0

Karma: The creative life-force of human beings

This article is an abridged version of Chapter 14 of Nalin Swaris’

book Magga: The Buddha’s Way to Human Liberation – A Socio-
historical Approach, his Ph.D. dissertation from the University of
Utrecht. A limited edition (500 copies) was published by the author
in 1997. Nalin Swaris was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and was
baptised into the Roman Catholic faith. He was ordained a
Redemptorist Priest in 1962. After resigning from the ministry in
1969, he taught Social Philosophy and Methodology of Community
Development for seventeen years at the Senior College for Social
Work in De Horst, Dreibergen in the Netherlands. Back now in Sri
Lanka, he works as a freelance journalist and lecturer.

A revised version of this article was published in 2011 through the

International Network of Engaged Buddhists in their book
Rethinking Karma: The Dharma of Social Justice, edited by
Jonathan S. Watts. That book also contains many other useful
articles on the social doctrine of Buddhism.

The theory of karma in Hindu and Buddhist ethics is always

explained in relationship to the doctrine of rebirth. In the
Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, rebirth is accepted as an essential
component of the Buddha’s teaching. The mainstream Theravāda
Buddhist tradition has held fast to anatta as the corner stone of its
doctrinal system. On the other hand Theravādins, like the
Mahāyānists, consider rebirth theory as the pillar of their ethical
system. According to Theravāda doctrine, it is not a soul principle,
but “an identity consciousness” which enters a mother’s womb at the
moment of conception and determines the eventual personal
identity of the fertilized ovum. Between the Theravāda and
Mahāyāna traditions, in this as in many other aspects, the
differences in practice are marginal.

Supporters of rebirth theory can muster enough textual evidence to

prove that the Buddha actually taught a theory of individual rebirth
after death. The Buddhist tradition, Mahāyāna as well as
Theravāda, has used this theory of reward and punishment not only
to instill morality, but also to explain social inequalities. According
to popular explanations of the theory of karma a person’s gender
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 2

and social position at birth is either a reward or punishment for

good or evil deeds performed in a previous life. This doctrine of
karma in its practical implication functions as a dominant ideology
when it is deployed to explain social disparities as the manifestation
of an immanent justice at work in the world. Myths which provide
seemingly plausible explanations of social hierarchy, as Balandier
points out, are aimed at justifying the position and privileges of the
powers-that-be:

They explain the existing order in historical terms and justify it by

presenting it as a system based on right. Those myths that confirm
the dominant position of a group are obviously most significant;
they help to maintain a superior situation. (1972:118, emphasis his)

The spontaneously arising protest of people against their misery and

against the injustice of oppressive conditions are channeled by
reassuring them that there is an invisible justice at work in reality.
The good will be rewarded and the evil punished in another life. At
the theoretical level, scholars could argue that individual rebirth
theory is compatible with logic and reason.1 Its actual workings,
however, are difficult to verify empirically, though periodically
there are individuals who claim to have vivid memories of their
lives in previous births. The theory of karma as generally taught
raises several troubling issues. While seeming to explain the
problem of suffering in the world, many karma expositors give a
positive moral evaluation of high social status, material comforts,
and sensual pleasure. These are depicted as rewards for good done
in a previous birth. By the same token, poverty, starvation, social
degradation, servitude, feudal service, birth into a “low” caste, or
birth as a woman are explained as punishments for evil deeds
committed in a previous birth. One needs to seriously question the

1
David J. Kalupahana, for example, argues via the Logical Positivist A. J.
Ayer that re-birth theory as presented in the early Buddhist texts is a
logical possibility (1976:53). But, the Buddha held that views “hammered
out on the anvil of logic” (D.i. 1) are of little practical use when it comes
to the urgent task of eradicating suffering in the world. Logic may help
to explain social (dis)order. The important thing however is to eradicate
the conditions which engender suffering.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 3

crudely materialist evaluations of “good” and “evil” underlying

such interpretations.2

How can the cornerstone of the Buddha’s ethic, anatta (no-self, no

substance), be reconciled with the theory of individual rebirths –
however one may call it – transmigrations of souls, or rebirth of
identity-consciousness? The Buddha insisted that there is action, but
no actor and that there is no consciousness that runs on from the
past through the present into the future. There are numerous
passages in Pāli scriptures where the Buddha asks his disciples to
end restless speculation as to what they might have been in a
previous life and what they might become in a future birth. He
called this “attending to things which one should not attend to”
Sabbāsavā Sutta (M.i.6).

