation of dispositions, especially of mental 'defilements' ('klesa', 'dosa', 'anusaya') such as attachment and hate, from the accumulation of retributive karmic potential ('karmasaya'). The 'defilements' are often presented as a condition for the perpetuation of karma; in some texts (for instance, Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasya), the fundamental disposition of existential craving ('trsna') appears as the cause of rebirth per se, while karma is said to regulate its specific circumstances. But there has also been much overlap and ambiguity (for instance, in the Jaina notion of 'ruinous' karmas).

What is an act in a karmically relevant sense? What is the significance of intention? What distinguishes good and bad deeds? How does an act produce its 'unseen' power ('adrsta'), and what is the ontological status of this power? Who or what acts? What connects the karmic agent and the subject of retribution? What is the scope and nature of karmic causality? How does it affect the mental and the physical realm? How do we know about karma and rebirth? Do we have valid arguments for their existence, or is it a matter of authoritative tradition and superhuman modes of awareness (such as 'yogic perception')? Are there basically different types of karma, and how can they be classified?

Our preceeding survey has shown a wide variety of answers to these and similar questions. But this multitude of theoretical answers does not describe the breadth and complexity of the phenomenon in its entirety. In the history of Indian thought and life, karma has functioned at various levels of understanding and interpretation, as an unquestioned presupposition and a topic of theoretical inquiry, in popular mythology and in philosophical thought. In its various contexts and applications, it has at least three clearly separable, but interrelated, functions and dimensions:

1. It provides causal explanations of factual occurrences and correlates the present with the past (for instance, in traditional medical literature).
2. It provides perspectives on and incentives for actions and decisions and correlates the present with the future (most conspicuously in the normative Dharmasastra literature).
3. It provides a soteriological point of departure, a view of the causal and temporal world which calls for detachment, transcendence and final liberation.

In the philosophical tradition of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism we find all of these meanings of karma. But the third one clearly overshadows the other two, and it accounts for the pervasive sense of soteriological commitment in Indian philosophical thought."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 216-7)
<QUOTE

[JackDaydream]

Also, is there any natural justice in life? That is because 'bad' people thrive often while 'good' people often experience misfortunes. However, on an intuitive level, in daily experience, both the ups and downs, I often see my own experiences as being part of a learning curve based on past action, my intentions, including conflicts below the surface of my conscious wishes. What are your thoughts on the processes of cause and effect in life and, to what extent is consciousness inherent in the processes?

To answer your other question, no current religion outside Judaism and Christianity states there is any natural justice in life, and both of those had to add an afterlife to make any justice at all. Both of them base it on ancient Egyptian myths.

Other than those two, no other religions at all take any life after death seriously either, except for Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism does describe how to reincarnate, but the process has nothing to do with how you actually choose to behave in life. AFTER YOU DIE, there are a series of ordeals and you have choices to make, which are described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and probably originate from another extinct religion called Bon.

Unless it is trying to raise money, all religions are particularly concerned not with what happens when you die, but in how you choose to behave in response to problems in this life. There is no concept of divine justice otherwise. None at all.

People in India tell children if they don't behave better they will reincarnate as a frog. At some point around puberty they get the talk 'look all those stories about Vishnu and Rama and reincarnation were just to help you figure out for yourself how to be good to other people. They aren't real."

And there is a huge amount of nonsense in the USA by people on drugs about it all.

The fact I have to spell things like that out in a philosophy forum says alot about the pitiful state of the modern Western mind.

I definitely agree that people have been taught a lot of nonsense in the name of various religions, like the idea of some rebirth of being reborn as a frog in a future life. A lot is a way of enforcing morality, like the ideas of heaven and hell. I went through a lot of agonising over the idea of hell and I don't think that the fear lead me to become a better person. Some of the mythic ideas may have had some role in the evolution of culture and morality, but science has given a shift in thinking about causality. In creating the thread I am not wishing to suggest simplistic ideas be taken on board. There is the pop religion and the self help genre which speaks of karma but the nature of causation is one of science too, and there may have been some convergence in the fundamental ideas by some thinkers.

In terms of science, in biology the nature of illness and causality involves body and mental states. There is a clear demonstration of illnesses being based on factors of diet, especially in diabetes and heart disease. However, there is also the impact of mental states, with
the role of stress and the psychosomatic being seen as having a major role in the processes of inflammation and immune function. Even guilt may play a role, especially in depression. The interplay between mind and body in understanding of causation is important and how people's mindset and intentions, consciously and unconsciously shape what happens to them in day to day manifestation of life events.

[ernestm]

QUOTE>
"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed."
—Wilhelm Halbfass (see below!)

"Karma (Skt.; Pali, kamma, action). The doctrine of karma states the implications for ethics of the basic universal law of Dharma, one aspect of which is that freely chosen and intended moral acts inevitably entail consequences (Pali, kamma-niyama). It is impossible to escape these consequences and no one, not even the Buddha, has the power to forgive evil deeds and short-circuit the consequences which inevitably follow. A wrongful thought, word, or deed, is one which is committed under the influence of the three roots of evil (akusala-mula), while good deeds stem from the opposites of these, namely the three 'virtuous roots' (kusala-mula). These good or evil roots nourished over the course of many lives become ingrained dispositions which predispose the individual towards virtue or vice. Wrongful actions are designated in various ways as evil (papa), unwholesome (akusala), demeritorious (apunya), or corrupt (samklista), and such deeds lead inevitably to a deeper entanglement in the process of suffering and rebirth (samsara). Karma determines in which of the six realms of rebirth one is reborn, and affects the nature and quality of individual circumstances (for example, physical appearance, health, and prosperity). According to Buddhist thought the involvement of the individual in samsara is not the result of a 'Fall', or due to 'original sin' through which human nature became flawed. Each person, accordingly, has the final responsibility for his own salvation and the power of free will with which to choose good or evil."

(Keown, Damien. Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 137-8)

"Buddhism is founded on the understanding that all life in the universe is subject to moral causality, a process that links present actions to future consequences, both in this life and in lives to come. This force is karma, a word meaning 'deeds', but also their consequences, the individual's cumulative balance of punya ('merit', or what is familiarly called 'good karma') and papa ('demerit', or 'bad karma'). Buddhists regard all intentional acts of the body, speech, and mind as producing 'karmic' consequences. Karma primarily determines the nature of every rebirth after death, ruling one's destiny until, and unless, one realizes nirvana and eliminates karma."

(Trainor, Kevin, ed. Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 60)

"The movement of beings between rebirths is not a haphazard process but is ordered and governed by the law of karma, the principle that beings are reborn according to the nature and quality of their past actions; they are 'heir' to their actions. It is said that acts of hatred and violence tend to lead to rebirth in a hell, acts bound up with delusion and confusion tend to lead to rebirth as an animal, and acts of greed tend to lead to rebirth as a ghost. A person's actions mould their consciousness, making them into a certain kind of person, so that when they die their outer form tends to correspond to the type that has been developed. (...) All intentional actions, good or bad, matter; for they leave a trace on the psyche which will lead to future results.

The law of karma is seen as a natural law inherent in the nature of things, like a law of physics. It is not operated by a God, and indeed the gods are themselves under its sway. Good and bad rebirths are not, seen as 'rewards' and 'punishments', but as simply the natural results of certain kinds of action. Karma is often likened to a seed, and the two words for a karmic result, 'vipaka' and 'phala', respectively mean 'ripening' and 'fruit'. An action is thus like a seed which will sooner or later, as part of a natural maturation process, result in certain fruits accruing to the doer of the action. What determines the nature of a karmic 'seed' is the will or intention behind an act: 'It is will ('cetana'), O monks, that I call karma; having willed, one acts through body, speech or mind.' It is the psychological impulse behind an action that is 'karma', that which sets going a chain of causes culminating in a karmic fruit."

(Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. pp. 39-40)

"The Buddha did not hold that the 'reborn' is the same as the being who died. Thus strictly speaking this is not a case of rebirth. Likewise the 'reborn' being is not different from the being that died, at least if by 'different' we mean completely different in the way that, say, you and I are different. The reborn being is linked to the being that died by a causal process. Let us call the one who dies A, and the reborn being B. Then B is not the same as A. For example, B is not the same person as A (this, at least, seems to me uncontroversial). B occurs in causal dependence (of the right sort) on A. Among the relevant causal factors here are morally wholesome, or unwholesome, actions (karman) performed by A (in the sense understood above) in the past (or even by A's previous incarnations as X, Y, and Z, back theoretically to infinity). Thus at death these factors in complex ways enter into the causal process ('karmic causality') which leads to another embodied individual occurring, in direct dependence upon actions performed by A in one ore more of his lives. Therefore the link between the 'reborn being' and the 'being that died' is also explained in terms of causal dependence, where karmic causation is held to be a central factor in holding the whole process together. With causation there is absolutely no need for a Self to link A and B. This is why one speaks of causal dependence 'of the right sort'. At death the psychophysical bundle reconfigures. One figuration breaks down and another figuration takes place. The bundle is a bundle of the aggregates, but each aggregate taken as a whole is a bundle of momentary impermanent components that form members of that aggregate-class. Thus the person is reducible to the temporary bundle of bundles where all constituents are radically impermanent, temporarily held together through causal relationships of the right sort. All this is in accordance with causal laws (notably of the karmic sort). Because there is the right sort of causal dependence, we cannot say of B that he or she is totally different from A either."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 69-70)

"[F]or the Buddha karman is essentially volition (intention) which leads to actions of body, speech, or mind. Wholesome and unwholesome karmic intentions entail (in this life or in future lives) pleasant and unpleasant experiences, feelings, as their karmic results, together with the particular psychological organism that is capable of undergoing those feelings. Whereas wholesome and unwholesome intentions are by definition morally virtuous or unvirtuous, the results—while pleasant and painful—in themselves are neither wholesome nor unwholesome. A pain in itself has no moral quality. But it is the result of unwholesome karmic intention(s). Thus for a feeling to be unpleasant is not as such for it to be morally wrong. A volition or intention of hatred or greed (produced by ignorance) as a mental response to what is unpleasant, on the other hand, is morally wrong (i.e. unwholesome, not conducive to following the path to liberation). For the Buddha this is all underpinned by the impersonal lawlike behaviour of causality. Thus an unwholesome intention because it is a cause that brings about a feeling of pain as a result. A feeling of pain (like all in samsara) must be a result, and therefore it must be the result of its cause, an unwholesome intention. And the feeling of pain, as resulting, occurs (by definition) in the same causal continuum as the unwholesome intention occurred as cause. This is why, the Buddhist wants to claim, even with an impermanent psychological continuum and without a Self there is no 'causal confusion' or 'confusion of continua'. Even without a Self, the karmic results occur in the same continuum in which occurred the unwholesome intentions. Feelings of pain are therefore brought about not by others (other persons, God or gods) but by oneself, in the sense that in everyday speech we use 'oneself' to refer to events in the same causal continuum. This is a situation of 'total responsibility' (Gombrich). Richard Gombrich has commented that 'just as Being lies at the heart of the Upanishadic world view, Action lies at the heart of the Buddha's. 'Action', of course, is 'kamma'; and primarily it refers to morally relevant action'."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 72-3)

"BUDDHISM: In the oldest extant sources of Buddhism, there is far less ambiguity about karma and rebirth than in the Upanishads, not to mention the older Vedic texts. In the legendary accounts of his enlightenment, the Buddha himself (ca. 500 BC) is credited with the discovery of a pervasive causality and with the realization that living beingsd are causal series of acts and results which extend over countless successive existences. Although the number of older canonical texts which deal with the doctrine in greater detail is relatively small, its central significance cannot be questioned. It is, in fact, inseparable from the quintessential Buddhist formula of 'dependent origination' ('pratityasamutpada'; Pali: 'paticcasamuppada'). In the emergent sectarianism, debates on karma play an important role; different conceptions and interpretations of karma are among those factors that define the doctrinal identity of the various schools. The basic contributions of ancient Buddhism to the development of the karma theory relate, above all, to the following five areas:

1. a stricter notion of causality which postulates a pervasive coherence of karmic events, but insists on the feasibility of choice and responsibility, that is, of acts which are not themselves karmic effects (thus avoiding the karmic determinism associated with the Ajivika school);
2. a notion of agency which defines the act as rooted in, or even as essentially identical with, volition and decision ('cetana') and interprets its vocal or physical implementation as a secondary phenomenon;
3. a process ontology which interprets the connection between act and experienced result strictly and exclusively as causal continuity and tries to avoid the assumption of an identical subject or substrate of act and result;
4. a comprehensive ethicization which replaces Vedic-Brahmanic notions of ritual correctness and caste-bound aptitude with more open and universal ideas of moral obligation and value;
5. a more radical notion of final liberation ('nirvana'/'nibbana') and the commitment to achive it by eliminating the roots of karmic existence, that is, selfish desire and the illusion of the self.

All these areas leave room for further analysis and debate. What, more precisely, is the nature of the mental act or intention, and how does it relate to speech and physical action? How is karmic causality transmitted, and how does it interact with other causes? Is there an intermediate existence between death and rebirth? How does the karma influence the external, material world, and how does it determine the physiological or psychological constitution of sentient beings? What is the special karmic situation of a 'buddha' or an 'arhat', whose selfish desire has been eliminated? Such and similar issues are discussed in detail in the Abhidharma texts and the commentarial literature of the Theravada tradition, and analysed in the context of their complex theories of causal conditions ('pratyaya'/'paccaya') and the ultimate constituents of reality ('dharma'/'dhamma'). The Kathavatthu defends the Theravada views against numerous alternatives. Among the other great schools of Buddhist thought, Sarvastivada made significant and influential contributions to the dharma theory, the classification of causal factors, and the analysis of the person as a 'series' ('santana') of dharmas. Its reifying conception of 'acquisition' ('prapti') is supposed to explain the way the series is affected by the moral and karmic implications of decisions and actions. It also deals with the relation between mental acts and their vocal and physical manifestations and in general with the question of how latent actions ('avijnapti') relate to their manifest counterparts ('vijnapti'). To provide a basis for causality and especially for the durable retributive power of acts in an impermanent world, Sarvastivada developed its distinctive theory of time, which postulates an irreducible state of nonactual being or subsistence for past and future entities, side by side with the actual existence of present entities.

In the teachings of the Vatsiputriya-Sammatiya school, we find the peculiar and seemingly 'heterodox' concept of a durable 'person' ('pudgala'), that is, a common basis of act and result. However, this pudgala is described, in a somewhat elusive fashion, as neither different from nor identical with the impersonal factors that are supposed to constitute the person. It should not be identified with the Hindu notion of the 'soul' or 'self' ('atman').

The Sautrantika school adds various qualifications to the Sarvastivada analysis of volition, action and the transition from the initial impetus to the intended act itself ('cetayitva karman'). But most significant is its explanation of the process that leads from the act to the retributive result: any intentional act or decision affects the subsequent series of mental events ('cittasantana') in a particular fashion and impregnates it with a certain potential. It initiates, in collaboration or competition with other acts, a process of evolution or transformation ('parinama') within the series which will lead to a mental state of fruition or retribution. It is a kind of mental seed or germ ('bija') which is transformed into its appropriate fruit.

