Karma & Rebirth: A Contemporary Call to Orthodoxy

Dhamma without Rebirth?

By Ven. Badulle Sangarathana

In line with the present-day stress on the need for religious teachings to be personally relevant and directly verifiable, in certain circles the time-honored doctrine of rebirth has come up for severe re-examination. Although only a few contemporary Buddhist thinkers still go so far as to suggest that this doctrine be scrapped as “unscientific.” Another opinion has been gaining ground to the effect that whether or not rebirth itself be a fact, the doctrine of rebirth has no essential bearing on the practice of Dhamma and thence no assured place in the Buddhist teachings. The Dhamma, it is said, is concerned solely with the here and now, with helping us to resolve our personal hangups through increased self-awareness and inner honesty. All the rest of Buddhism we can now let go as the religious trappings of an ancient culture utterly inappropriate for the Dhamma of our technological age.

If we suspend our own predilections for the moment and instead go directly to our sources, we come upon the indisputable fact that the himself Buddha taught rebirth and taught it as  a basic tenet of his teaching. Viewed in their totality, the Buddha’s discourses show us that far from being a mere concession to the outlook prevalent in his time, or an Asiatic cultural contrivance, the doctrine of rebirth has tremendous implications for the entire course of Dhamma practice, affecting both the aim with which the practice is taken up, and the motivation with which is followed through to completion.

The aim of the Buddhist path is liberation from suffering, and the Buddha makes t abundantly clear that the suffering from which liberation is needed is the suffering of the bondage to samsara, the round of repeated birth and death. To be sure, the Dhamma does have an aspect which is directly visible and personally verifiable. By direct inspection of our own experience we can see that sorrow, tension, fear, and grief always arise from our greed, aversion and ignorance, and thus can be eliminated with the removal of those defilements. The importance of thi directly visible side of Dhamma practice cannot be [over]estimated, as it serves to confirm our confidence in liberating efficacy of the Buddha’s path. However, to downplay the doctrine of rebirth, and explain the entire import of the Dhamma as the amelioration of mental suffering through enhanced awareness, is to deprive the Dhamma of those wider perspectives from which it derives its full breadth and profundity. By doing so, one risks reducing it, in the end, to little more than a sophisticated ancient system of humanistic psychotherapy.

The Buddha himself has clearly indicated that the root problem of human existence is not simply the fact that we are vulnerable to sorrow, grief and fear, but that we tie ourselves, through our egoistic clinging, to a constantly regenerating pattern of birth, aging, sickness and death within which we undergo the more specific forms of mental affliction. He has also shown that the primary danger in the defilements is their causal role in sustaining the round of rebirths. As long as they remain unabandoned [sic] in the deep strata of the mind, they drag us through the round of becoming in which we shed a flood of tears “greater than the waters of the ocean.” When these points are carefully considered, we then see that the practice of Dhamma does not aim at providing us with a comfortable reconciliation with our present personalities and our situation in the world, but at initiating a far-reaching inner transformation which will issue in our deliverance from the cycle of worldly existence in its entirety.

Admittedly, for most of us the primary motive for entering upon the path of Dhamma has been a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction with the routine course of our unenlightened lives rather than a keen perception of the dangers of the round of rebirth. However, if we are to follow the Dhamma through to its end and tap its full potential for conferring peace and higher wisdom, it is necessary for the motivation of our practice to mature beyond that which initially induced us to enter the path. Our underlying motivation must grow toward those essential truths disclosed to us by the Buddha and, encompassing those truths, must use them to nourish its own capacity to lead us toward the realization of the goal.

Our motivation acquires the requisite maturity by the cultivation of right view, the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, which as explained by the Buddha includes an understanding of the principles of kamma and rebirth as fundamental to the structure of our existence. Though contemplating the moment is key to the development of insight meditation, it would be an erroneous extreme to hold that the practice of Dhamma consists wholly in maintaining mindfulness of the present. The Buddhist path stresses the role of wisdom as the instrument of deliverance, and wisdom must comprise not only a penetration of the moment in its vertical depths but a comprehension of the past and future horizons within which our present existence unfolds. To take full cognizance of the principle of rebirth will give us that panoramic perspective from which we can survey our lives in their broader context and total network of relationships. This will spur us on in our won pursuit of the path and reveal the profound significance of the goal toward which our practice points, the end of the cycle of rebirths as the mind’s final liberation from suffering.

