I often feel a little puzzled about the origins of karma theory; it seems like an answer to a question that didn’t need to be asked. Karma functions very well as an answer to a common question: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” People who are good now receive bad fates because of bad things they did in former lives, and vice versa.
The thing is, Buddhists – and their predecessors in Indian culture – don’t need an answer to this question. The suffering of good people, it seems to me, is a major problem for those who believe in an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. If God is really all-powerful and all good, it would stand to reason that he would stop bad things from happening to good people (and maybe bad people too) – so why doesn’t he? It’s a logical problem – theodicy – that monotheists continue to wrestle with answering.
But for someone who’s not a monotheist, the question seems like a non-starter. The question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” seems to me like the question “Why do yellow things fall when they’re dropped?” The very phrasing of the question suggests a certain lack of understanding. Why would we ever think that bad things wouldn’t happen to good people? What, other than the belief in an omnipotent being, would lead us to make such a connection?
I wonder if there’s something in the human condition that compels us to expect that the good will be rewarded and the bad punished – basically, that the world is fair. I’ve heard of studies of chimps that show signs of distress when others get more than they do – more distress than they feel when they have less themselves. Is there, perhaps, a justice instinct – even a theodicy instinct?
Good questions. I think answering “yes” to your last questions solves the mystery of why Indians came up with Karma. Humans seek order, symmetry even. Studies have shown that symmetrical facial features are important to ‘universal’ concepts of beauty, and one theory is that being able to recognize symmetrical objects such as faces of predators and prey was key to our evolution. Thus our love of the stars for telling us the seasons, our love of regular seasons in general, and by extension, our love of orderliness and regularity.
So I do think that dharma and karma, as impersonal cosmic orderliness and our individual actions (intentional in Buddhism) that connect us to that cosmos, are needed *in the place of* a theistic explanation.
As an aside, there was a study recently that also showed that a chimp would virtually starve itself if it knew that eating would inflict pain on a fellow chimp.
Important point on the chimps. I tend to be impressed by the basic, seemingly instinctual human tendency to punish and hate; but the countertendency is notable too. This is one of the reasons why Mencius and Xunzi could have had their debate.
I’m a bit less convinced by the main points. I think it’s a bit of a leap from facial symmetry to cosmic orderliness; if indeed the preferences for both of these are instinctual, I’m not convinced it’s the same instinct. So too, assuming there is an instinct for cosmic order, our instinctual preference to see the world a certain way doesn’t actually make it so. Our looking to see order in the cosmos may be a feature of our cognitive lives comparable to our seeing the earth as flat. I suppose there might be room for such errors in a well developed philosophy, but only in a Straussian sort of way: leave that cosmology out there untouched in order to maintain harmony among the lesser souls who don’t seek out deeper insight.
Hi Amod,
I was just thinking about theodicy yesterday!
I would be inclined to agree with both you and Justin that there is a human drive to find some sort of resolution to this problem. And I would agree that it probably finds its roots in our evolutionary heritage, though I have to disagree with Justin on the importance of any “‘universal’ concepts of beauty”. But then again, I am emphatically no platonist!
I suspect that this need for the assigning of causes for the good man’s suffering (and the evil man’s success) serves to mitigate the psychological distress which always accompanies feelings of powerlessness. To my mind, it is no wonder that we have invented all manners of explanations (justifications?), because everyday the world demonstrates fate’s capriciousness. Being the type of creature that plans obsessively for contingencies, the evident inefficacy of our efforts cannot do anything other than to distress us. But we can’t stop, either and the moment we have assigned a cause to the phenomenon we consider ourselves to understand it and, thus, to have reasserted our control over ourselves and our destiny.
Long-winded much!
Hi James – welcome, and I hope you’ll stick around! I think you have a good point that assigning supernatural mechanisms helps assuage our feelings of powerlessness. The question that remains in my mind is: why this particular mechanism? Pretty much every premodern culture has some beliefs that we now (with science) look back on as supernatural. What makes karma a bit different (along with Christian/Islamic heaven and hell) is the conception of moral reward and punishment; that seems to be unusual in pre-Axial Age cultures. But once this conception of reward and punishment was developed it seems to have spread very rapidly, suggesting that there’s something about it in particular that appeals to people beyond the feelings of powerlessness.
What about the following two reasons (an external and an internal one) why one needs a theory of karman:
1. without justice in retribution, it would be virtually impossible to ask people to behave properly (external reason)
2. we all experience the hard task of trying to concentrate, to be passionless, etc. It is hardly the case that one could accomplish in just one life the whole path from a normal human being to a Buddha. In order to make the Buddhist path plausible, one needs to postulate that this path can be followed for lives and lives and that the achievments of past lives are not lost. Else, the Buddha would be a deceiver and/or no one would engage in the difficult (=”counter-natural”) path taught by him, since it will never bring to the aim (internal reason)
Hmmm. Your first point is an important one. As Gananath Obeyesekere notes, not every culture has a karma-like cosmology, in which the cosmos rewards good acts and punishes bad ones. But… many of the ones that don’t, tend to be so small-scale that justice can be administered on a local and individual level, where human justice is enough. Maybe that explains the rapid spread of Christianity and Buddhism during the Axial Age – that this was a transition from small-scale nomadic societies to large agricultural urban ones, which needed cosmic justice in a world where earthly justice couldn’t be maintained? Not sure. The explanation seems a little too functionalist to be historically convincing, but it’s certainly worth pondering about.