2
For the type of tortuous arguments used to justify this theory which
explains birth into a wealthy and aristocratic family as a reward and
birth into a lowly and wretched family as a punishment, see the essays by
Francis Story and Nina van Gorkom in Kamma and its Fruit, ed.,
Nyanaponika Thera. It is within living memory that hundreds and
thousands of Sri Lankan peasants lost their lands due to unjust,
draconian legislature enacted by the British colonial government. Entire
villages were torched to appropriate lands for the plantation of cash
crops like coffee and tea. By what stretch of imagination can one suggest
that these peasants and their miserable descendents deserved this lot?
Story goes so far as to argue that children who are born into families
who have plundered the wealth of others could enjoy their luxuries
without any qualms of conscience. They are reaping the fruit of their
good personal karma in a previous birth! He cites the descendents of the
Nazis to illustrate the mysterious ways of karma. According to his logic,
the millions of Jews gassed to death were obviously reaping the fruit of
their bad karma. Story describes karma as an iron law and draws an
analogy between it and kismet-fate as cynically depicted by Omar
Khayyam: “The moving finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: Nor
will all thy piety nor wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line - Nor all
your tears wash out a word of it” (Nyanaponika 1990:8). The
compassionate Buddha could hardly have promulgated a law of ruthless
retribution. He would have regarded such views as, at best, imaginative
“story-telling.”
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 4

I. Collective Karma

Is there a way of understanding Buddha’s teaching on karma not as

a variant of an existing view but as a radical restatement of it,
which is consistent with anicca, paṭicca samuppāda and anatta? J.G.
Jennings (1947) has argued persuasively that the Buddha diagnosed
craving (taṇhā) as a compulsion to reproduce itself, not the
individual:

If the epithet pono-bbhavika be applied to taṇhā (thirst), and

translated as “tending to arise again and again, repeating itself,
recurring” (that is causing the rebirth of itself, not of the
individual), it is fully in accord with the doctrine of altruistic
responsibility. (xxxvii)

This understanding of taṇhā as a proclivity to repetition provides

illuminating insight into the birthing and rebirthing of ego
consciousness as a function of desire. The ideology of individualism
portrays the real conditions of existence as accidental to (identity)
consciousness, which “runs on and fares on” impelled by its own
momentum. But, we find the Buddha insisting again and again that
“consciousness is generated by conditions; apart from conditions
there is no origin of consciousness” (see for example Horner,
M.i.258). A consciousness that, as it were, floats above conditions is
a transcendental or metaphysical entity.

The linkage of ethics to reward and punishment treats the human

being as an animal that can be goaded into morality only by
conditioned reflexes of desire and fear. It engenders a mercantilist
mentality which evaluates everything in terms of cost and benefit.
The selfish individual asks him/her self, “What visible or invisible
profit will this bring for me now and in the hereafter?” This self-
centered evaluation of actions and the results of action has in fact
become the dominant ethic of society. Governments work towards
winning the next election; big companies are concerned with their
annual financial report; trade unions become fixed on their next
labor contract. Parents strive to provide the best for their own
children and hope that their offspring will do well in life and make
a good marriage. How can people be helped to look beyond these
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 5

narrow horizons and see actuality from a wider and longer-term

perspective?

Once a transcendental ego is assumed, the morality of an act is

assessed in terms of the intentions of the “agent in the body.” The
Buddha reversed this metaphysical premise. He urged people to
reflect on the long-term effects of their actions and to purify their
intentions, their thoughts, words, and deeds. Social events are not
just quantitative additions of the acts of separate individuals. Both
at the individual and collective level, human action has unintended
effects. Thus good intentions alone do not determine the effect of
an action. Through experience individuals can become aware that
when certain actions are done certain actions follow “as the cart
wheel follows the ox,” as the Buddha put it (Dhp. 1). Understanding
this, wise and compassionate human beings can learn to regulate
their conduct bearing in mind the long term effects of their actions.
The first principle of the noble Eightfold Path is Right View. With
this as the point of departure, the disciple is trained to cultivate
Right Intention. What is foremost in this ethical attitude is not self-
interest but the “welfare and happiness” of beings in their manifold
manifestations.

