Readings (3)

At I.2, the Simile of the Mountain, we learn that when old age and death are “rolling in,” there is nothing else to do but to “live by the Dhamma, live righteously, and to do wholesome and meritorious deeds.” In light of the adage, “Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” that response, though admirable, may not strike us as necessarily the most obvious one. The key to the argument appears in the very last lines.

“When one conducts oneself by Dhamma

With body, speech and mind,

They praise one here in the present life

And after death one rejoices in heaven.”

Based on this and succeeding passages, we can tease out the following principles:

There is not only this one life, but a series of lives.

One’s actions are judged after death.

Merit accrues to the doer of good deeds, demerit to the doer of bad deeds.

Good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds punished in this life or in a future life.

The person is responsible for her own actions and only she will experience the results of them. In other words, merit is not transferrable.

We can begin to discern the bare outlines of the Early Buddhist teachings about action, renewed becoming, the fruits of action (results), and samsāra (literally, “passing through”), the process of rebirth whereby one appears, now here and now there among the various realms of existence, over incalculably vast periods of time, driven by the moral value of one’s past actions. Much more could be said about the ideas that make up this very important conceptual cluster. For now it is enough to note that the “laws of karma” comprise much more than ordinary cause-and-effect relations.