Philosophical Implications of the Doctrine of Karma

·期刊原文
Philosophical Implications of the Doctrine of Karma
By Wadia, A. R.
Philosophy East and West
V. 15, No. 2 (1965)
pp. 145-152
Copyright 1962 by University of Hawaii Press
Hawaii, USA

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It would be no exaggeration to say that the one concept which distinguishes Indian philosophy from European philosophy is the concept of karma (karman). In its essence, it is nothing but the application of the law of cause and effect in the moral sphere. If every good deed had its own reward and every evil deed its own punishment, there would be no difficulty in accepting the doctrine of karma as a universal law in the sphere of morality. Unfortunately, however, it is a part of common human experience that a good man often suffers in spite of his goodness and an evil man prospers, and the evil in him is overlooked in the glare of his wealth and power. This apparent falsification of the moral law has led to the idea that what we call a human personality is but a link in a long chain of births and deaths which may cover millennia and perhaps even eternity. Thus, the Law of Karma has become attached to the idea of reincarnation, the idea that what is called death relates only to the death of the physical body, while the soul remains unaffected by it and may be reborn in another body, human or animal.

This belief is found in many primitive religions all over the world. But in the course of human history it died out under the pressure of great monotheistic religions such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Thus it is that in European philosophy, ever since the days of Socrates, the immortality of soul has come to be accepted, but without any reference to the doctrine of reincarnation. This doctrine was not unknown to Plato, but even he presented it only as a myth, having moral implications but no logical validity. Christianity, with its emphasis on heaven and hell, has removed the idea of reincarnation from the main stream of European philosophy.

There have been philosophers such as John McTaggart and G. Lowes Dickinson who have been led to the doctrine of reincarnation as an integral part of their philosophic thinking. Such a thinker as A. Seth Pringle-Pattison devoted a chapter to reincarnation and karma in his Gifford Lectures on The Idea of Immortality, only to show up its philosophic untenability. A sizable number of European and American theosophists have come to accept karma and re-

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incarnation as basic to their life and thought. But their treatment of it is shrouded so much in mystic references to Tibetan mahaatmas that it has failed to appeal to the philosophical and logical mind of the West. Theosophy, born out of Indian beliefs, has become markedly theological without any claim to being considered philosophical.

India remains the home of the doctrine of karma. Hinduism begins its history with the Vedas. The Vedas, however, show no reference to reincarnation. It is only in the Upani.sads that we find the great sage Yaaj~navalkya emerging as the stout exponent of reincarnation. Since that time it has become the heritage of the whole of India, so much so that even the so-called heterodox schools of Buddhism and Jainism clung to it. It has thus influenced people even outside the Hindu fold. But it has been admitted on all hands that it has not been proved; it is just a dogma. S. N. Dasgupta, the great historian of Indian philosophy, did not hesitate to say so openly, while European scholars go to the length of saying that Indian philosophy is not philosophy as the West understands it, because it rests on intuitions which cannot be anything but dogmas from the philosophic standpoint. `Sa^mkara, genius of the Advaita Vedanta, is generally considered the most logical Indian thinker. But he, too, looks upon rebirth as a part of maayaa, the great illusion or mere appearance, and maayaa in his philosophy is anirvacaniiya, inexplicable. Why is it, then, that India has clung so steadfastly to the idea of reincarnation?

The reason is that it is India's contribution to the solution of the problem of evil. There is no solution of this problem which can be expected to give universal satisfaction. In fact, many philosophers have been content to describe it as insoluble. For the theist, belief in God is fundamental. If God in his wisdom has chosen to create evil, we have to accept it in the spirit of "Thy will be done." Indeed, it requires the patience of a Job to be content with such a solution. At the earliest dawn of monotheism in Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda, as the Spirit of Goodness, was too good to be tainted with evil, and evil was ascribed to Angramainyush, the spirit of evil. The existence of evil implies a certain limitation of the power of God, though ultimately Ahura Mazda will triumph. It is on the surface a dualism of two opposing forces. In this sense, all monotheism has an element of dualism. Even Christianity does not fail to accept it. Schweitzer, in his Christianity and the Religions of the World, has the courage to say, "Every rational faith has to choose between two things: either to be an ethical religion or to be a religion that explains the world. We Christians choose the former as that which is of higher value" (p. 73). He is fully conscious of the philosophical difficulties involved in this position. He frankly admits, "The God who is known through philosophy and the God