According to Jennings, if one relinquishes the perspective of the

separate individual and comprehends the Buddha’s teaching on
karma as collective karma without transcendental subjects, we have:

[an] ethical ideal of complete altruism of such beauty that it would

be worth presenting in a concrete form even if that form were not
strictly historical. Of its historical truth, however, in the life of
Gotama Buddha, there appears to be sufficient proof. (xxii)

If we take the Buddha’s radical insistence that there are only

actions and the results of actions, the world of humans and gods can
be seen as “constructs” – the result of collective flows of action.
Jennings suggests that we should understand the Buddha’s teaching
on karma as a theory of collective karma (xxxvii). According to
him, the individualistic theory of karma is the work of “after-men”
trying to reconcile anatta with the dominant value system:
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 6

This reconciliation savors more of his metaphysical successors than

of Gotama himself who declared he did not deal in metaphysical
questions but with the Eightfold Path of Conduct. Gotama calls for
self-dependence and eager activity in the present, not however on
behalf of the self, since such grasping, whether for immediate or
ultimate reward, is the source of all sorrow, therefore necessarily
on behalf of others. (xxxvii; xlvi)

Jennings regards the reconciliation of anatta with individual rebirth

a key element in the Hinduization of Buddhism (lviii):

In the Hindu view the same individual acts and suffers in different
lives; the usual modern Buddhist view is the same; but the strict
original Buddhist view is altruistic, the actor being one, and the
ultimate sufferer or beneficiary another, individual. Allowing that
the reconciliation is later, it may be assumed that Buddha, teaching
the doctrines of no-permanent soul, moral responsibility and
altruism, taught a doctrine of altruistic responsibility or collective
karma, according to which every action, word and thought of the
individual, transient though he may be, brings forth inevitable
consequences to be suffered or enjoyed by others in endless
succeeding generations. The sanctions of such a doctrine of altruism
appear to be as impressive as those based upon the individualistic
doctrine of personal immortality. (xxxvii)

II. The Vāseṭṭha Sutta

The Vāseṭṭha Sutta (M.ii.196, Sn 3.9) is a masterly discourse on the

biological unity of the human race and a deconstruction of pseudo
explanations of gender and class roles as biological functions. It is a
brilliant application of the basic law of paṭicca samuppāda and the
doctrine of anatta to radical social criticism. The Buddha develops
his argument step by step and concludes with a masterly exposition
of human action as social praxis. Let us follow step by step this
gradual method of instruction. The entire discourse is based not on
an a priori assumption about human nature “as such,” but on wholly
verifiable empirical premises. It exemplifies the Buddha’s non-
metaphysical method of explanation: human “realities” are not
reflections of concepts immanent in the mind; concepts are
abstracted from perceptible practices.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 7

This discourse was given in response to a question put to the

Buddha by two young brahmin students of theology, Bhāradvāja
and Vāseṭṭha. They asked the Buddha whether there was any truth
in the doctrine they had been taught that an individual is a
brāhmaṇa by birth and another a non-brāhmaṇa by birth. The
Buddha pierced this bubble of fantasy and unravelled the mystery
of social differentiation and hierarchy step by step or “gradually”
(anupubbaṃ).

I will explain to you in gradual and very truth, the differentiation

by kind jāti (birth) of living things, for there is species-
differentiation (jātivibhaṅgaṃ pāṇānaṃ) according to “other-other”
species (aññamaññā hi jātiyo). (600)

A Morphological Classification of Living Beings

The Buddha begins with a general morphological classification of

the various forms of life in the world according to habitat and
behavior:

 There is variety of plant life from grasses to trees.

 There is a variety of animals that live in the earth and dust, like
worms and ants.

 There is a variety of four-footed beasts.

 There is a variety of long-backed creatures, like reptiles.

 There is a variety of fishes.

 There is a variety of winged animals, who fly through the air.

