Karma in Buddhism and Hinduism

Karma in Buddhism and Hinduism

Background of Karma

Karma (also karman, kamma) has been a foundational concept in Indian religions since the Vedic period (1500 BCE), appearing in various Hindu schools of thought as well as in Buddhism and Jainism. The term shifts in meaning between these traditions (and, indeed, between various streams of Hinduism). As a result, understanding karma requires situating it in specific historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts.

There is no clear origination to the concept of karma. The term comes from the Sanskrit root kr (“to do or make”). In the Vedic context (1500- 500 BCE), karma refers specifically to sacrificial action, ritual work. An individual performs ritual action, and the consequences are automatic, governed by cosmic (Doniger, 2005).

Karma in Hinduism

In Hinduism, karma functions predominantly as a means of explaining the problem of evil, and the inequalities and hardships encountered in this life, which are seen as being the result of actions in a previous life. All living creatures are held to be responsible for their own karma, since they act with free will. The law of karma determines whether a person is born in their next incarnation as a human, an animal or an insect, and, if they are reincarnated in human form, their status and situation. However, God, the ultimate dispenser of karma, may intervene and mitigate the natural consequences of this impersonal law. There are said to be three kinds of karma: prarabdha (karma to be experienced in the present lifetime), sancita (latent karma which has yet to come to fruition), and sanciyama (karma sown in the present lifetime, which will be reaped in a future incarnation). If an individual can attain moksha, or nirvana, they can be liberated from the karmic cycle; the latent karma is 'burned out', and while the present lifetime's karma still has to be worked through, no new karma is created, so that at death, the enlightened person has no karma remaining, and is thus freed from the cycle of samsara and will not be reincarnated (Flood, 1996).

In its most general connotation, karma is any action, but specifically it refers to the performance of life cycle rituals ( karma kanda). Such rituals are many in number, beginning with those relating to conception and including birth, initiation (in the case of clean caste boys), marriage, and death rites. Postmortem food offerings (shraddha) are an important component of Hindu piety. The performance of these rituals is usually carried out under the supervision of Brahman priests, but lower-caste people who may not be served by them employ their own ritual specialists (Harvey, 1990).

Related to the notion of karma as dharmic action is the idea of the fruits of action ( karma phala). Inherent in the concept of karma, and of the actor as a moral agent, is the expectation that, besides its worldly consequences, every action carries a positive or negative moral load. It is one's unalterable fate that the consequences of this accumulation (sanchit karma ) must be enjoyed ...