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whom I experience as Ethical Will do not coincide. They are one; but how they are one I do not understand" (p. 77).

From the philosophic standpoint of creative evolution or of the spirit that grows in and through the world we are familiar with, it is not very difficult to understand the role of so-called evil in the evolution of life. It is just a phase, a stage in the great drama of life. Nothing in the world is absolutely good or absolutely evil. Evil is the travail of life. Once it has played its part in evolution, it ceases to be an evil and may well be forgotten. A perfect world would be a dead world with its appalling monotony. We would miss the freshness of spring without the shivers of winter. A tree is kept fresh and alive only through the autumn of withering leaves. Human life keeps up its freshness only through the death of old generations.

Philosophically, evil is not inexplicable. Death in general is not unintelligible, but it does not fail to raise questions when a father loses a son or a loving husband loses his wife in childbirth, or a child is left parentless. We might feel reconciled even to these individual losses, if they took place in an ordered fashion, e.g., if a man were to die at threescore years and ten when he had fulfilled his duties. But things do not happen so mechanically. As to why a man dies in his prime leaving a young widow behind and children to feed remains a mystery.

It is this aspect of evil that has been particularly felt in India. Men are unequal, but why are they unequal? Why is one man born rich and another left to grovel for crumbs of food? Why is one beautiful woman a happily wedded wife, while another beautiful woman becomes a prostitute? Why does a man afflicted with an incurable disease linger on in life, while a healthy young man dies in the prime of life? The Hindu, rich or poor, illiterate or educated, atheist or theist, finds a ready answer in one word, "karma" -- as a man sows, so must he reap. Every act has its effect. If one life is too short to realize a man's personality, as Kant was forced to argue in his Critique of Practical Reason, there has to be a life after death, and immortality of soul becomes a presupposition of all moral life. To a Hindu, this life is but a continuation of some previous existence, with its joys as rewards of past good deeds and its sufferings as punishments for past evil deeds.

To the caste-ridden Hindu, karma affords a key as to why a man is born a braahma.na, a k.satriya, a vai`sya, a `suudra, or an untouchable. In the face of the tragedies of life, it is a comforting thought to believe that this is the result of one's own karma, and not the result of the will of an unjust and capricious God. Why does a clever good man die, leaving a beautiful widow behind? It is his karma. Why does a beautiful woman become a widow in her twenties? It is her

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karma. And so, every question finds a ready answer. It is soothing; it is satisfying. Rhys Davids in his Buddhism says with acuteness: "Now the doctrine of transmigration, in either the Brahmanical or Buddhistic form, is not capable of disproof; while it affords an explanation quite complete to those who can believe it of the apparent wrongs in the distribution here of happiness or woe."

A belief so simple and easy is not without difficulties which cannot be ignored from the philosophic standpoint. Even in India, a vitriolic attack has come from the pen of Jehangir E. Sanjana in his Dogma of Reincarnation (Bombay: New Book Co., 1954). From the maze of words in which he revels one can cull a few of the arguments he urges against the doctrine.

First, though reincarnation has as much reference to rewards as to punishments, there is a greater consciousness of suffering as punishment. From the human juristic standpoint, a man to be effectively punished must be conscious of the crime he has committed. Sanjana writes, "Reincarnation fails of its very object if we have not the slightest recollection of any event, however important, in any past life." Pringle-Pattison also tends toward the same view. But the argument is not very convincing. Even in our normal life we do not remember everything we experience. It would be a calamity if our memory were to be burdened with the recollection of every little occurrence in our life. It has been wisely said that the art of remembering is the art of forgetting. If in one single life the load of memory is so unbearable, how much worse would it be if we had to bear the burden of remembering the events, however important they might have been, in our past life or lives.

