Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s2.1

c10.s2.1

The insistence on the doctrine of the causation of misery was doubtless in Buddhism inspired by opposition to the pessimism of the Ājīvakas under Makkhali Gosāla, who insisted that purity and depravity arose without cause or condition, that the fate of men depended neither on their own nor others’ action or effort; that no human power was efficient, and that all things with life were without inherent force. Ajita also held that there was no fruit of good or evil deeds nor result of the deeds of others or previous lives. Such doctrines² were, it is plain, destructive of any orderly conception of existence, and the Buddha’s message of deliverance is based on the conviction that misery exists because it is produced and will continue to exist until its process of production can be stopped.