(601-606)

After each of these classifications the Buddha observes that among

these life forms there are distinct species-constituting marks (liṅgaṃ
jātimayaṃ). These species-constituting marks signify other-other
species (liṅgaṃ jātimayaṃ tesaṃ, aññamaññā hi jātiyo). There are
several noteworthy features in this system of classification. First,
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 8

life forms or rūpas are generically classified according to the

modality of their life-activities and habitats: moving in water, air,
on the earth, or rooted to one place (plant-life), and common
observable external features: all birds have beaks, feathers, claws,
etc., fish have scales and gills, etc. But within each genus,
significant differences could be noted in the common marks. On the
basis of these different marks, one could distinguish different sub-
species among plants, reptiles, insects, fish, birds and quadrupeds.
Unlike Aristotle, the Buddha does not conclude that distinguishable
behavior patterns and external features are signs of hidden essences
or substantial forms. Neither does he hierarchize life-forms
according to a Great Ladder of Being. The discourse is not
propelled by a human will to power over the universe. At the end,
as we shall see, hierarchy is demolished.

The Human Form (rūpa) as an Unmarked and Unsigned Unity

After dispassionately examining the diversity of life-forms and

recognizing species differences among them, the Buddha turns to
the human form or rūpa.

Yathā etāsu jātīsu, liṅgaṃ jātimayaṃ puthu;

Evaṃ n’ atthi manussesu, liṅgaṃ jātimayaṃ puthu.

Whereas in these species there are distinct species-making

marks,
In humans there is no species-making separate (or
distinguishable) marks. (607)

To substantiate this general conclusion, the Buddha proceeds to a

detailed examination of the external features or “marks” of the
human form. There is no mark that could be singled out as a sign or
signifier of essential differences among human beings which could
be attributed to their own distinctive natures (svadhamma):

Not in the hairs, nor in the head

Nor in the ears, nor in the eyes
Nor in the mouth, nor in the nose
Nor in the lips, nor in the brows
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 9

Nor in the shoulders or the neck

Nor in the belly or the back
Not in the buttocks or the breast
Nor in the anus or genitals
Nor in the hands nor in the feet
Nor in the fingers nor the nails
Nor in the knees nor in the thighs
Nor in their color or in voice (607)

This item by item listing of the parts of the human form, without
calling it male or female, is a tour de force of de-signification. The
mind is focused and concentrated on the perceived form without
letting it be biased by pre-“conceptions” and without delusion,
desire, or revulsion. One sees that there are no “marks” which are
signifiers of species difference; there is only a differentiated
organism.

On the basis of this empirical-clinical examination of the human

form, the Buddha formulates a general principle:

Liṅgaṃ jātimayaṃ n’ eva, yathā aññāsu jātisu.

‘Paccattaṃ sasarīresu, manussesv-etaṃ na vijjati;
Vokārañ ca manussesu, samaññāya pavuccati.

Here, there are no species-constituting marks as among other

species.
Humans are indeed corporeally conditioned, but what applies to
other species does not apply here.
The differences one speaks of among human beings are purely
conventional. (610-611)

The Buddha affirms the corporeality of human beings, but does not
make the body the sign or the dwelling place of a hidden essence.
Differences in physical features are not denied, but no single
feature of the human form – the genitals, pigmentation, the timbre
of the voice, the shape of nose, the color or texture of the hair – is
singled out as a “mark” (liṅga) to construct significant or
ontological sexual and racial differences in the human (manussa)
species (jāti). Significant differences within the human species, the
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 10

Buddha insists, are constituted by naming. But these are not

“essential” differences, but conventionally spoken of differences.

This radical denial of essential differences between human beings

opens up an exciting new perspective for understanding the
phenomenon of difference itself. Hierarchizations of human beings
according to race and sex are founded or grounded on what
Foucault in The Order of Things uncovers as the play of “sameness
in differences and difference in sameness” (Foucault, 1970). Men
and women share a perceptibly similar form: a woman is not an
inferior being because of separate nature. Similarly, people
belonging to various ethnic (cultural-linguistic) groups share an
undeniably similar external form and common physiology. The best
proof of this, the Buddha pointed out in another exchange with
brahmin scholars, is that men and women belonging to different
classes and ethnic groups do have intercourse and produce human
offspring, not some hybrid creature. Whereas, when a mare is
mated with a donkey the offspring is a mule. “Now should the foal
be named after the mare or the donkey?” the Buddha asked
(M.ii.153).