Second, going into details, Sanjana raises the question of a child's dying. If it is argued that it may be a mode of punishing the parents, he asks pertinently, "Granted that the Lord desires to chasten the parents, what about the futile and really causeless rebirth of the unfortunate child?" There would be some worth in this argument if the child were to begin its series of births, but there is no reason to believe that it had no previous existence and that its short life on this earth may itself be a punishment.

Third, it is argued that the whole conception of punishment as based on vindictiveness is outmoded. Pringle-Pattison argues, "The doctrine seems open therefore to all the criticism to which the vindictive theory of punishment has been subjected in modern times, and to which in most quarters it has succumbed." It is true that in modern times there has been a tendency to look upon the human side of a criminal rather than upon the individual crime of which he may have been guilty. It is quite justifiable to reform the criminal, for a criminal reclaimed is a citizen gained. But it would be quite unsound to discount the vindictive aspect altogether. Even forgiveness has its limits, and

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too much leniency may be quite misplaced from the standpoint of human society. There may be cases in which forgiveness may be the best type of punishment, as in what is usually called noble revenge. But this is hardly applicable to the vast masses of human beings. If a wrong has to be redressed, some sort of tangible punishment has to be resorted to, even if it be at the level of sheer vindictiveness.

Lastly, there is a much more serious argument that can be urged against reincarnation as an appendix of karma. It leads to fatalism, and it has led to fatalism on a wide scale in India. If a man commits a murder and this is looked upon as something which he could not but have done, it would be adding insult to injury to punish him for what he was destined to do, but it could be argued that, if he is hanged for the murder he has committed, this itself is a part of his past karma and he must suffer. But the difficulty envisaged is real, and it becomes insufferably oppressive if this cycle of births and deaths comes to be looked upon as eternal. Fatalism must lead to pessimism, and pessimism is the greatest enemy of the human desire to create a better world than the one in which we are born. We shall come back to this point a little later.

As stated before in this essay, the doctrine of karma and reincarnation has to be accepted as a dogma which has not been proved and cannot be proved. But it does not follow that it is necessarily irrational. On the contrary, there is a core of rationality in the doctrine which goes far to explain its hold on the most astute minds in the long history of Indian culture and philosophy. There is the basic argument that a man is born into the world he has made. A man is the architect of his own fortune, and this is the most virile part of the Indian belief.

On the whole, it is fortunate that a man is born ignorant of his past life and lives. But there have been cases, few and far between though they may be, where a person remembers something of his or her past life. Recently there was the case of a Hindu girl who, born in one city, claimed to remember the place of her previous birth and was able to identify several relatives of that birth. It is always possible to doubt the authenticity of such cases, and especially when they have not been scientifically investigated. No country in the world offers such opportunities for a study of parapsychology as India, and an investigation of cases relating to the memory of past births offers a very fruitful field of research.

This is in the womb of the future. In the meantime, some corroboration of the belief in rebirth may be found in the sciences of astrology and palmistry. It has become fashionable to look upon these as pseudo-sciences, but in India they are still widely believed in and practiced. Paradoxically, as in other fields,

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it is the West that has given a new fillip to these studies. Those who have read World Predictions by Cheiro (pseud. for Hamon Lewis) cannot but be struck with the remarkable accuracy of predictions made in it and proved meticulously correct, as in the life of the Duke of Windsor. It is too simple to suggest mere coincidence. No coincidence can explain so accurate a prediction as that Edward Prince of Wales would succeed to the throne of England but that before he could be crowned he would abdicate because of his romantic attachment to a lady who was not acceptable to the royal family or the government of the day and the people of England generally.