The Yogacara-Vijnanavada school adopts these and other Sautrantika ideas and develops them in the contexts of its 'consciousness only' theory, a subjective idealism which reduces reality to states of awareness or mental occurrences. Reality in this sense, as mental and experienced reality, is eo ipso a medium of retribution. As a basis and matrix for the generation of retributive—favourable or unfavourable—experiences, the school postulates a 'warehouse consciousness' ('alaya-vijnana'), which contains the potential, or the stored 'seeds', for all actual awareness ('pravrttivijnana').
The most radical treatment or rather transcendence of karma and rebirth is found in the Madhyamika school of Nagarjuna. Here (as centuries later in Sankara's Advaita Vedanta), karma and rebirth are relegated to the level of provisional, pragmatic and conventional truth ('samvrti' or 'vyavahara'), to an understanding of oneself and the world which needs to be transcended. Neither the accumulation of good karma nor the attempt to eliminate all karma will lead to nirvana. Karma is inseparable from a false commitment to means and ends, to acquisition, ownership and selfhood. From the standpoint of absolute truth, it is as essenceless and 'void' ('sunya') as the self or soul ('atman') itself. Realizing this voidness is liberation.
In general, the transfer of karmic merit plays a much greater role in the Mahayana schools than in old Buddhism; it is a defining characteristic of the 'bodhisattva' ideal."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 213-5)

"Exemplary modernist statements on karma and rebirth may be found in the works of such Neo-Hindu thinkers as Vivekananda (1863-1902), Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) and Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). Numerous authors continue to debate in contemporary India, both in English and in Indian vernaculars. The most distinctive features of the modernist interpretation can be described as follows:

1. Karma is, more or less radically, dissociated from the traditional mythological implications of 'samsara', which include heavens, hells and other transempirical realms of existence; rebirth itself is treated as a less essential adjunct of karma.
2. Karma is presented as a fundamentally scientific notion, a comprehensive 'law' and principle of explanation, which supersedes all merely physical causality and regularity.
3. There is a stronger commitment to empirical evidence, to 'case studies', to the collection and analysis of 'reports' and personal claims concerning rebirth; research in this sense if foreign to the traditional treatment of karma and rebirth.
4. The doctrine is associated with modern Western concepts of evolution and progress; the world of karma and rebirth appears not so much as the realm of aimless wandering ('samsara') which calls for transcendence and ultimate liberation ('moksa'), but rather as a sphere of potential self-perfection and spiritual growth.
5. In response to European criticism, any fatalistic implications of karma are strongly and passionately rejected, and its compatibility with action, initiative and social responsibility is emphasized.
6. The notions of 'collective karma', 'group karma' or even 'national karma', which have no place in traditional thought, but seem to be taken for granted in theosophy, emerge in Neo-Hindu thought and discourse, although their uses are somewaht elusive and in some cases merely rhetorical."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. p. 216)

"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed. The expression 'the doctrine of karma and rebirth' is only a convenient label. To be sure, there are certain shared premises—above all, the twin postulates that there should be no undeserved suffering or wellbeing and that no effect of a past deed should be lost. But apart from such rather formal premises (which may be derived from the even more fundamental postulate that justice should be inherent in the universe), there has been a wide variety of interpretations and manifestations and much room for debate. The twin postulates themselves may be applied more or less strictly. In fact, their rigid implementation would hardly be compatible with the element of freedom and initiative which is implied in the notion of karmic action.

Furthermore, the familiar association and correlation of karma and rebirth is itself problematic. While the two concepts have become virtually inseparable in the idea of 'samsara', their historical roots may, in fact, be quite different. There are also significant conceptual differences between karma and rebirth, and their relation is not a symmetrical one. While karma requires rebirth as the condition of its own inescapability, rebirth does not require karma. It could just be a merely factual condition of existence, without subjection to retributive justice. In this sense, and in spite of its wide-ranging mythical ramifications, the concept of rebirth would, in principle at least, be more easily compatible with a 'scientific' worldview which understands the universe in terms of facts, not values or judicial standards. A world in which rebirth had a place could still be our 'natural' world, the domain of science, while a world in which karma operated would have to be a structurally different universe. Explanations in such a universe would involve justification in the sense of 'theodicy' or rather 'cosmodicy'.

However, karmic causality does not always imply a judicial order of deeds and corresponding rewards or punishments. There is also an ancient and recurrent tendency to explain the functioning of karma as a natural sequence of mental states and events, a psychological, not retributory or quasi-legal, process which links acts and decisions with the formation of dispositions, instincts, character attributes or other internal modes of being. This may, indeed, be the case in some of the oldest statements on karma, which appear in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. Here, Yajnavalkya does not propose reward and punishment (that is, pleasant and painful experience) as the result of karma, but the formation of a good or bad person. Similar ideas are documented in ancient Buddhism. Most later schools distinguish the formation of dispositions, especially of mental 'defilements' ('klesa', 'dosa', 'anusaya') such as attachment and hate, from the accumulation of retributive karmic potential ('karmasaya'). The 'defilements' are often presented as a condition for the perpetuation of karma; in some texts (for instance, Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasya), the fundamental disposition of existential craving ('trsna') appears as the cause of rebirth per se, while karma is said to regulate its specific circumstances. But there has also been much overlap and ambiguity (for instance, in the Jaina notion of 'ruinous' karmas).

What is an act in a karmically relevant sense? What is the significance of intention? What distinguishes good and bad deeds? How does an act produce its 'unseen' power ('adrsta'), and what is the ontological status of this power? Who or what acts? What connects the karmic agent and the subject of retribution? What is the scope and nature of karmic causality? How does it affect the mental and the physical realm? How do we know about karma and rebirth? Do we have valid arguments for their existence, or is it a matter of authoritative tradition and superhuman modes of awareness (such as 'yogic perception')? Are there basically different types of karma, and how can they be classified?

Our preceeding survey has shown a wide variety of answers to these and similar questions. But this multitude of theoretical answers does not describe the breadth and complexity of the phenomenon in its entirety. In the history of Indian thought and life, karma has functioned at various levels of understanding and interpretation, as an unquestioned presupposition and a topic of theoretical inquiry, in popular mythology and in philosophical thought. In its various contexts and applications, it has at least three clearly separable, but interrelated, functions and dimensions:

1. It provides causal explanations of factual occurrences and correlates the present with the past (for instance, in traditional medical literature).
2. It provides perspectives on and incentives for actions and decisions and correlates the present with the future (most conspicuously in the normative Dharmasastra literature).
3. It provides a soteriological point of departure, a view of the causal and temporal world which calls for detachment, transcendence and final liberation.

In the philosophical tradition of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism we find all of these meanings of karma. But the third one clearly overshadows the other two, and it accounts for the pervasive sense of soteriological commitment in Indian philosophical thought."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 216-7)
<QUOTE

Well thanks for the long list of quotes lol. When the first says "It is impossible to escape these consequences and no one, not even the Buddha, has the power to forgive evil deeds and short-circuit the consequences which inevitably follow." it is referring to what philosophy calls a theory, but religion calls a doctrine, the name of which is DEPENDENT ORIGINATION for which I gave the SANSKRIT reference not PALI.

I provided a link on it, but it was too much for you to read. So here is a picture. Each of the arrows represents a cause.



As you can see, the texts you cite are a rather paltry description. Have a nice day.

[ernestm]

I guess I should add,

ALL THE SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT, together with the FIVE ITEM NUMBERED LIST

in the above article

ARE ALREADY ON THE PAGE ABOUT DEPENDENT ORIGINATION I CITED

IN THE WIKIPEDIA


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%A ... tp%C4%81da

Again, the correct name in sanskrit is Pratītyasamutpāda, which refers to, again, DEPENDENT ORIGINATION.

[JackDaydream]

QUOTE>
"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed."
—Wilhelm Halbfass (see below!)

"Karma (Skt.; Pali, kamma, action). The doctrine of karma states the implications for ethics of the basic universal law of Dharma, one aspect of which is that freely chosen and intended moral acts inevitably entail consequences (Pali, kamma-niyama). It is impossible to escape these consequences and no one, not even the Buddha, has the power to forgive evil deeds and short-circuit the consequences which inevitably follow. A wrongful thought, word, or deed, is one which is committed under the influence of the three roots of evil (akusala-mula), while good deeds stem from the opposites of these, namely the three 'virtuous roots' (kusala-mula). These good or evil roots nourished over the course of many lives become ingrained dispositions which predispose the individual towards virtue or vice. Wrongful actions are designated in various ways as evil (papa), unwholesome (akusala), demeritorious (apunya), or corrupt (samklista), and such deeds lead inevitably to a deeper entanglement in the process of suffering and rebirth (samsara). Karma determines in which of the six realms of rebirth one is reborn, and affects the nature and quality of individual circumstances (for example, physical appearance, health, and prosperity). According to Buddhist thought the involvement of the individual in samsara is not the result of a 'Fall', or due to 'original sin' through which human nature became flawed. Each person, accordingly, has the final responsibility for his own salvation and the power of free will with which to choose good or evil."

