Nyāya Sūtras 337

NyS 3.2.67: By this, irregularity is answered.

This irregularity which is asserted to exist if the creation of the body has not karma as its cause, is answered by this [statement]: 'Just like the cause of the body's origination, karma is the cause of the origination of [its] connection.'

What, first of all, is this 'regularity'? Regularity means that as the body of one self is, so is that of all. Irregularity means difference, diversity, distinction—such that it is of one kind for one, and of another kind for another.

And diversity of birth is observed: high birth and low birth; praiseworthy and blamed; full of disease and free from illness; complete and defective; full of pain and full of pleasure; endowed with the marks of an extraordinary person and the opposite; possessing praiseworthy marks and possessing blamed marks; keen in sense organs and dull in sense organs; and subtle difference is immeasurable. This difference of birth is intelligible only through the difference of karma restricted to individual selves. If there were no difference of karma restricted to individual selves, then because selves are without distinguishing differences, because earth and the other [elements] are common, and because there is no cause of restriction belonging to earth and the other [elements], it would follow that everything would belong to all selves; yet this birth is not of that nature. Therefore, the body's origination does not have non-karma as its cause.
And separation from it is intelligible because the exhaustion of karma is intelligible. When the creation of the body has karma as its cause, the self's separation from that body is intelligible. Why? Because the exhaustion of karma is intelligible. The exhaustion of karma is indeed intelligible: when delusion is destroyed through correct vision, one who is free from passion does not perform karma that causes rebirth with body, speech, or mind; thus there is no accumulation of subsequent [karma], and there is exhaustion of previously accumulated [karma] through the experience of its fruition. Thus, in the absence of a cause of reproduction, when this body has fallen, no subsequent body can arise, so there is no reconnection. But if the creation of the body had not karma as its cause, separation from it would not be intelligible, because an exhaustion of the elements is impossible.