Astrology has suffered from the fact that there are far too many quacks in the field, and they have naturally brought discredit to the subject. But there is no doubt that there is a core of truth in astrology in the hands of the few who have mastered the subject and practice it honestly. After all, those who believe in it cannot all be fools. By and large, so many astrological predictions have come true that it cannot be denied that there is a basis for belief in it as a science. Western astrologers, with their more accurate knowledge of modern astronomy, have shown that astrology, like all sciences, is capable of developing.

Of course, even to mention astrology in a serious essay on karma will be looked upon as unphilosophical in many quarters. But philosophy is concerned with truth, and ceases to be philosophy if it yields to prejudices and brushes aside facts. If astrology has a place in the scheme of life, it affords further evidence in support of the doctrine of reincarnation. It implies that a man's birth in a particular environment is not a matter of mere chance but is regulated according to a man's karma. Old astrological books dealing with thousands of horoscopes venture to say what a man's past life was and what his future life will be. A good deal of this reads like a fairy tale and carries no conviction of truth, as it is palpably beyond the possibility of verification. But, so far as present life is concerned, there is abundant room for verification. If a question is asked as to the basis on which one can believe in the possibility of astrology, the answer suggests itself, that it is the result of karma. It may sound like a petitio principii to cite astrology as evidence of the influence of karma as determining the present life and to cite karma as giving a basis for astrology. But the two are so closely interconnected that they support each other, and that is the only justification for bringing astrology into a paper on karma.

The one most fatal objection to the theory of karma and reincarnation is that it leads to fatalism. This has been mentioned before, and, unless we can meet this objection, the theory of reincarnation as based on karma will become a liability for a life of morality. Astrology is not fatalistic if it is looked upon

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as a science of tendencies. A man's past karma determines the field, the environment, in which he is born, but it is left to him to build up his new karma within the limits of his environment. One has to bear in mind that karma is a two-edged theory: it is an effect, and it is also a cause. It is determined as effect, but it is creative as cause. It is not open to us to be blind to the fact that naked fatalism would be inimical to all morality. Morality to be morality implies responsibility, and responsibility implies free will. In other words, karma determines the field of life, but within that field man is free to develop himself, to build up his new karma.

There is still another objection to the theory of karma which has to be met. The series of births and deaths becomes eternal, and, if life is a vale of suffering as it is usually described, this eternity becomes an appalling nightmare. Hindu seers were fully conscious of this, and as a way out of it they developed the concept of mukti or mok.sa (emancipation), which sees the end of this series of births and deaths. There are three traditional paths to mukti. The first is through knowledge, i.e., realizing the oneness of aatman (self) as an individual soul with Brahman as the ultimate and only reality. It is a hard path, open only to philosophers. The second path is through karma, action, sacrificial and moral. Ritualistic Hinduism tends to emphasize sacrifices and worship, but the life of high moral purity is also recognized. A good man can attain mukti, his karma ends, and there is no more birth for him. The third path is through bhakti, devotion to God. This is the easiest as it enables even the masses of the ignorant to attain mukti. It goes without saying that bhakti implies a pure life of devotion and implies morality.

There are many critics who are not prepared to accept the philosophical worth of karma and reincarnation. It may be difficult, perhaps impossible, to establish its theoretical validity. Its eternity may be appalling, but the idea of eternal burning in hell, which so many religious people believe in, is perhaps even more appalling. Agnosticism is only an expression of man's inability to know. It satisfies neither the intellect nor the heart. Many may be tempted to share with Omar Khayyam his bitter experience:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went.

But this can only be a passing mood. There is an insatiable thirst in the human heart and mind to pierce the veil of mystery that shrouds the phenomena of birth and death. The problem of evil is insoluble to many, but, if

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the doctrine of karma and reincarnation helps us to solve our individual problems and brings some peace of mind, it need not be cast aside as mere trash. Intellectually it is intelligible; morally it is satisfying. That is why Indians believe in karma and reincarnation.