(Keown, Damien. Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 137-8)

"Buddhism is founded on the understanding that all life in the universe is subject to moral causality, a process that links present actions to future consequences, both in this life and in lives to come. This force is karma, a word meaning 'deeds', but also their consequences, the individual's cumulative balance of punya ('merit', or what is familiarly called 'good karma') and papa ('demerit', or 'bad karma'). Buddhists regard all intentional acts of the body, speech, and mind as producing 'karmic' consequences. Karma primarily determines the nature of every rebirth after death, ruling one's destiny until, and unless, one realizes nirvana and eliminates karma."

(Trainor, Kevin, ed. Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 60)

"The movement of beings between rebirths is not a haphazard process but is ordered and governed by the law of karma, the principle that beings are reborn according to the nature and quality of their past actions; they are 'heir' to their actions. It is said that acts of hatred and violence tend to lead to rebirth in a hell, acts bound up with delusion and confusion tend to lead to rebirth as an animal, and acts of greed tend to lead to rebirth as a ghost. A person's actions mould their consciousness, making them into a certain kind of person, so that when they die their outer form tends to correspond to the type that has been developed. (...) All intentional actions, good or bad, matter; for they leave a trace on the psyche which will lead to future results.

The law of karma is seen as a natural law inherent in the nature of things, like a law of physics. It is not operated by a God, and indeed the gods are themselves under its sway. Good and bad rebirths are not, seen as 'rewards' and 'punishments', but as simply the natural results of certain kinds of action. Karma is often likened to a seed, and the two words for a karmic result, 'vipaka' and 'phala', respectively mean 'ripening' and 'fruit'. An action is thus like a seed which will sooner or later, as part of a natural maturation process, result in certain fruits accruing to the doer of the action. What determines the nature of a karmic 'seed' is the will or intention behind an act: 'It is will ('cetana'), O monks, that I call karma; having willed, one acts through body, speech or mind.' It is the psychological impulse behind an action that is 'karma', that which sets going a chain of causes culminating in a karmic fruit."

(Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. pp. 39-40)

"The Buddha did not hold that the 'reborn' is the same as the being who died. Thus strictly speaking this is not a case of rebirth. Likewise the 'reborn' being is not different from the being that died, at least if by 'different' we mean completely different in the way that, say, you and I are different. The reborn being is linked to the being that died by a causal process. Let us call the one who dies A, and the reborn being B. Then B is not the same as A. For example, B is not the same person as A (this, at least, seems to me uncontroversial). B occurs in causal dependence (of the right sort) on A. Among the relevant causal factors here are morally wholesome, or unwholesome, actions (karman) performed by A (in the sense understood above) in the past (or even by A's previous incarnations as X, Y, and Z, back theoretically to infinity). Thus at death these factors in complex ways enter into the causal process ('karmic causality') which leads to another embodied individual occurring, in direct dependence upon actions performed by A in one ore more of his lives. Therefore the link between the 'reborn being' and the 'being that died' is also explained in terms of causal dependence, where karmic causation is held to be a central factor in holding the whole process together. With causation there is absolutely no need for a Self to link A and B. This is why one speaks of causal dependence 'of the right sort'. At death the psychophysical bundle reconfigures. One figuration breaks down and another figuration takes place. The bundle is a bundle of the aggregates, but each aggregate taken as a whole is a bundle of momentary impermanent components that form members of that aggregate-class. Thus the person is reducible to the temporary bundle of bundles where all constituents are radically impermanent, temporarily held together through causal relationships of the right sort. All this is in accordance with causal laws (notably of the karmic sort). Because there is the right sort of causal dependence, we cannot say of B that he or she is totally different from A either."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 69-70)

"[F]or the Buddha karman is essentially volition (intention) which leads to actions of body, speech, or mind. Wholesome and unwholesome karmic intentions entail (in this life or in future lives) pleasant and unpleasant experiences, feelings, as their karmic results, together with the particular psychological organism that is capable of undergoing those feelings. Whereas wholesome and unwholesome intentions are by definition morally virtuous or unvirtuous, the results—while pleasant and painful—in themselves are neither wholesome nor unwholesome. A pain in itself has no moral quality. But it is the result of unwholesome karmic intention(s). Thus for a feeling to be unpleasant is not as such for it to be morally wrong. A volition or intention of hatred or greed (produced by ignorance) as a mental response to what is unpleasant, on the other hand, is morally wrong (i.e. unwholesome, not conducive to following the path to liberation). For the Buddha this is all underpinned by the impersonal lawlike behaviour of causality. Thus an unwholesome intention because it is a cause that brings about a feeling of pain as a result. A feeling of pain (like all in samsara) must be a result, and therefore it must be the result of its cause, an unwholesome intention. And the feeling of pain, as resulting, occurs (by definition) in the same causal continuum as the unwholesome intention occurred as cause. This is why, the Buddhist wants to claim, even with an impermanent psychological continuum and without a Self there is no 'causal confusion' or 'confusion of continua'. Even without a Self, the karmic results occur in the same continuum in which occurred the unwholesome intentions. Feelings of pain are therefore brought about not by others (other persons, God or gods) but by oneself, in the sense that in everyday speech we use 'oneself' to refer to events in the same causal continuum. This is a situation of 'total responsibility' (Gombrich). Richard Gombrich has commented that 'just as Being lies at the heart of the Upanishadic world view, Action lies at the heart of the Buddha's. 'Action', of course, is 'kamma'; and primarily it refers to morally relevant action'."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 72-3)

"BUDDHISM: In the oldest extant sources of Buddhism, there is far less ambiguity about karma and rebirth than in the Upanishads, not to mention the older Vedic texts. In the legendary accounts of his enlightenment, the Buddha himself (ca. 500 BC) is credited with the discovery of a pervasive causality and with the realization that living beingsd are causal series of acts and results which extend over countless successive existences. Although the number of older canonical texts which deal with the doctrine in greater detail is relatively small, its central significance cannot be questioned. It is, in fact, inseparable from the quintessential Buddhist formula of 'dependent origination' ('pratityasamutpada'; Pali: 'paticcasamuppada'). In the emergent sectarianism, debates on karma play an important role; different conceptions and interpretations of karma are among those factors that define the doctrinal identity of the various schools. The basic contributions of ancient Buddhism to the development of the karma theory relate, above all, to the following five areas:

1. a stricter notion of causality which postulates a pervasive coherence of karmic events, but insists on the feasibility of choice and responsibility, that is, of acts which are not themselves karmic effects (thus avoiding the karmic determinism associated with the Ajivika school);
2. a notion of agency which defines the act as rooted in, or even as essentially identical with, volition and decision ('cetana') and interprets its vocal or physical implementation as a secondary phenomenon;
3. a process ontology which interprets the connection between act and experienced result strictly and exclusively as causal continuity and tries to avoid the assumption of an identical subject or substrate of act and result;
4. a comprehensive ethicization which replaces Vedic-Brahmanic notions of ritual correctness and caste-bound aptitude with more open and universal ideas of moral obligation and value;
5. a more radical notion of final liberation ('nirvana'/'nibbana') and the commitment to achive it by eliminating the roots of karmic existence, that is, selfish desire and the illusion of the self.

All these areas leave room for further analysis and debate. What, more precisely, is the nature of the mental act or intention, and how does it relate to speech and physical action? How is karmic causality transmitted, and how does it interact with other causes? Is there an intermediate existence between death and rebirth? How does the karma influence the external, material world, and how does it determine the physiological or psychological constitution of sentient beings? What is the special karmic situation of a 'buddha' or an 'arhat', whose selfish desire has been eliminated? Such and similar issues are discussed in detail in the Abhidharma texts and the commentarial literature of the Theravada tradition, and analysed in the context of their complex theories of causal conditions ('pratyaya'/'paccaya') and the ultimate constituents of reality ('dharma'/'dhamma'). The Kathavatthu defends the Theravada views against numerous alternatives. Among the other great schools of Buddhist thought, Sarvastivada made significant and influential contributions to the dharma theory, the classification of causal factors, and the analysis of the person as a 'series' ('santana') of dharmas. Its reifying conception of 'acquisition' ('prapti') is supposed to explain the way the series is affected by the moral and karmic implications of decisions and actions. It also deals with the relation between mental acts and their vocal and physical manifestations and in general with the question of how latent actions ('avijnapti') relate to their manifest counterparts ('vijnapti'). To provide a basis for causality and especially for the durable retributive power of acts in an impermanent world, Sarvastivada developed its distinctive theory of time, which postulates an irreducible state of nonactual being or subsistence for past and future entities, side by side with the actual existence of present entities.