The second point has tougher philosophical consequences. Can there be a Buddhist path without rebirth? Vajray?na and some East Asian traditions promise an accelerated path of “enlightenment in this very life,” but I’m skeptical of that, to say the least. I really doubt that even tantra can create that radical a transformation of human nature. But then that would appear to leave me saying that awakening (enlightenment, nirvana, bodhi) is impossible. And can you really have a Buddhist path, even as an ethical path, without that? Without the Third Noble Truth? Tricky…
The doctrine of Karma – Janma implies that life is beginningless and endless. There must always have been action for there to be fruits of action. Likewise it cannot end or the rule is broken. This runs counter to scientific awareness from a Darwinian perspective and the possibility of complete annihilation. Ingenious devotees can offer answers to the conundrums generated by the doctrine of karma and eschatology but I think that they miss the point of what doctrines are and why they take the shape that they do. My view is that they are elements in a transcendental orrery, detach them from their setting and they become mere clockwork.
Let me start by noting that karma and rebirth are not entirely the same thing. A while ago I noted Dale Wright’s attempt to make a theory of karma without rebirth; Gananath Obeyesekere’s book notes that the theory of rebirth didn’t originally involve karma. Now, I don’t think these points invalidate your claim; as I understand it, you’re trying to say something different, which is that karma and rebirth logically imply each other, that there’s no real sense in having one without the other. I can respect that view, but if it’s true, I think we would be better off dumping the two of them together rather than keeping the two of them together. I’ve yet to be persuaded by arguments for the existence of rebirth (and indeed haven’t usually seen such arguments made).
Amod:
You ask:
The doctrine of karma arose out of a primal experience of cosmic order not I believe from a species of wish fulfilment if that is what you are suggesting. It is part of the Vedic suite and did not, I think, generate the rebirth theory. One might as well speculate that a shamanistic vision of rebirth led to the pondering of the question as to why there should be rebirth and thus karma was offered.
The paradox of getting beyond karma while yet acting is treated in the Gita where the idea of actionless action (nishkama karma) is proposed. This is moving in the Kantian and Aristotelian direction. We ought not to be goal directed or involved with the fruits of our actions, the reward of virtue is being a virtuous person etc.
Hello again!
After reading your reply, Amod, I believe that I understand better what you’re getting at! I don’t think I have the answers, but I have had some thoughts that might be of interest.
I wonder, most of all, whether our desire (instinct?) for fairness doesn’t have something to do with all this. Prior to the ethicizing(?) of causality by the Axial philosophers/ethicists, we were “dependent” on the correct/effective ritual performances of the priests. And if the priest were bad (or even mediocre) at his job then bad things resulted. The karma notion, though, is universal and exact. I may not know what I did to deserve my stubbed toe, or what helping an old lady cross the street might bring me in the future, but I know that it’s directly related and perfectly proportional to MY activity. Likewise with your actions and results. There can be no unjust results on account of ineptitude or deliberate tampering with ritual procedure. And no one escapes what they’ve got coming.
Another possibility I considered is that, since most of us figure we’re ok, if not great people, then this thing ought to work out in our favour! ;)
As for the necessity of rebirth to acquire the skills and virtues required for the attainment of enlightenment… I can only imagine such a doctrine as necessary if one’s criteria of enlightenment are too stringent for a human being to reasonably be expected to satisfy in one lifetime. Indeed, this, I suspect, is the case with Buddhism.
Hi James… I think you’re right, that this is related to our desire for fairness – a justice instinct, perhaps, as I briefly mentioned. There seems to be a very widespread, perhaps even universal, human desire to see goodness rewarded and badness punished (often more the latter, I suspect). This is probably where theodicy comes from. I’m hoping to learn more about cross-cultural findings in experimental psychology on the point.
The question of criteria for enlightenment is an interesting one. Although it starts to make me think: maybe we shouldn’t expect that enlightenment is possible in this lifetime – which is to say at all, if we don’t believe in rebirth. We’re probably always going to suffer at least some; and that recognition may be good, in that it leads us to strive to be better without ever expecting that the goal is at an end. I am a little uneasy when living people are identified as fully enlightened: that strikes me as the sort of thing that leads to cults. (Everyone could tell that Adi Da was enlightened, so of course his female disciples should want to have sex with him at his command… right?) Maybe the Second Noble Truth is right, but not the Third? Very intriguing…
Isn’t doing good supposed to make the world a better Place? Could the question of “Why do bad things…” be a questioning, doubting, of what good, God, really is?
I don’t get the sense that the question is that kind of doubt in the way that it’s usually asked; but it could certainly lead in that direction. Many people would seem to want to believe that goodness is something written into the fabric of the physical universe and its causality – an assumption that seems to be present both in traditional monotheism and in traditional karma theory, but which seems questionable at best to me. Asking the question might help to shake that assumption, which is just as well.
Karma, karma, karma…
How about, say, someone steals a purse from an old lady. Accept that it happens. It’s life, sad, but true. Love the thief ‘cuz maybe they if they had more love they wouldn’t be mugging old ladies.But they still deserve to be punished. People seem to think that Karma is a matter of justice being served, if only immediately, but this is a way of sneaking a basic dualistic supposition back into how we act in the world, namely that there is something missing/stolen/lost from the situation that we need to restore, even at it’s most terrifying “by any means necessary”.
Yeah, I think this is something like what I was trying to hit with the idea of the theodicy instinct: this idea that something within us craves to see a situation of wrongdoing “fixed” – by further wrongdoing.
That something within us trying to work against karma, yes? Since the idea of fixing a wrongdoing implies a need that karma cares when it doesn’t.