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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s8: 8. The Doctrine of the Act

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s8

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8. The Doctrine of the Act

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The insistence of the Buddha on the doctrine of the act (*karman*) can clearly be explained as an outcome of his revolt against the pure materialism of teachers like Ajita or the negation of any true human activity as insisted upon by Pūraṇa Kassapa, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Makkhali Gosāla, despite their divergent views on other points. It is more difficult to ascertain the degree of originality in this assertion of the doctrine of the rewards and penalties of action, for the references to the doctrine in the Upaniṣads are scanty, enlightenment being the main object of these treatises.² But we know that the Jaṭilas were authorized to be admitted to the Buddhist order without the normal novitiate of three months because of their belief in the doctrine, and the success of the teaching of the Buddha in this regard is infinitely more probable if it were already a widely accepted doctrine of the ascetics and nobles than if the conception were wholly new. Nor is the presentation of the doctrine in our texts favourable to the view that it was new; the stress laid on the chain of causation rather than on the mere fact of Karman hints at the originality, such as it is, of the chain, not of the fact of Karman.

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² Cf. Oldenberg, LUAB., pp. 108 ff.

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But if we may judge from the case of the Jain doctrine of Karman, which is frankly materialistic and imagines that bodily or verbal action creates a subtle matter to envelop the soul and produce retribution, it was possible for the Buddha to make an important step in advance, and to sever the idea from connexion with the old Vedic conception of sin as a sort of physical contamination which might be removed by fire or water, to whose influence the Jains succumbed. Action for the Buddha seems to have been volition (cetanā), and what is done after volition whether in the form of action or of speech. To resolve to kill is one thing, to act another, to approve the act after it has been performed a third, and all three elements must coincide to make an act complete. A gift should be accompanied by intention, and to regret the generosity is to ruin its effect; a sin, on the other hand, is in part counteracted by confession, which is also the accomplishment of the duty of truthfulness, and this fact explains the importance laid by the community on the formal confession of sins.¹

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¹ SN. ii. 99; cf. MKV., p. 306; Poussin, Nirvāṇa, ch. iii.

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A further and important result is derived from this rationalizing of the conception of action. The morality of action predominates in the Buddhist view, and ritual practices such as sacrifice² and purification, nay even offerings to the dead, become merely surplusage, superstitious usages (sīlabbata), which have no value. But it must be admitted that there is no attempt to demonstrate the principles which render an act moral or immoral; it is not until late that we have the suggestion that an act is good or bad according as it benefits one’s neighbour or injures him, and even then there is no more far-reaching criterion than the mere idea of goodness as pleasure and evil as pain. Moreover, the true Buddhist essentially seeks release, and that has nothing in itself to do with either goodness or badness. The monk, indeed, is compelled to attain his end to concentrate his interest on himself alone;³ his actions like those of the sage of the Upaniṣads are essentially for the sake of the self; and the path of salvation requires that he should lay aside, as did the Buddha, all the human class of duty towards wife or children, since family life is a barrier to the attainment of release.

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² Yet it is allowed, DN. ii. 88; MV. vi. 28. 11; on ritual bathing see Therīgāthā, 239, and later Āryadeva’s Cittaviçuddhiprakaraṇa (JASB. lxvii. 2); Vasubandhu, Gāthāsaṃgraha (Mél. asiat. viii. 559 ff.); on offerings to the dead Petavatthu, (PTS. 1888).

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³ Cf. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Up., i. 4. 8; ii. 4; iv. 5.

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