In the teachings of the Vatsiputriya-Sammatiya school, we find the peculiar and seemingly 'heterodox' concept of a durable 'person' ('pudgala'), that is, a common basis of act and result. However, this pudgala is described, in a somewhat elusive fashion, as neither different from nor identical with the impersonal factors that are supposed to constitute the person. It should not be identified with the Hindu notion of the 'soul' or 'self' ('atman').

The Sautrantika school adds various qualifications to the Sarvastivada analysis of volition, action and the transition from the initial impetus to the intended act itself ('cetayitva karman'). But most significant is its explanation of the process that leads from the act to the retributive result: any intentional act or decision affects the subsequent series of mental events ('cittasantana') in a particular fashion and impregnates it with a certain potential. It initiates, in collaboration or competition with other acts, a process of evolution or transformation ('parinama') within the series which will lead to a mental state of fruition or retribution. It is a kind of mental seed or germ ('bija') which is transformed into its appropriate fruit.

The Yogacara-Vijnanavada school adopts these and other Sautrantika ideas and develops them in the contexts of its 'consciousness only' theory, a subjective idealism which reduces reality to states of awareness or mental occurrences. Reality in this sense, as mental and experienced reality, is eo ipso a medium of retribution. As a basis and matrix for the generation of retributive—favourable or unfavourable—experiences, the school postulates a 'warehouse consciousness' ('alaya-vijnana'), which contains the potential, or the stored 'seeds', for all actual awareness ('pravrttivijnana').
The most radical treatment or rather transcendence of karma and rebirth is found in the Madhyamika school of Nagarjuna. Here (as centuries later in Sankara's Advaita Vedanta), karma and rebirth are relegated to the level of provisional, pragmatic and conventional truth ('samvrti' or 'vyavahara'), to an understanding of oneself and the world which needs to be transcended. Neither the accumulation of good karma nor the attempt to eliminate all karma will lead to nirvana. Karma is inseparable from a false commitment to means and ends, to acquisition, ownership and selfhood. From the standpoint of absolute truth, it is as essenceless and 'void' ('sunya') as the self or soul ('atman') itself. Realizing this voidness is liberation.
In general, the transfer of karmic merit plays a much greater role in the Mahayana schools than in old Buddhism; it is a defining characteristic of the 'bodhisattva' ideal."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 213-5)

"Exemplary modernist statements on karma and rebirth may be found in the works of such Neo-Hindu thinkers as Vivekananda (1863-1902), Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) and Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). Numerous authors continue to debate in contemporary India, both in English and in Indian vernaculars. The most distinctive features of the modernist interpretation can be described as follows:

1. Karma is, more or less radically, dissociated from the traditional mythological implications of 'samsara', which include heavens, hells and other transempirical realms of existence; rebirth itself is treated as a less essential adjunct of karma.
2. Karma is presented as a fundamentally scientific notion, a comprehensive 'law' and principle of explanation, which supersedes all merely physical causality and regularity.
3. There is a stronger commitment to empirical evidence, to 'case studies', to the collection and analysis of 'reports' and personal claims concerning rebirth; research in this sense if foreign to the traditional treatment of karma and rebirth.
4. The doctrine is associated with modern Western concepts of evolution and progress; the world of karma and rebirth appears not so much as the realm of aimless wandering ('samsara') which calls for transcendence and ultimate liberation ('moksa'), but rather as a sphere of potential self-perfection and spiritual growth.
5. In response to European criticism, any fatalistic implications of karma are strongly and passionately rejected, and its compatibility with action, initiative and social responsibility is emphasized.
6. The notions of 'collective karma', 'group karma' or even 'national karma', which have no place in traditional thought, but seem to be taken for granted in theosophy, emerge in Neo-Hindu thought and discourse, although their uses are somewaht elusive and in some cases merely rhetorical."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. p. 216)

"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed. The expression 'the doctrine of karma and rebirth' is only a convenient label. To be sure, there are certain shared premises—above all, the twin postulates that there should be no undeserved suffering or wellbeing and that no effect of a past deed should be lost. But apart from such rather formal premises (which may be derived from the even more fundamental postulate that justice should be inherent in the universe), there has been a wide variety of interpretations and manifestations and much room for debate. The twin postulates themselves may be applied more or less strictly. In fact, their rigid implementation would hardly be compatible with the element of freedom and initiative which is implied in the notion of karmic action.

Furthermore, the familiar association and correlation of karma and rebirth is itself problematic. While the two concepts have become virtually inseparable in the idea of 'samsara', their historical roots may, in fact, be quite different. There are also significant conceptual differences between karma and rebirth, and their relation is not a symmetrical one. While karma requires rebirth as the condition of its own inescapability, rebirth does not require karma. It could just be a merely factual condition of existence, without subjection to retributive justice. In this sense, and in spite of its wide-ranging mythical ramifications, the concept of rebirth would, in principle at least, be more easily compatible with a 'scientific' worldview which understands the universe in terms of facts, not values or judicial standards. A world in which rebirth had a place could still be our 'natural' world, the domain of science, while a world in which karma operated would have to be a structurally different universe. Explanations in such a universe would involve justification in the sense of 'theodicy' or rather 'cosmodicy'.

However, karmic causality does not always imply a judicial order of deeds and corresponding rewards or punishments. There is also an ancient and recurrent tendency to explain the functioning of karma as a natural sequence of mental states and events, a psychological, not retributory or quasi-legal, process which links acts and decisions with the formation of dispositions, instincts, character attributes or other internal modes of being. This may, indeed, be the case in some of the oldest statements on karma, which appear in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. Here, Yajnavalkya does not propose reward and punishment (that is, pleasant and painful experience) as the result of karma, but the formation of a good or bad person. Similar ideas are documented in ancient Buddhism. Most later schools distinguish the formation of dispositions, especially of mental 'defilements' ('klesa', 'dosa', 'anusaya') such as attachment and hate, from the accumulation of retributive karmic potential ('karmasaya'). The 'defilements' are often presented as a condition for the perpetuation of karma; in some texts (for instance, Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasya), the fundamental disposition of existential craving ('trsna') appears as the cause of rebirth per se, while karma is said to regulate its specific circumstances. But there has also been much overlap and ambiguity (for instance, in the Jaina notion of 'ruinous' karmas).

What is an act in a karmically relevant sense? What is the significance of intention? What distinguishes good and bad deeds? How does an act produce its 'unseen' power ('adrsta'), and what is the ontological status of this power? Who or what acts? What connects the karmic agent and the subject of retribution? What is the scope and nature of karmic causality? How does it affect the mental and the physical realm? How do we know about karma and rebirth? Do we have valid arguments for their existence, or is it a matter of authoritative tradition and superhuman modes of awareness (such as 'yogic perception')? Are there basically different types of karma, and how can they be classified?

Our preceeding survey has shown a wide variety of answers to these and similar questions. But this multitude of theoretical answers does not describe the breadth and complexity of the phenomenon in its entirety. In the history of Indian thought and life, karma has functioned at various levels of understanding and interpretation, as an unquestioned presupposition and a topic of theoretical inquiry, in popular mythology and in philosophical thought. In its various contexts and applications, it has at least three clearly separable, but interrelated, functions and dimensions:

1. It provides causal explanations of factual occurrences and correlates the present with the past (for instance, in traditional medical literature).
2. It provides perspectives on and incentives for actions and decisions and correlates the present with the future (most conspicuously in the normative Dharmasastra literature).
3. It provides a soteriological point of departure, a view of the causal and temporal world which calls for detachment, transcendence and final liberation.

In the philosophical tradition of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism we find all of these meanings of karma. But the third one clearly overshadows the other two, and it accounts for the pervasive sense of soteriological commitment in Indian philosophical thought."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 216-7)
<QUOTE

Religious beliefs about life after death have such a lack of agreement within traditions. Many spoke of rebirth into animals being possible, whereas some, including the theosophists, have maintained that once a 'soul' has evolved into the human kingdom it is not likely to be reborn as an animal. That is connected to the idea of the kingdoms themselves transmuting into the next one. That involves the souls of the present human kingdom evolving into the future spiritual kingdom, comprised of angels and other members of the spiritual hierarchy. This view is suggested by Blavatsky and Alice Bailey. It is based on the essential ideas of Hinduism reinterpreted and also from such writers' claims about channelling of spiritual masters.

