Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 11

T. G. Kalghatgi
bases. "This truth of Karma has been always recognised in the East in one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the credit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal enunciation and the most insistent importance. In the West, too, the idea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary glimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and most as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against the self-will and strength of man."'19 The Jainas have developed the doctrine of Karma on a scientific basis.
Karma etymologically means whatever is done, any activity. It got associated with the after-effects of action, both physical and mental. Every jiva (living being) is constantly active, expressing the activity in the threefold functions of body, speach and mind. It leaves behind traces of aftereffects in the physical and psychic forms. Every action, word or thought produces, besides its visible, invisible and transcendent effects. It produces under certain conditions potential energies which forge the physical effects in the form of reward or punishment. As in the case of a bond which continues to operate until, but loses its validity on, the repayment of the capital; so does the invisible effect of an action remain in potential form after the visible effect has disappeared. Actions performed in this life would be the causes.20 And the present life is the result of actions performed in previous lives. So is the chain of life connected in the series of actions and their effects realised. The Karma doctrine involves the idea of eternal metem psychosis.
Karl Potter in his Presuppositions of Indian Philosophies 21 has tried to interpret Karma as a form of habit. Human being faces challenges from many sides which have to be met by birth, social action and by the application of scientific techniques in order to be free from the bondage in life. But the more subtle challenges lie underneath the surface, and arise from habits themselves, which continue after the conditions that engender them have been removed, and which engender new habits which in turn must be removed somehow. This round of habits breeding habits is a part of what is called in Sanskrit Samsāra, the wheel of birth, which is governed by Karma, the habits themselves, Karma is described in the Jaina Philosophy as a kind of dirt which accretes to the otherwise pure jiva by virtue of one's actions. In the Bhagavadgitā the dirt is described as of three kind : “one may think of these as types of habits."22 I have not been able to
19. Ibid p. 85 20. Glasenapp (Von H.): The Doctrine of Karma in Jaina Philosophy. (German
Edition, 1942) Preface. 21. Presuppositions of Indian Philosophies. (Prentice Hall, 1963). 22. Ibid.