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8. AGE OF REASON
The Samyutta Nikaya states:
"According to the seed that's sown, So is the fruit you reap there from, Doer of good will gather good, Doer of evil, evil reaps, Down is the seed and thou shalt taste The fruit thereof."
Karma is a law in itself, which operates in its own field without the intervention of any external, independent ruling agency. The bad seed is the wrong mental attitude and thinking. Out of it comes bad actions and evil for self and for society.
"Listen, Tapassi. Of these three types of kamma (thought, word and deed) so distinguished by me, I say that mental kamma has the heaviest consequences for the committing of evil deeds and the existence of evil deeds, not bodily or verbal kamma."
The other basic theory for Buddhism was the law of reincarnation.
Every birth is conditioned by a past good or bad karma, which predominated at the moment of death. Karma that conditions the future birth is called Reproductive Karma. The death of a person is merely 'a temporary end of a temporary phenomenon'. Though the present form perishes, another form, which is neither the same nor the totally different takes its place, according to the potential thoughtvibration generated at the death moment, because the karmic force which propels the life-flux still survives. It is this last thought, which is technically called Reproductive (janaka) Karma, that determines the state of a person in his subsequent birth. This may be either a good or a bad karma.
Unlike the modern understanding of reincarnation, it is not the same person who continues to be born again. The energy or will to live causes continuation of motion. There is no such thing as soul in Buddhism and so there is no continuation of Soul in reincarnation.
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