The excerpts you include on Buddhism point to some of the complex ideas within it, and there are many varying schools of thought. I know people who have changed from being Catholic to Buddhist because they have preferred it to Buddhism because they see it as a complete rejection of the idea of the 'fall' and the concept of original sin. However, as the extract you quoted shows it is not that simple and Buddhism doesn't necessarily reject the idea of heavens and hells, even if that may be followed by future rebirths eventually. I also believe that there is some disagreement in Buddhist philosophy between idealism and materialism as there is within Western thought.

The idea of the 'fall' is in itself a basis for idealism because it involves the fall of the non material info the more gross form of bodies, as in matter. This tension between bodies as matter and as 'spiritual' bodies also arises in Christianity, in the idea of what the resurrection body is. Certainly, the Biblical texts speak of being able to touch Jesus as 'flesh and blood" but, even so, it is not clear that the body was exactly the same as it was before. The Christian tradition speaks of a resurrection at the end of the world but also involves different opinions about life in between, and the question of an immortal soul. These ideas do act in the form of potential punishment, especially the idea of hell, and I probably only read and thought about these ideas because they were a source of worry for myself and others within the Catholic tradition.

Generally, I see many of the ideas in the comparative traditions in a non literal way, but do find it a bit confusing at times in thinking about the metaphysical aspects, and I am definitely not a materialist. Many of the ideas may be symbolic, like the idea of rebirth and the cycles of time.

However, it still raises the question as to whether causation occurs in a linear level of progression and about the nature of the dimensions of existence and whether there are ones beyond the physical, and as the writer on comparative religion, Huston Smith argues, even space is symbolic. The realm of time as the fourth dimension and the nature of the multiverse do make causation more complicated in the way this is seen in the quantum world because reality is less 'solid'. Writers such as Bohm do suggest a non material realm, the idea of the implicate order, beyond the visible, the explicate order.

This basis for thinking about the idea of causation open to the possibility of karma, although it may be a different angle from the more simplistic pictures of punishment and rewards, even though it may suggest a balancing process. To some extent, but not entirely, the original idea of karma is dependent on such a belief in past and future rebirths. Some modern ideas of karma may be very different from the ancient ones, especially when seen through Western eyes which is less oriented towards idealism. Also, time in Eastern thought is more about cycles, which affects the basis of thinking, as Western understanding of linear causality is linked to the nature of entropy.

[ernestm]

QUOTE>
"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed."
—Wilhelm Halbfass (see below!)

"Karma (Skt.; Pali, kamma, action). The doctrine of karma states the implications for ethics of the basic universal law of Dharma, one aspect of which is that freely chosen and intended moral acts inevitably entail consequences (Pali, kamma-niyama). It is impossible to escape these consequences and no one, not even the Buddha, has the power to forgive evil deeds and short-circuit the consequences which inevitably follow. A wrongful thought, word, or deed, is one which is committed under the influence of the three roots of evil (akusala-mula), while good deeds stem from the opposites of these, namely the three 'virtuous roots' (kusala-mula). These good or evil roots nourished over the course of many lives become ingrained dispositions which predispose the individual towards virtue or vice. Wrongful actions are designated in various ways as evil (papa), unwholesome (akusala), demeritorious (apunya), or corrupt (samklista), and such deeds lead inevitably to a deeper entanglement in the process of suffering and rebirth (samsara). Karma determines in which of the six realms of rebirth one is reborn, and affects the nature and quality of individual circumstances (for example, physical appearance, health, and prosperity). According to Buddhist thought the involvement of the individual in samsara is not the result of a 'Fall', or due to 'original sin' through which human nature became flawed. Each person, accordingly, has the final responsibility for his own salvation and the power of free will with which to choose good or evil."

(Keown, Damien. Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp. 137-8)

"Buddhism is founded on the understanding that all life in the universe is subject to moral causality, a process that links present actions to future consequences, both in this life and in lives to come. This force is karma, a word meaning 'deeds', but also their consequences, the individual's cumulative balance of punya ('merit', or what is familiarly called 'good karma') and papa ('demerit', or 'bad karma'). Buddhists regard all intentional acts of the body, speech, and mind as producing 'karmic' consequences. Karma primarily determines the nature of every rebirth after death, ruling one's destiny until, and unless, one realizes nirvana and eliminates karma."

(Trainor, Kevin, ed. Buddhism: The Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 60)

"The movement of beings between rebirths is not a haphazard process but is ordered and governed by the law of karma, the principle that beings are reborn according to the nature and quality of their past actions; they are 'heir' to their actions. It is said that acts of hatred and violence tend to lead to rebirth in a hell, acts bound up with delusion and confusion tend to lead to rebirth as an animal, and acts of greed tend to lead to rebirth as a ghost. A person's actions mould their consciousness, making them into a certain kind of person, so that when they die their outer form tends to correspond to the type that has been developed. (...) All intentional actions, good or bad, matter; for they leave a trace on the psyche which will lead to future results.

The law of karma is seen as a natural law inherent in the nature of things, like a law of physics. It is not operated by a God, and indeed the gods are themselves under its sway. Good and bad rebirths are not, seen as 'rewards' and 'punishments', but as simply the natural results of certain kinds of action. Karma is often likened to a seed, and the two words for a karmic result, 'vipaka' and 'phala', respectively mean 'ripening' and 'fruit'. An action is thus like a seed which will sooner or later, as part of a natural maturation process, result in certain fruits accruing to the doer of the action. What determines the nature of a karmic 'seed' is the will or intention behind an act: 'It is will ('cetana'), O monks, that I call karma; having willed, one acts through body, speech or mind.' It is the psychological impulse behind an action that is 'karma', that which sets going a chain of causes culminating in a karmic fruit."

(Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. pp. 39-40)

"The Buddha did not hold that the 'reborn' is the same as the being who died. Thus strictly speaking this is not a case of rebirth. Likewise the 'reborn' being is not different from the being that died, at least if by 'different' we mean completely different in the way that, say, you and I are different. The reborn being is linked to the being that died by a causal process. Let us call the one who dies A, and the reborn being B. Then B is not the same as A. For example, B is not the same person as A (this, at least, seems to me uncontroversial). B occurs in causal dependence (of the right sort) on A. Among the relevant causal factors here are morally wholesome, or unwholesome, actions (karman) performed by A (in the sense understood above) in the past (or even by A's previous incarnations as X, Y, and Z, back theoretically to infinity). Thus at death these factors in complex ways enter into the causal process ('karmic causality') which leads to another embodied individual occurring, in direct dependence upon actions performed by A in one ore more of his lives. Therefore the link between the 'reborn being' and the 'being that died' is also explained in terms of causal dependence, where karmic causation is held to be a central factor in holding the whole process together. With causation there is absolutely no need for a Self to link A and B. This is why one speaks of causal dependence 'of the right sort'. At death the psychophysical bundle reconfigures. One figuration breaks down and another figuration takes place. The bundle is a bundle of the aggregates, but each aggregate taken as a whole is a bundle of momentary impermanent components that form members of that aggregate-class. Thus the person is reducible to the temporary bundle of bundles where all constituents are radically impermanent, temporarily held together through causal relationships of the right sort. All this is in accordance with causal laws (notably of the karmic sort). Because there is the right sort of causal dependence, we cannot say of B that he or she is totally different from A either."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 69-70)

"[F]or the Buddha karman is essentially volition (intention) which leads to actions of body, speech, or mind. Wholesome and unwholesome karmic intentions entail (in this life or in future lives) pleasant and unpleasant experiences, feelings, as their karmic results, together with the particular psychological organism that is capable of undergoing those feelings. Whereas wholesome and unwholesome intentions are by definition morally virtuous or unvirtuous, the results—while pleasant and painful—in themselves are neither wholesome nor unwholesome. A pain in itself has no moral quality. But it is the result of unwholesome karmic intention(s). Thus for a feeling to be unpleasant is not as such for it to be morally wrong. A volition or intention of hatred or greed (produced by ignorance) as a mental response to what is unpleasant, on the other hand, is morally wrong (i.e. unwholesome, not conducive to following the path to liberation). For the Buddha this is all underpinned by the impersonal lawlike behaviour of causality. Thus an unwholesome intention because it is a cause that brings about a feeling of pain as a result. A feeling of pain (like all in samsara) must be a result, and therefore it must be the result of its cause, an unwholesome intention. And the feeling of pain, as resulting, occurs (by definition) in the same causal continuum as the unwholesome intention occurred as cause. This is why, the Buddhist wants to claim, even with an impermanent psychological continuum and without a Self there is no 'causal confusion' or 'confusion of continua'. Even without a Self, the karmic results occur in the same continuum in which occurred the unwholesome intentions. Feelings of pain are therefore brought about not by others (other persons, God or gods) but by oneself, in the sense that in everyday speech we use 'oneself' to refer to events in the same causal continuum. This is a situation of 'total responsibility' (Gombrich). Richard Gombrich has commented that 'just as Being lies at the heart of the Upanishadic world view, Action lies at the heart of the Buddha's. 'Action', of course, is 'kamma'; and primarily it refers to morally relevant action'."

