Karma
Karma is an ancient Indian concept that refers to an action, work, or deed, and its effect or consequences. In Indian religions, the term more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein individuals' intent and actions influence their future : Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and worse rebirths. In some scriptures, however, there is no link between rebirth and karma.
In Hinduism, karma is traditionally classified into four types: Sanchita karma, Prārabdha karma, Āgāmi karma, and Kriyamāṇa karma.
Karma is often misunderstood as fate, destiny, or predetermination. Fate, destiny or predetermination has specific terminology in Sanskrit and is called Prarabdha.
The concept of karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions, as well as Taoism. In these schools, karma in the present affects one's future in the current life as well as the nature and quality of future lives—one's saṃsāra.
Many New Agers believe in karma, treating it as a law of cause and effect that assures cosmic balance, although in some cases they stress that it is not a system that enforces punishment for past actions.
Definition
The term karma refers to both the executed 'deed, work, action, act' and the 'object, intent'.Wilhelm Halbfass explains karma by contrasting it with the Sanskrit word kriya: whereas kriya is the activity along with the steps and effort in action, karma is the executed action as a consequence of that activity, as well as the intention of the actor behind an executed action or a planned action. A good action creates good karma, as does good intent. A bad action creates bad karma, as does bad intent.
Difficulty in arriving at a definition of karma arises because of the diversity of views among the schools of Hinduism; some, for example, consider karma and rebirth linked and simultaneously essential, some consider karma but not rebirth to be essential, and a few discuss and conclude karma and rebirth to be flawed fiction. Buddhism and Jainism have their own karma precepts. Thus, karma has not one, but multiple definitions and different meanings. It is a concept whose meaning, importance, and scope varies between the various traditions that originated in India, and various schools in each of these traditions. According to Manu Doshi, all Aryan philosophies accept karma but Jainism has gone deeper into this subject. Wendy O'Flaherty claims that, furthermore, there is an ongoing debate regarding whether karma is a theory, a model, a paradigm, a metaphor, or a metaphysical stance.
Principle of karma
Karma also refers to a conceptual principle that originated in India, often descriptively called the principle of karma, and sometimes the karma-theory or the law of karma.In the context of theory, karma is complex and difficult to define. Different schools of Indology derive different definitions for the concept from ancient Indian texts; their definition is some combination of causality that may be ethical or non-ethical; ethicization, i.e., good or bad actions have consequences; and rebirth. Other Indologists include in the definition that which explains the present circumstances of an individual with reference to their actions in the past. These actions may be those in a person's current life, or, in some schools of Indian traditions, possibly actions from their past lives; furthermore, the consequences may result in the current life, or a person's future lives. The law of karma operates independent of any deity or any process of divine judgment.
Causality
A common theme to theories of karma is its principle of causality. This relationship between karma and causality is a central motif in all schools of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain thought. One of the earliest associations of karma to causality occurs in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad verses 4.4.5–6:The theory of karma as causation holds that: executed actions of an individual affects the individual and the life he or she lives, and the intentions of an individual affects the individual and the life he or she lives. Disinterested actions, or unintentional actions do not have the same positive or negative karmic effect, as interested and intentional actions. In Buddhism, for example, actions that are performed, or arise, or originate without any bad intent, such as covetousness, are considered non-existent in karmic impact or neutral in influence to the individual.
Another causality characteristic, shared by karmic theories, is that like deeds lead to like effects. Thus, good karma produces good effect on the actor, while bad karma produces bad effect. This effect may be material, moral, or emotional – that is, one's karma affects both one's happiness and unhappiness. The effect of karma need not be immediate; the effect of karma can be later in one's current life, and in some schools it extends to future lives.
The consequence or effects of one's karma can be described in two forms: phala and samskara. A phala is the visible or invisible effect that is typically immediate or within the current life. In contrast, a samskara is an invisible effect, produced inside the actor because of the karma, transforming the agent and affecting their ability to be happy or unhappy in their current and future lives. The theory of karma is often presented in the context of samskaras.
Karl Potter and Harold Coward suggest that karmic principle can also be understood as a principle of psychology and habit. Karma seeds habits, and habits create the nature of man. Karma also seeds self perception, and perception influences how one experiences life-events. Both habits and self perception affect the course of one's life. Breaking bad habits is not easy: it requires conscious karmic effort. Thus, psyche and habit, according to Potter and Coward, link karma to causality in ancient Indian literature. The idea of karma may be compared to the notion of a person's 'character', as both are an assessment of the person and determined by that person's habitual thinking and acting.
Ethicization
The second theme common to karma theories is ethicization. This begins with the premise that every action has a consequence, which will come to fruition in either this life or a future life; thus, morally good acts will have positive consequences, whereas bad acts will produce negative results. An individual's present situation is thereby explained by reference to actions in his present or in previous lifetimes. Karma is not itself "reward and punishment", but the law that produces consequence. Wilhelm Halbfass notes that good karma is considered as dharma and leads to punya, while bad karma is considered adharma and leads to pāp.Reichenbach suggests that the theories of karma are an ethical theory. This is so because the ancient scholars of India linked intent and actual action to the merit, reward, demerit, and punishment. A theory without ethical premise would be a pure causal relation; the merit or reward or demerit or punishment would be same regardless of the actor's intention. In ethics, one's intentions, attitudes, and desires matter in the evaluation of one's action. Where the outcome is unintended, the moral responsibility for it is less on the actor, even though causal responsibility may be the same regardless. A karma theory considers not only the action, but also the actor's intentions, attitude, and desires before and during the action. The karma concept thus encourages each person to seek and live a moral life, as well as avoid an immoral life. The meaning and significance of karma is thus as a building-block of an ethical theory.
Rebirth
The third common theme of karma theories is the concept of reincarnation or the cycle of rebirths. Rebirth is a fundamental concept of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Rebirth, or saṃsāra, is the concept that all life forms go through a cycle of reincarnation, that is, a series of births and rebirths. The rebirths and consequent life may be in different realm, condition, or form. The karma theories suggest that the realm, condition, and form depends on the quality and quantity of karma. In schools that believe in rebirth, every living being's soul transmigrates after death, carrying the seeds of Karmic impulses from life just completed, into another life and lifetime of karmas. This cycle continues indefinitely, except for those who consciously break this cycle by reaching moksha. Those who break the cycle reach the realm of gods, those who do not continue in the cycle.The concept has been intensely debated in ancient literature of India; with different schools of Indian religions considering the relevance of rebirth as either essential, or secondary, or unnecessary fiction. Hiriyanna suggests rebirth to be a necessary corollary of karma; Yamunacharya asserts that karma is a fact, while reincarnation is a hypothesis; and Creel suggests that karma is a basic concept, rebirth is a derivative concept.
The theory of "karma and rebirth" raises numerous questions – such as how, when, and why did the cycle start in the first place, what is the relative Karmic merit of one karma versus another and why, and what evidence is there that rebirth actually happens, among others. Various schools of Hinduism realized these difficulties, debated their own formulations – some reaching what they considered as internally consistent theories – while other schools modified and de-emphasized it; a few schools in Hinduism such as Charvakas abandoned the theory of "karma and rebirth" altogether. Schools of Buddhism consider karma-rebirth cycle as integral to their theories of soteriology.