Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s1.3

c11.s1.3

Conduct, it follows, from the end of man,¹ must be such as to aid him in his end; it must secure for him either progress to Nirvāṇa or rebirth at least in a superior form of life. The action of Karman may not be unbroken or absolutely regular, but it is assumed for practical purposes to have these qualities, and man will profit or suffer according to his own deeds and deserts. Moreover, man has the power to act; strange as it may seem when one ground of the denial of a self is remembered, and the apparent determinism of the chain of causation, the Buddha has no doubt whatever that the determinism of Makkhali Gosāla is the most detestable of all heresies. The position is the more remarkable, because one of the arguments in the Canon and later against the existence of a self is that such a thing must be autonomous, while all in the world is conditional and causally determined. But the issue is solved by the simple process of ignoring it, and Buddhism rejoices in being freed from any error of determinism to menace moral responsibility.