The Buddha understood that once difference is substantialized,

hierarchy can be provoked. When discussing the marks which
constitute jāti difference among other living forms, the Buddha
used the term aññamaññaṃ: añña means “the opposite”, “the
contrary”, “the different”. The term aññamaññaṃ hi jātiyo is used
by the Buddha to distinguish between different species – they are
“other-others”. The word samañña on the other hand, is
compounded from san (con) “with,” + añña. It denotes: “with the
other” (PED, 13). In other words, the Buddha uses this term for
precepts or rūpas sharing common features. The differences among
humans are differences among likes (samaññāya), not differences
between un-likes. The Buddha does not concede sameness and then
emphasize differences in order to separate, classify, or hierarchize
beings sharing a common form (rūpa). All humans belong to the
one and same jāti. There is no teleological dynamic, biological or
“spiritual,” which stratifies the human species in terms of “high”
and “low.” As R. Chalmers observed:
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 11

Herein Gotama was in accord with the conclusion of modern

biologists, that Anthropidae are represented by the single genus and
species, man. (1894: 396)

The affirmation by the Buddha of the biological unity of the human

race is not a platitude – an égalisation sub specie aeterni – or in
some celestial kingdom after death. This unqualified insistence of
the equality of all human beings, irrespective of perceived gender,
class, and ethnic differences, was part of a social campaign against
the hierarchization of society and against man’s inhumanity to man.
As the Sri Lankan Buddhist scholar O.H. de A.L. Wijesekere points
out:

The Buddha was the first thinker of India, not to say of the whole
world, to give up the theological approach and adopt a rational
attitude in such matters... If one believes that he revolutionized the
theological and metaphysical standpoint of Brahmanist religion and
philosophy, it would be absurd to hold that the Buddha failed to
condemn their sociological implications. (1951:4)

Human Differentiation as Differentiated Practices

Having established the biological unity of the human race the

Buddha proceeds to answer the inevitable question. If all human
beings are members of the same species (jāti) how is it that humans
seem to be dispersed from birth to death into different classes and
occupational groups? The question continues to be asked to this day,
and the Buddha’s answer is as relevant today as when it was first
given 2,500 years ago. In the Buddha’s day, an historical
development in the social division of labor had taken on the
appearance of a natural phenomenon, because it was reproduced
from generation to generation. People had come to believe, and
brahmin ideology reinforced this view, that some individuals are
predestined by birth to labor, to serve and to provide pleasure;
others to bless and to curse; and some others to conquer and to rule.
The Buddha unravelled this bitter-sweet mystery of life to the two
young brahmins who prided themselves on being brāhmaṇa – the
most excellent of beings by birth:
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 12

[He] who makes his living by agriculture

is called a farmer. He is not a brāhmaṇa

He who makes his living by varied crafts is called a craftsman

not a brāhmaṇa.

He who makes his living by merchandise is called a merchant

not a brāhmaṇa.

He who makes a living by serving

is called a servant, not a brāhmaṇa.

Who makes a living by stealing

is called a robber, not a brāhmaṇa.

He who makes a living by archery

is called a soldier, not a brāhmaṇa

He who makes a living by priestly craft

is called a ritualist, not a brāhmaṇa. (119-120)

The Buddha did not exclude the “blue-bloods” of the period from
this general law:

He who governs the city and realm

is called a ruler, not a brāhmaṇa.

The brahmins had constituted themselves the normative speaking

subjects on the order of things and humans. The Buddha exposes the
strategy behind this will to power. The brahmins had established
themselves as a substantially different category of human beings by
way of negation – they are not peasants, artisans, thieves,
mercenaries, merchants, or rulers. Thereafter, they had occulted the
trace of this process in order to present themselves as sui generis
creatures born out of the mouth of Brahma. They had appropriated
the term brāhmaṇa as a designation for themselves as the ritually
pure and most excellent of status groups. As the Buddha discloses,
the Brahmins did this by reifying perceived differences in language:
the phoneme brāhmaṇa is not the same as the phonemes vessa,
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 13

dāsa, or rājāa. They then argued that there was an intrinsic identity
between the sound-image brāhmaṇa and the concept “excellent.”
They claimed that they were skilled philologists (595) because the
fixed, intrinsic relationship between a sound and its signification
had been revealed to them. This knowledge was not acquired but
was the privilege of birth. They were the mouth-born sons of
Brahma, the ultimate source of all signification in heaven and on
earth. The Buddha exposed the spurious character of the Brahmin
claim:

He who makes a living by priestly craft

is called a ritualist, not a brāhmaṇa.