Karma As Rationale & Pseudo-Explanation

The Problem with Karma: Notes from the Conflict in Sri Lanka

By Amarnath Amarasingham

Over the past month, there has been some speculation among members of the global Tamil community on whether Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited Texas to obtain cancer treatment in secret. The story in itself is not particularly interesting, but it does have relevance for the post-conflict situation in Sri Lanka. Many reacted to the news not with sadness, but with a sense that cosmic justice was being meted out. Some argued that Rajapaksa, responsible for mass human rights violations during the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war, was now getting his just desserts. Although many nationalist Tamils profess to be atheist or secular, the reaction to the news was always framed in Hindu and Buddhist notions of karma, popularly defined in the West as "what goes around comes around."
For Sinhala soldiers as well, the notion of karma was ever-present throughout the war with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which came to a bloody conclusion in May 2009. As Daniel Kent's recent research makes clear, Buddhist monks blessed Sri Lankan soldiers before they went out for training, preached at their funerals, and counseled soldiers and their families about the conduct of war and its justification.

For many years, scholarship on Buddhism, and Eastern religious traditions generally, was often guided by a crude assumption that Western religions held a monopoly on violence, while the East was largely peaceable. Over the last several years, research into conflict in Buddhist societies has forced scholars to rethink our assumptions. According to Kent's research in Sri Lanka, for example, there is real debate within the Sri Lankan army about notions of karma and intention in the killing of enemy soldiers. While there are many different aspects to the discussion, I focus here on one important question: whether religion, particularly discussions of karma and intention, restrict genuine reconciliation between Sinhala and Tamil communities in post-conflict Sri Lanka. I rely heavily on Kent's research on the Sri Lankan army, but much of what follows can likely be applied to the Tamil community as well.

Karma may complicate moves toward reconciliation in Sri Lanka, firstly, by assigning causal explanations to events that are largely inexplicable. Kent recalls interviewing a Sri Lankan Corporal, named Specs, at Panagoda army camp near Colombo, who told the story of narrowly escaping a blast from an improvised explosive device. His friend, who was not so lucky, was blinded and had both of his hands blown off. For Specs, his survival is explained with reference to karma. "That sort of thing must occur as the result of merit," he says, "one becomes disabled like this because of some sort of negative karma, but one's life is saved because one has done some sort of merit. That is what we think. It must be that. It is the way of karma." Not only do karmic explanations bring a spiritual rationalization to bear on worldly events, but these justifications often tend to be self-serving. In other words: I survived because I am good.

Perhaps more important for our present purposes is the way in which karma is linked with intention. Kent interviewed one monk, the Venerable Pilassi Vimaladhajja, who pointed out that negative karma does not accrue when an enemy is killed. "Vimaladhajja is not giving soldiers a blank check to kill whomever they wish while fighting the enemy," writes Kent, "He stresses that if a soldier has the intention to kill, a negative karma occurs. If a soldier's intention is to fight the enemy in order to protect the country and religion, however, their actions do not produce negative consequences." As Kent observes, those who hold this belief look at killing as secondary with the primary intention being the protection of the country.

As with the example above, however, it is assumed that karma, as a cosmic force, is supremely capable of discovering one's underlying intentions. Depending on how the soldier's life subsequently turns out, his ideas of karma and intention may have to be re-evaluated. As one soldier told Kent: "Honestly it is possible to rape and pillage during war without being caught. However, if you do that, nothing will ever go right for you ... there was one incident when we were in Trinco ... the Tamils had cultivated a field and left it. Our guys went and harvested the rice. They harvested the rice, sold it and took the money ... there were 21 guys who did that. All 21 of them were killed on the same day at the same time."

Such faith that karma will mete out punishment with mathematical certainty may work against the potential for remorse, regret or reconciliation. The very fact that some soldiers are still alive and living a life of health, wealth and happiness, is, with profound circular logic, seen as evidence of just conduct during war. This, in essence, is the problem with karma. 