(Williams, Paul, and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London: Routledge, 2000. pp. 72-3)

"BUDDHISM: In the oldest extant sources of Buddhism, there is far less ambiguity about karma and rebirth than in the Upanishads, not to mention the older Vedic texts. In the legendary accounts of his enlightenment, the Buddha himself (ca. 500 BC) is credited with the discovery of a pervasive causality and with the realization that living beingsd are causal series of acts and results which extend over countless successive existences. Although the number of older canonical texts which deal with the doctrine in greater detail is relatively small, its central significance cannot be questioned. It is, in fact, inseparable from the quintessential Buddhist formula of 'dependent origination' ('pratityasamutpada'; Pali: 'paticcasamuppada'). In the emergent sectarianism, debates on karma play an important role; different conceptions and interpretations of karma are among those factors that define the doctrinal identity of the various schools. The basic contributions of ancient Buddhism to the development of the karma theory relate, above all, to the following five areas:

1. a stricter notion of causality which postulates a pervasive coherence of karmic events, but insists on the feasibility of choice and responsibility, that is, of acts which are not themselves karmic effects (thus avoiding the karmic determinism associated with the Ajivika school);
2. a notion of agency which defines the act as rooted in, or even as essentially identical with, volition and decision ('cetana') and interprets its vocal or physical implementation as a secondary phenomenon;
3. a process ontology which interprets the connection between act and experienced result strictly and exclusively as causal continuity and tries to avoid the assumption of an identical subject or substrate of act and result;
4. a comprehensive ethicization which replaces Vedic-Brahmanic notions of ritual correctness and caste-bound aptitude with more open and universal ideas of moral obligation and value;
5. a more radical notion of final liberation ('nirvana'/'nibbana') and the commitment to achive it by eliminating the roots of karmic existence, that is, selfish desire and the illusion of the self.

All these areas leave room for further analysis and debate. What, more precisely, is the nature of the mental act or intention, and how does it relate to speech and physical action? How is karmic causality transmitted, and how does it interact with other causes? Is there an intermediate existence between death and rebirth? How does the karma influence the external, material world, and how does it determine the physiological or psychological constitution of sentient beings? What is the special karmic situation of a 'buddha' or an 'arhat', whose selfish desire has been eliminated? Such and similar issues are discussed in detail in the Abhidharma texts and the commentarial literature of the Theravada tradition, and analysed in the context of their complex theories of causal conditions ('pratyaya'/'paccaya') and the ultimate constituents of reality ('dharma'/'dhamma'). The Kathavatthu defends the Theravada views against numerous alternatives. Among the other great schools of Buddhist thought, Sarvastivada made significant and influential contributions to the dharma theory, the classification of causal factors, and the analysis of the person as a 'series' ('santana') of dharmas. Its reifying conception of 'acquisition' ('prapti') is supposed to explain the way the series is affected by the moral and karmic implications of decisions and actions. It also deals with the relation between mental acts and their vocal and physical manifestations and in general with the question of how latent actions ('avijnapti') relate to their manifest counterparts ('vijnapti'). To provide a basis for causality and especially for the durable retributive power of acts in an impermanent world, Sarvastivada developed its distinctive theory of time, which postulates an irreducible state of nonactual being or subsistence for past and future entities, side by side with the actual existence of present entities.

In the teachings of the Vatsiputriya-Sammatiya school, we find the peculiar and seemingly 'heterodox' concept of a durable 'person' ('pudgala'), that is, a common basis of act and result. However, this pudgala is described, in a somewhat elusive fashion, as neither different from nor identical with the impersonal factors that are supposed to constitute the person. It should not be identified with the Hindu notion of the 'soul' or 'self' ('atman').

The Sautrantika school adds various qualifications to the Sarvastivada analysis of volition, action and the transition from the initial impetus to the intended act itself ('cetayitva karman'). But most significant is its explanation of the process that leads from the act to the retributive result: any intentional act or decision affects the subsequent series of mental events ('cittasantana') in a particular fashion and impregnates it with a certain potential. It initiates, in collaboration or competition with other acts, a process of evolution or transformation ('parinama') within the series which will lead to a mental state of fruition or retribution. It is a kind of mental seed or germ ('bija') which is transformed into its appropriate fruit.

The Yogacara-Vijnanavada school adopts these and other Sautrantika ideas and develops them in the contexts of its 'consciousness only' theory, a subjective idealism which reduces reality to states of awareness or mental occurrences. Reality in this sense, as mental and experienced reality, is eo ipso a medium of retribution. As a basis and matrix for the generation of retributive—favourable or unfavourable—experiences, the school postulates a 'warehouse consciousness' ('alaya-vijnana'), which contains the potential, or the stored 'seeds', for all actual awareness ('pravrttivijnana').
The most radical treatment or rather transcendence of karma and rebirth is found in the Madhyamika school of Nagarjuna. Here (as centuries later in Sankara's Advaita Vedanta), karma and rebirth are relegated to the level of provisional, pragmatic and conventional truth ('samvrti' or 'vyavahara'), to an understanding of oneself and the world which needs to be transcended. Neither the accumulation of good karma nor the attempt to eliminate all karma will lead to nirvana. Karma is inseparable from a false commitment to means and ends, to acquisition, ownership and selfhood. From the standpoint of absolute truth, it is as essenceless and 'void' ('sunya') as the self or soul ('atman') itself. Realizing this voidness is liberation.
In general, the transfer of karmic merit plays a much greater role in the Mahayana schools than in old Buddhism; it is a defining characteristic of the 'bodhisattva' ideal."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 213-5)

"Exemplary modernist statements on karma and rebirth may be found in the works of such Neo-Hindu thinkers as Vivekananda (1863-1902), Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) and Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). Numerous authors continue to debate in contemporary India, both in English and in Indian vernaculars. The most distinctive features of the modernist interpretation can be described as follows:

1. Karma is, more or less radically, dissociated from the traditional mythological implications of 'samsara', which include heavens, hells and other transempirical realms of existence; rebirth itself is treated as a less essential adjunct of karma.
2. Karma is presented as a fundamentally scientific notion, a comprehensive 'law' and principle of explanation, which supersedes all merely physical causality and regularity.
3. There is a stronger commitment to empirical evidence, to 'case studies', to the collection and analysis of 'reports' and personal claims concerning rebirth; research in this sense if foreign to the traditional treatment of karma and rebirth.
4. The doctrine is associated with modern Western concepts of evolution and progress; the world of karma and rebirth appears not so much as the realm of aimless wandering ('samsara') which calls for transcendence and ultimate liberation ('moksa'), but rather as a sphere of potential self-perfection and spiritual growth.
5. In response to European criticism, any fatalistic implications of karma are strongly and passionately rejected, and its compatibility with action, initiative and social responsibility is emphasized.
6. The notions of 'collective karma', 'group karma' or even 'national karma', which have no place in traditional thought, but seem to be taken for granted in theosophy, emerge in Neo-Hindu thought and discourse, although their uses are somewaht elusive and in some cases merely rhetorical."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. p. 216)

"Karma and rebirth are among the most important regulative ideas in the history of Indian thought. But there has never been one identical theory (and certainly no scientific theory) of karma to which a majority of thinkers could have agreed. The expression 'the doctrine of karma and rebirth' is only a convenient label. To be sure, there are certain shared premises—above all, the twin postulates that there should be no undeserved suffering or wellbeing and that no effect of a past deed should be lost. But apart from such rather formal premises (which may be derived from the even more fundamental postulate that justice should be inherent in the universe), there has been a wide variety of interpretations and manifestations and much room for debate. The twin postulates themselves may be applied more or less strictly. In fact, their rigid implementation would hardly be compatible with the element of freedom and initiative which is implied in the notion of karmic action.