The Buddha then added :

I do not call anyone a brāhmaṇa because of his birth from a

particular mother, even if he may be addressed as “Sir” and may
be wealthy.

This last statement would have touched the raw nerve of brahmin
pride. The brahmins traced their origin to a Heavenly Father. The
Buddha sticks close to more certifiable facts. A person’s paternity
could be dubious, but never the maternity. The Buddha drives home
his point unrelentingly. Even if the brahmins founded their claim
on the surer ground of being born of a brahmin mother, he still saw
no reason why this should be a basis for pride and for demanding
respect and subservience. In a radical reversal of values, the Buddha
redeploys the term brāhmaṇa as a designation for those who lead
morally unimpeachable lives:

Who has cut off all fetters

And is no more by anguish shaken,
Who has overcome all ties, detached:
He is the one I call a brāhmaṇa,

Who has cut each strap and thong,

The reins and bridle as well,
Whose shaft is lifted, the awakened one,
He is the one I call a brāhmaṇa.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 14

Who does not flare up with anger,

Dutiful, virtuous, and humble...

Who has laid aside the rod

Against all beings frail or bold...
Who does not kill or have killed,
Who leaves behind all human bonds
And bonds of heaven...

Whose destination is unknown

To gods, to spirits, and to humans,
An arahant with taints destroyed
He is the one I call a brāhmaṇa....

The Buddha sweeps aside all claims to holiness based on ritual

activities or esoteric knowledge. What matters is not what a person
thinks or says he/she is, or is believed to be, by undiscerning people.
What is important is the moral quality of a person’s life. The rites
performed by a priest are just as much routinized and ritualized
practices as the activities of a “herdsman,” a “soldier,” or a
“trader.” It is just another way of earning a living! Any one who
lives by stealing is a robber, no matter by what name society may
think fit to call him – “priest,” “king,” or “merchant.” If social
convention does not prevent it, any person, male or female, could
learn the bag of tricks and practice priest-craft. The Buddha did not
spare his own renouncer disciples. The shaven head and yellow
robes may signify “mendicant” (bhikkhu) but this does not
necessarily imply that he is a man of excellent moral character:

There are many ill-natured, unrestrained imposters who wear

yellow robes. (Dh. 307)

The Buddha explains that the social division of labor is the result of
a division of practices (kamma vibhaṅga) within the same species. It
is a falsification of observable facts to claim that this division of
labor is due to a diversity of natures (jāti vibhaṅga).3 This truth is

3
For an ‘historical’ explanation of the genesis of social differentiation and
hierarchy, see the Aggañña Sutta D.iii.27.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 15

hidden to make people ignorant of their own creative potential. By

their own ingenuity people had learnt to master the forces of nature
before which they once fell down in adoration. As the social
division of labor (kamma) became complex and the chains of
interdependence lengthened, the actual dynamics of society became
increasingly opaque. The fixation of activity into ever recurring
sets of relationships within a more or less unchanging system made
society appear as an alien force existing outside human beings.
Ideologists used this ignorance of the true beginnings of things to
tell people that their lowly social condition is the product of their
inherent natures or a punishment by a law of natural justice –
karma. The brahmin theory of social order reversed the historical
order of events. Repeated social practices did not produce concepts.
These practices are the exteriorization of ideas conceived by the
divine mind of Brahma. The concepts of brāhmaṇa, khattiya, vessa,
and sudda were made anterior to the historically evolved life-
practices of these social classes.

Brahmin lawgivers (like Manu) used their social power to impose a

fixed hierarchized order on society: Thou shalt read thine own
experience as commanded by the Law and submit thine own
understanding of what you do in life to it. The Buddha disturbs the
holy innocence which surrounds this discourse. A social identity is
not an idea or an inner essence which enters the mother’s womb at
the moment of maternal conception: “I do not call anyone by any
name, because he/she is born from the womb of a particular
mother”. A person is called a servant (dāsa-dāsī) because the
circumstances of life have forced him/her to practice subservience
to another. A person is called a master because he is able to exercise
power over another. The practices of two individuals relate them to
each other in a servant-master relationship. A servant is not a
master and a master is not a servant due to their respective
practices, not because two concepts have entered their beings and
fixed their inner essences or natures. The Buddha ended this section
of the Vāseṭṭha Sutta by summing up his incisive diagnosis into
social practices. The conceptual order is a reflex of human practice.
Significations do not descend to the earth from a Transcendental
Signifier. They are social constructs:
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 16