Confession & Summary

As a product of my education—that is, as a snob, an elitist, a neo-Darwinian, and a skeptic—I naturally suppose it to be insuperably difficult for the educated class in the West to embrace any form of religious orthodoxy. I am well aware that to think so is an error on the face of it. Consider the case of the biologist Kenneth Miller, who describes himself, sincerely if incomprehensibly, as an orthodox Darwinist and an orthodox Catholic. Yet the idea that I seem to be stuck with, namely, that doctrinal conformity is practically impossible for a post-Enlightenment person, is not groundless, and may yet prove to have some validity as a generalization. Over the course of my life I have watched Catholic doctrine and practice crystallize and dissolve, again and again, upon the background of the pre-Vatican II Church into which I was baptized. I have studied the historical ebb and flow of the religious visions, enthusiasms, and awakenings that produced, among other things, the more than 250 ostensibly Christian denominations represented in the armed forces of the United States. My own rather shaky edifice of belief is the result of nearly continuous demolition and rebuilding. So let me begin by declaring that while I can imagine the benefits of orthodoxy, I have little feeling for it in the way of either sympathy or nostalgia. Thus I am surprised, again and again, when a one of my contemporaries mounts a defense of Buddhist orthodoxy. When faced with a choice between a philosophically suspect Buddhist doctrine and an explanation consonant with the findings of the sciences, I choose the latter every time.

Given the exuberance and fecundity of religious philosophy in India, the Buddha showed remarkable restraint when it came to ontological speculation, let alone commitment. On the contrary, he seems to have done his utmost to discourage the proliferation of theoretical constructions. From the time of his immediate successors, beginning with the Abhidhammists, attempts have been made to fill in the gaps in his teaching and to address those questions which he declined to answer. Ever since, there has been an alternation between those among his disciples who would capture the Dharma like a truffle in aspic, and those, like Nagarjuna, who would return to a wide-open prospect. Then, too, the geographical journey of the Buddha-Dharma brought it into contact with native religious elements which not only refused to be subordinated, but threatened to overshadow even fundamental doctrines. The history of Buddhism is a history of orthodoxy-busting.

Huston Smith complains that the story of life as told by scientists is dull, incomplete, uninspiring if not actually depressing, and lacking in the happy ending he seems to think life demands. Perhaps we are reading different books. Anyhow, there is a reason why Professor Smith gets upset whenever E. O. Wilson or anyone else suggests that science is, or ought to be, the base line against which all opinion is measured. What really bothers Smith, I think, is that, whether you find the stories told by scientists uplifting or demoralizing, more or less satisfactory than the stories told by the religious scriptures, only the stories of science are subjected to a continuous process of re-evaluation and adjudication. Only the stories of science are routinely scrutinized, analyzed, and tested against observable data. In short, they are the only stories upon which there is any real possibility for agreement.

The conceptual,schema of karma and rebirth fails to deliver useful information. It is based on no confirmable evidence, has no predictive value (as might be expected of a "theory" that is compatible with any imaginable set of circumstances), generates no testable hypotheses, and cannot to date be plugged into the body of modern science. The many troubles with the karma complex boil down to the following kinds:

   ·As ostensible fact, it has no evidential support.

   · As theory, it is (1) conceptually incoherent, (2) almost certainly absurd, (3) lacking in explanatory power and (4) incompatible with existing theory.

   · As a sound basis and a source of motivation for moral striving, it is inadequate precisely because it is not what it claims to be, namely, the true picture of a just universe.

In order for the karma-rebirth-samsāra complex) to make a serious claim upon our attention, it must be (1) a collection of facts about the world (events or processes) explicable under the terms of our best theoretical understanding, and/or (2) a theoretical schema capable of enriching our understanding of the facts. As it happens, the karma complex is commonly presented as both fact and theory. However, it is easily shown that the karma complex cannot fill the bill in either category.

To the extent that talk about karma, rebirth and samsara is put forth as a kind of conceptual knowledge, it is subject to the same kinds of analytic scrutiny as other such claims. To the extent that it purports to comprise or encompass fact, it falls under the rubric of science and is subject to the criteria of scientific method. The same is true of any such statement 

The Problem of Evidence

We ought not pass on from this topic without mentioning the scientific study of reincarnation so-called. The attempt to demonstrate the plausibility of rebirth “scientifically” can be summarized as scant anecdotal evidence amounting, in a very few instances, to a weak prima facie case that upon examination quickly collapses. In answer to the standard question, “How do you account for so-and-so’s vision, memory, ability, information?” I refer readers to the standard reply, that on a case-by-case basis it is in practice always possible to find a more plausible alternative hypothesis. Countless books and articles have been written about the inadequacy of the “proofs” of reincarnation. I will not recapitulate their contents here.

I will, however pause long enough to draw your attention to one interesting feature of the problem facing advocates of karma-theory whenever they try to explain an individual’s apparently impossible knowledge. The central nervous system of the human being is a powerful, convincing and occasionally deceptive generator of extraordinary and even impossible events. We have abundant evidence of compelling and yet utterly subjective “experiences.” The data are derived from the study of dreams, drug-induced states, advanced visualization techniques, schizophrenia, and sensory deprivation.