Furthermore, the familiar association and correlation of karma and rebirth is itself problematic. While the two concepts have become virtually inseparable in the idea of 'samsara', their historical roots may, in fact, be quite different. There are also significant conceptual differences between karma and rebirth, and their relation is not a symmetrical one. While karma requires rebirth as the condition of its own inescapability, rebirth does not require karma. It could just be a merely factual condition of existence, without subjection to retributive justice. In this sense, and in spite of its wide-ranging mythical ramifications, the concept of rebirth would, in principle at least, be more easily compatible with a 'scientific' worldview which understands the universe in terms of facts, not values or judicial standards. A world in which rebirth had a place could still be our 'natural' world, the domain of science, while a world in which karma operated would have to be a structurally different universe. Explanations in such a universe would involve justification in the sense of 'theodicy' or rather 'cosmodicy'.

However, karmic causality does not always imply a judicial order of deeds and corresponding rewards or punishments. There is also an ancient and recurrent tendency to explain the functioning of karma as a natural sequence of mental states and events, a psychological, not retributory or quasi-legal, process which links acts and decisions with the formation of dispositions, instincts, character attributes or other internal modes of being. This may, indeed, be the case in some of the oldest statements on karma, which appear in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad. Here, Yajnavalkya does not propose reward and punishment (that is, pleasant and painful experience) as the result of karma, but the formation of a good or bad person. Similar ideas are documented in ancient Buddhism. Most later schools distinguish the formation of dispositions, especially of mental 'defilements' ('klesa', 'dosa', 'anusaya') such as attachment and hate, from the accumulation of retributive karmic potential ('karmasaya'). The 'defilements' are often presented as a condition for the perpetuation of karma; in some texts (for instance, Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasya), the fundamental disposition of existential craving ('trsna') appears as the cause of rebirth per se, while karma is said to regulate its specific circumstances. But there has also been much overlap and ambiguity (for instance, in the Jaina notion of 'ruinous' karmas).

What is an act in a karmically relevant sense? What is the significance of intention? What distinguishes good and bad deeds? How does an act produce its 'unseen' power ('adrsta'), and what is the ontological status of this power? Who or what acts? What connects the karmic agent and the subject of retribution? What is the scope and nature of karmic causality? How does it affect the mental and the physical realm? How do we know about karma and rebirth? Do we have valid arguments for their existence, or is it a matter of authoritative tradition and superhuman modes of awareness (such as 'yogic perception')? Are there basically different types of karma, and how can they be classified?

Our preceeding survey has shown a wide variety of answers to these and similar questions. But this multitude of theoretical answers does not describe the breadth and complexity of the phenomenon in its entirety. In the history of Indian thought and life, karma has functioned at various levels of understanding and interpretation, as an unquestioned presupposition and a topic of theoretical inquiry, in popular mythology and in philosophical thought. In its various contexts and applications, it has at least three clearly separable, but interrelated, functions and dimensions:

1. It provides causal explanations of factual occurrences and correlates the present with the past (for instance, in traditional medical literature).
2. It provides perspectives on and incentives for actions and decisions and correlates the present with the future (most conspicuously in the normative Dharmasastra literature).
3. It provides a soteriological point of departure, a view of the causal and temporal world which calls for detachment, transcendence and final liberation.

In the philosophical tradition of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism we find all of these meanings of karma. But the third one clearly overshadows the other two, and it accounts for the pervasive sense of soteriological commitment in Indian philosophical thought."

(Halbfass, Wilhelm. "Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, edited by Edward Craig, 209-218. London: Routledge, 1998. pp. 216-7)
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Religious beliefs about life after death have such a lack of agreement within traditions. Many spoke of rebirth into animals being possible, whereas some, including the theosophists, have maintained that once a 'soul' has evolved into the human kingdom it is not likely to be reborn as an animal. That is connected to the idea of the kingdoms themselves transmuting into the next one. That involves the souls of the present human kingdom evolving into the future spiritual kingdom, comprised of angels and other members of the spiritual hierarchy. This view is suggested by Blavatsky and Alice Bailey. It is based on the essential ideas of Hinduism reinterpreted and also from such writers' claims about channelling of spiritual masters.

The excerpts you include on Buddhism point to some of the complex ideas within it, and there are many varying schools of thought. I know people who have changed from being Catholic to Buddhist because they have preferred it to Buddhism because they see it as a complete rejection of the idea of the 'fall' and the concept of original sin. However, as the extract you quoted shows it is not that simple and Buddhism doesn't necessarily reject the idea of heavens and hells, even if that may be followed by future rebirths eventually. I also believe that there is some disagreement in Buddhist philosophy between idealism and materialism as there is within Western thought.

The idea of the 'fall' is in itself a basis for idealism because it involves the fall of the non material info the more gross form of bodies, as in matter. This tension between bodies as matter and as 'spiritual' bodies also arises in Christianity, in the idea of what the resurrection body is. Certainly, the Biblical texts speak of being able to touch Jesus as 'flesh and blood" but, even so, it is not clear that the body was exactly the same as it was before. The Christian tradition speaks of a resurrection at the end of the world but also involves different opinions about life in between, and the question of an immortal soul. These ideas do act in the form of potential punishment, especially the idea of hell, and I probably only read and thought about these ideas because they were a source of worry for myself and others within the Catholic tradition.

Generally, I see many of the ideas in the comparative traditions in a non literal way, but do find it a bit confusing at times in thinking about the metaphysical aspects, and I am definitely not a materialist. Many of the ideas may be symbolic, like the idea of rebirth and the cycles of time.

However, it still raises the question as to whether causation occurs in a linear level of progression and about the nature of the dimensions of existence and whether there are ones beyond the physical, and as the writer on comparative religion, Huston Smith argues, even space is symbolic. The realm of time as the fourth dimension and the nature of the multiverse do make causation more complicated in the way this is seen in the quantum world because reality is less 'solid'. Writers such as Bohm do suggest a non material realm, the idea of the implicate order, beyond the visible, the explicate order.

This basis for thinking about the idea of causation open to the possibility of karma, although it may be a different angle from the more simplistic pictures of punishment and rewards, even though it may suggest a balancing process. To some extent, but not entirely, the original idea of karma is dependent on such a belief in past and future rebirths. Some modern ideas of karma may be very different from the ancient ones, especially when seen through Western eyes which is less oriented towards idealism. Also, time in Eastern thought is more about cycles, which affects the basis of thinking, as Western understanding of linear causality is linked to the nature of entropy.

There's several dozen schools of Buddhism falling in three main groups: the theraveda, vajrayana, and mahayana schools.

Therevada is the oldest and the only one based only on the teachings of Buddha, and Vajrayana are the variations of Buddhism practiced in Tibet. Both these schools have nothing to say on the afterlife in much the same way as one doesn't find mention of flat earth in scientific journals.

The mahayana, sometimes called the 'great vheicle' allows for incorporation of local superstitions and myths native to a specific area in the interest of enabling more to reach the primary goal of salvation. It includes various types of Chinese buddhism and Zen. While it is possible that it could allow concepts of afterllife, as previously mentioned, there arent any other world beliefs in an afterlife.

So there is no afterlife in any version of buddhism.

[ernestm]

The vajrayana does acknowledge a temporary domain where one is submitted to ordeals to determine whether one reincranates as an animal, person, or manages to escape any kind of rebirth. The vajrayana also includes some domains occupied by gods and demons that are referred to as heavens and hells, but they are domains of conceptualization open to perception by enlightened minds and not part of samsara, which is the name of the illusion of cyclic existence created by wrong beliefs in karma.