Religion

Ancient India
Hinduism & Buddhism

Adapted excerpt from The Dhammapada, by Eknath Easwaran;

    Like the Buddha, the sages of the Upanishads did not find the world capricious. Nothing in it happens by chance – not because events are predestined, but because everything is connected by cause-and-effect. Thoughts are included in this view, because they both cause things to happen and are aroused by things that happen. What we think has consequences for the world around us, for it conditions how we act. 

 

    All these consequences (for others, for the world, and for ourselves) are our personal responsibility. Sooner or later, due to the laws of nature, it is sure to come back to us. Someone who is always angry, to take a simple example, is bound to provoke anger from others. More subtly, a man who pollutes the environment will eventually have to breathe the air and drink the water that he has helped to poison.

 

    These are illustrations of what Hinduism and Buddhism call the law of karma. Karma means something done, whether as cause or effect. Actions in harmony with dhamma, or the laws of nature, bring good karma and add to health and happiness. Selfish actions, at odds with the rest of life, bring unfavorable karma and pain.

 

     In this view, there is no need for a God to punish and reward us, we punish and reward ourselves. This was not regarded as a tenet of religion but as a law of nature, as universal as the law of gravity. No one has stated it more clearly than St. Paul: “As you sow, so shall you reap. With whatever measure you mete out to others, with the same measure it shall be meted out to you.”

 

    For the Upanishadic sages, however, the books of karma could only be cleared within the natural world. Unpaid karmic debts and unfulfilled desires do not vanish when the physical body dies. They are forces which remain in the universe to quicken life again at the moment of conception when conditions are right for past karma to be fulfilled. We live and act, and everything we do goes into what we think at the present moment, so that at death the mind is the sum of everything we have done and everything we still desire to do. That sum of forces has karma to reap, and when the right context comes – the right parents, the right society, the right epoch – the bundle of energy that is the germ of your personality is born again. We are not just limited physical creatures with a beginning in a particular year and an end after fourscore years and ten. We go back eons, and some of the contents of the deepest unconscious are the dark drives of an evolutionary heritage much older than the human race.

 

    The law of karma simply states that cause and effect apply universally and that the effect is of the nature of the cause. Every event, mental or physical, has to have effects, whether in the mind, in action, or in both – and each such effect becomes a cause itself.

 

   

 

Definitions

sages — wise people, especially ones whose wisdom comes from long reflection on deep questions; in Indian contexts, often the ancient teacher-poets who composed scriptures.

capricious — acting on sudden whims, without reason; unpredictable in a fickle way. A capricious universe would be one where things just happen for no reason.

predestined — fixed in advance by some outside power, so that the outcome cannot be changed.

cause-and-effect — the principle that every event is produced by prior conditions and in turn produces further events; nothing arises in isolation.

consequences — the results or effects that follow from an action, especially ones the actor is answerable for.

provoke — to stir up or call forth a reaction, usually a strong one like anger.

subtly — in a fine, not-obvious way; requiring attention to notice.

Hinduism — the family of religious and philosophical traditions native to the Indian subcontinent, rooted in religious texts called the Vedas and Upanishads.

Buddhism — the tradition founded by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) in the 5th century BCE, teaching that suffering arises from craving and ignorance and can be ended by following the Eightfold Path.

karma — literally "action" or "deed"; the principle that intentional actions leave consequences that shape future experience, in this life or beyond.

dhamma//dharma — a many-layered word meaning the natural law or order of things, the truth of how reality works, and also the teaching that describes that truth.

tenet of religion — a principle or doctrine held by a religion.

St. Paul — the first-century Jewish-Roman apostle whose letters make up much of the New Testament; a foundational figure in Christian theology.

quicken — to bring to life, to animate; an old word used especially for the moment when a fetus first stirs in the womb.

conception — the moment an egg is fertilized and a new life begins to form.

epoch — a particular period of history, usually one with a distinctive character ("the Victorian epoch," "our epoch").

germ — the tiny starting point from which something grows. (Not the disease sense.)

fourscore years and ten — ninety years. 

eons (also spelled aeons) — immensely long stretches of time.

 

 

Questions

 

What connects everything that happens in the world?

 

What example did the author use of a person who’s own behavior comes back to them?

 

According to the passage, who punishes and rewards us?

 

What is another name for the law of karma?

 

What is an example of another universal law of nature?

 

According to the passage, what happens to unpaid karmic debts and unfulfilled desires when the body dies?

 

 

 

“As you sow, so shall you reap. With whatever measure you mete out to others, with the same measure it shall be meted out to you.”

 

This is a saying built out of two farming-and-marketplace images that were everyday life for the people who first heard it. Once you see the pictures, the meaning becomes very plain.

 

"As you sow, so shall you reap."

 

Sowing means scattering seed in a field. Reaping means cutting down and gathering the crop that grows from that seed months later. A farmer who sows wheat reaps wheat. A farmer who sows thistles reaps thistles. You cannot plant one thing and harvest another, and you cannot plant nothing and harvest something. The harvest always matches the seed, and it always comes later than the planting.

 

Used as a saying about human life, it means: the kind of actions you put into the world are the kind of results that will come back to you, even if the results take a long time to appear.

 

"With whatever measure you mete out to others, with the same measure it shall be meted out to you."

 

This second image comes from the marketplace. In the ancient world, grain and flour and oil were sold by measure, you'd scoop them into a cup or a basket of a fixed size. To mete out means to measure out and give. A generous seller used a big, heaping measure. A stingy seller might have used a smaller one.

 

The saying means: the size of the measuring-cup you use when you give to other people is the same size of measuring-cup that will be used when things are given to you. If you are generous with others, generosity of that same size will come back to you. If you are stingy, stinginess will come back in the same small cup.

 

(Related: Causality, laws of nature, 'once upon a time' of history)