For most people, most of the time, it is possible to distinguish dreaming from waking life. It is even possible for the insane to sometimes discriminate hallucinated objects, voices and persons from those that are physically present, as the mathematician John Nash taught himself to do. It is unclear, to say the least, what criteria might be used to distinguish experiences of the astral plane from, let us say, spontaneously arisen visions due to prolonged fasting and dancing, or excessive intense concentration, or the unwitting ingestion of hallucinogenic bread mold. How, for that matter, are we to judge whether an unconfirmed verbal report is based on recollection of a past life, demonic possession, or acts of imagination? If most of us vastly prefer the latter explanation, it is because it requires far less in the way of groundless speculation and dovetails better with what we know to be relatively certain about the world.

Personhood & Renewed Existence

Absolute individuality and immutable personhood are incompatible with the Buddhist worldview. Acceptance of the core concept of pratitya-samutpada would seem to force the Buddhist to repudiate the notion of a permanent identity. Anything that might constitute the Self can be ruled out on account of its transience and contingency. The thesis of interdependence subverts both subjective and objective knowledge of the Self by positing the dependent arising of sensory phenomena in the former case, and suggesting an ontology of co-emergence in the latter.

What, then, of the ordinary sense of self or personhood?

It is argued that, by virtue of the right sort of causal connections, a person, Jones, at the age of ten is not the same (in the strict sense) as Jones at the age of 50, nor is he different. The relation of neither-sameness-nor-difference (or both-the-same-and-different) is also said to obtain between Smith at the time of his death and his causally related, afterlife successor, Bialistok. A third person, Allweather, has never had the same sort of relation with Jones or Bialistok that the various ephemeral versions of Jones have with each other or that Jones is alleged to have with his identity-successor, Bialistok. Jones and Allweather are different persons. Moreover, all the temporally successive versions of Smith are different from all the successive versions of Allweather, all the causally dependent predecessors of Smith (i. e., his “past lives”) are different from the causally dependent predecessors of Allweather, and the same relation of difference will be true for future versions of Smith and Allweather.[1]

Leaving aside for the moment the matter of how to account for causal relations across lifespans, let us ask what is it about Jones and Allweather that makes them different persons The most obvious difference between them is the two particular bodies associated with the names Bevan Jones and Thaddeus Allweather. Identical twins, no matter how much alike, are regarded as separate persons. A living clone of Bevan Jones would doubtless be considered another person for both quotidian and legal purposes. And although bodily form by itself cannot comprise personhood—a brain-dead body on mechanical life support has ceased, I think, to be a person except perhaps in a restricted legal sense—there is strong reason to suppose bodily form to be a sine qua non of conventional identity. Try joining a health club without one.

I hasten to add that we are speaking here of socially acknowledged bodies, bodies with names, “personalities.” Animate, particular, recognized bodies are all we need for a perfectly serviceable concept of personhood, the long tradition of dualism notwithstanding. In any case, so long as there is a body or bodies present there is no problem in grasping both “complete difference” between persons and the relation of neither-same-nor-different between different stages or versions of the same person. The trouble starts when the conversation turns to causal continuity (of any sort) in the absence of bodies.

If we begin with the idea, or vision, of interdependent origination, we will come to see that the many stages, phases, moments of a life (the activity of being a person) are causally continuous, share a common context and bear a family resemblance to their spatial and temporal neighbors rather than a strict identity. We will notice also that we do not have the same kind of direct access to the experiences of others, or to “our own” putative past lives. In no ordinary sense can Mr. P of this life be said to be the same as Ms. Q of the next, whatever “next” may mean. If I have a speculative turn of mind it may occur to me that there will come a time when the future person(s) who are causally dependent upon my actions will bear so little resemblance to me that it would strain the concept of personhood to the breaking point were either of us to claim a shared identity even in the very loose, Buddhistic sense.

In making sense of how the person functions in the absence of a Self, the conceptual schema of the five skandhas is most helpful. I will have more to say about it in future posts.

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[1] Tibetan tradition admits the possibility that concurrent versions of Jones and Allweather could have a common karmic ancestor as, for instance, is claimed for certain great treasure-finders of the Nyingma tradition. Among the Dharma-heirs of Guru Rinpoche, for instance, some are believed to have inherited the person, as well as the mind-treasures, of their illustrious, neither-same-nor-different predecessor. To allow such an option, however, further darkens the already murky theoretical waters. I would contend that our concept of personhood simply can’t accommodate a splitting of self into more than one future causally continuous me, him or her.

