Karma and Rebirth

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

Page 24

In the Vestibules of Karma
does not fructify,64 One who has acquired knowledge is not defiled by Karma as the lotus leaf does not hold water.65 The Absolutist philosophy does preclude the possibility of detailed instructions of how to realise this state of release on the basis of the attainment of jñāna. Some of the paths to be persued would be yoga of Patanjali, meditation on the absolute and self, bhakti (devotion) and renuciation of the fruits of efforts.
The impact of the Karma theory was so profound in Indian thought that detailed and casuistrical attempts were made to calculate the fruits of Karma experienced by individuals in the cycle of births. In the Manusmrti we get the description of the fruits of Karma one experiences due to various activities that he performs. For example, one who steals gold will be afflicted in the next life with poor Dails. He who takes alchobol will have black teeth. He who kills a Brahmin will suffer from consumption. One who is unchaste with the wife of his teacher will have skin disease.66 One who steals the property of a good man or Brahmin descends into the hot hell of paşāņakunda for as many years as there are hairs on his body, he is then reborn three times as a tortoise and so on.67 And for good actions : he who digs a pond or improves an old one reaches the heaven of the gods. He who gives food obtains good memory and other mental gifts in the next life. The story of Yeśodhara and Amộtamati is a narrative of the long series of effects of Karma in their chain of existences. The Buddha narrates the successive life story of a man who was greedy and was reborn as an elephant.68
Such statements cannot be interpreted literally. They can be understood in the sense that a. definite deed has a tendency to mature and fructify in a definite Karmic effect. This tendency is strongly modified more or less by the effects of other actions. The Indian doctrine of Karma is not merely, like the doctrine of retribution in western religions, a theory of rewards and punishments which we have to expect in the future for our deeds in this existence, but it will show the causes why we are in our present life precisely as we are in our present life and why we have the fate that we are experiencing. 69 Schopenhauer said that the moral meaning of metempsychosis in all Indian religions is not merely that in a subsequent rebirths we have to atone for every wrong we commit, but also that we must regard every wrong befalling us as thoroughly deserved through our misdeeds in a
64. Mahābhārata Vanaparva, 199-206. 65. Chan. Upani şad. 4.14.3. 66. Manusmyti. XI. 49 and Yajnavalk ya smyti. III. 209. 67. Devibhāgavata Purana. IX. ch. 33. 68. Anguttara Nikaya, 10, M 177. 69. Glasenapp : Immortality and Salvation in Indian Religion, p. 30.