Ancient Indian Cosmology & Other Baggage

Once a month we meet to talk about our readings of selected Pali texts. Last Thursday the topic was How to Get Ahead on the Wheel of Life. The discussion was wide-ranging, as befits the subject. The Buddha’s vision of a just universe opens up vast panoramas of space, time, and imagination. It is a springboard for Big Ideas and ample nourishment for loving kindness and compassion.

At the same time, samasāra in the fullness of the traditional description is bound to provoke a measure of skepticism. That all of us are not prepared to embrace a worldview that includes multiple levels of heaven and hell was evident in the way some members of the community spoke of “cultural stuff”—meaning Buddhist cosmology—as if nothing could be more obvious than that the belief in gods, heavens, hells, and rebirth in various unseen realms of existence was extraneous to the main thrust of the Awakened One’s teachings. Perhaps he’d offered them as a sop to popular superstition, or because he was afraid his words wouldn’t be heeded if he left them out. We can’t be sure.

But even if we can convince ourselves that samsāra is merely an ad-on to the authentic core of the Buddha’s teachings, a cluster of assertions about the world that the Awakened One employed with the aim of selling his product, although he didn’t really believe in them, we are still left with the problem what to do with them. It is claimed that distress over the prospect of samsāra is the moral lynchpin of Buddha-Dharma. In that case, are the various realms of existence to be understood as metaphor for psychological conditions or states of consciousness within the span of this life?

I am still looking for the line that clearly demarcates what is relevant or true in the Buddha’s Dharma from what is not. Indeed, I do not always know what to take seriously and what not amidst the colossal treasury of our own “cultural stuff.” Should I invest in scientific method, for instance, rationality, free enterprise, multiculturalism, democracy, the Bible, tolerance of lifestyle differences, nationalism, twelve-step programs, gun control?

Many of us well-educated, “middle class” Westerners have been marinated since childhood in a broth comprising equal parts of naturalism, social Darwinism, rugged individualism, and a strong dose of advertising intended to maintain covetousness at a fever pitch. We have ravaged the planet, we are drowning in possessions, and we show precious little interest in letting up. We are therefore predisposed to disregard moral blandishments that rub us the wrong way or cause us inconvenience. It is my guess that we do not find much to like in a crucial message of Buddha-Dharma, namely, that the world is a flood of dis-ease that must be crossed in order to attain a liberation that is, to put it charitably, not very sexy.

A Closer Look at the Traditional View of Karma

The argument presented in the last post is roughly analogous to the theist’s claim that without belief in an afterlife and a just God, there is no solid foundation for morality, and it suffers from the same weaknesses as that claim. For all its flaws, the argument, in one form or another, is called upon to justify the oft-heard assertion that karma is the bedrock of Buddhist and Hindu ethics, a proposition that is open to challenge on more than one front, and the even more dubious claim that without the doctrines of karma, rebirth and samsara to support it, the whole edifice of Buddhism would collapse. I do not subscribe to that point of view. On the contrary, I am inclined to suppose the body of the Buddha-Dharma could survive the excision of karma theory, together with much of the cosmology, and yet live to a ripe old age.

To restate in brief the moral component of karma theory: underlying the various conceptual schemata associated with the doctrines of karma and rebirth is the assumption that the universe itself, or the totality of natural laws according to which it carries on, is fundamentally just. It is maintained that the fairness alleged to be built into the impersonal working of cosmic forces is necessary in order to arouse and sustain moral striving. Furthermore, it is claimed that, unless it were certain that every person received reward and punishment for every morally significant act, there would be no reason to be good or to strive for moral improvement. There are difficulties with this position, to put it mildly. Here are three to think about. (1) The fact of universal moral justice has yet to be demonstrated. On the contrary, a child can see that life is not fair. (2) The assertion, that moral sensitivity and ethical living cannot occur in the absence of faith in unproven religious teachings, is demonstrably false. We all know non-religious people who are good. (3) There is abundant evidence that carrot-and-stick morality often fails to get the desired result. That is just the beginning of the difficulties with these doctrines.

In the article for which I provide a link below, the author discusses some of the real-life consequences of holding to certain of the teachings about karma and result.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amarnath-amarasingam/the-problem-with-karma-no_b_831093.html