For name and clan are assigned

As mere designations in the world.
Originating in conventions,
They are assigned here and there. (122)

Names are conventional designations for modes of activity, not

modes of ontologically determined modes of existence. People act
out social roles by following conventionally laid down rules of
procedure for performing certain functions. Forms of dress,
uniforms and modes of “ad-dress” like “Sir,” “Your Honor,” are
ways in which we “dress up” people and invest their roles and ranks
with authority and power. Behind the veil of appearances, everyone
is the same. Male, female, prince, priest, and pauper alike are
subject to the same law of impermanence – change, decay and
dissolution.

A Flow of Interweaving Actions

In the final section of the Vāseṭṭha Sutta (649-652), the Buddha

moves from the examination of particular practices to formulate a
general theory about the character of human action in the world.
The so-called fixed biological order, on examination, turns out be a
mental abstraction from the relatively stable social practices of
individuals sharing the same species nature:

For those who do not know this fact [the naming process]
Wrong views have long underlain their hearts
Not knowing, they declare to us:
“One is a brahmin by birth.”

[But] one is not a brahmin by birth,

Nor by birth is one a non-brahmin
By action (kamma) is one a brahmin.
By action is one a non-brahmin.

For men are farmers by their acts

And by their acts are craftsmen too.
And men are merchants by their acts
And by their acts are servants too.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 17

And men are priests by their acts

And by their acts are rulers too. (650f.)

The last two verses of this section sum up this grand and panoramic
view of human agency in a precise and succinct formula:

Evam etaṃ yathābhūtaṃ

Kammaṃ passanti paṇḍitā,
Paṭiccasamuppādadasā,
Kammavipākakovidā.

So that is how the truly wise

See action as it really is,
Seers of dependent origination [and]
Skilled in action and its results. (653)

The Buddha does not say things that are what they are, “thus being”
(yathattha), the ontological view. That would have implied a hidden
“essence,” an inherent nature, “meaning,” “significance” caught up
in the vicissitudes of material processes. It would also have implied
that all beings have an innate, predetermined goal in life, since the
word attha (Sk. artha) has a dual connotation of “meaning” as well
as “goal.” To avoid any such misconceptions the Buddha states
without ambiguity “thus-become-action” (yathābhūtaṃ kammaṃ).
Precepts, whether internal or external, have conditionally co-
originated (paṭiccasamuppādadasā). The death knell of onto-logics
is sounded with the declaration “the result of actions”
(kammavipākakovidā). Egocentric individuals imagine that the
world revolves around their petty selves. The Buddha shakes people
awake from this delusion: the world is eternally reproduced through
action and action alone:

Kammanā vattatī loko,

Kammanā vattatī pajā;
Kammanibandhanā sattā,
Rathassāṇīva yāyato.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 18
4
Action makes the world go round
Action makes this generation turn
Living beings are bound by action
Like the chariot wheel by the linchpin. (Ñāṇamoli & Bodhi, 654)

On another occasion the Buddha hammered home the centrality and

the all-encompassing character of human action by emphatic
repetition:

Beings are action (kamma) accompanied,

Action is their heritage,
They originate through action,
They are bonded through action.
Action differentiates beings into high and low. (M.iii.203)

The use of the plural “beings” underscores the fact that karma is
first and foremost the collective action of beings sharing the same
species potential. This provides a basis for the formulation of a
general theory of social practice: all beings are bound, linked, and
related to each other through action. The social division of labor
and the stratification of people into “high” and “low” is neither a
divine design nor a manifestation of the intrinsic nature of beings.
There is no mechanical cyclicity which holds human destiny in its
grip. Human beings reproduce relationships (social structures and
institutions) by repeating social practices under specific conditions.
Social practices alone continue to produce and reproduce people as
masculine/feminine, priest, aristocrat, peasant, landless laborer,
trader, professional soldier, etc. The brahmins claimed that it is
performance of their rituals (Sk. saṃskāras) which ensures the
proper maintenance of social order and prevents it from regressing
into a primeval chaos. The Buddha transvalued this term; the name
remained the same but its meaning was new. The Buddha’s
exposition discloses the earthly trace of a word that brahmin
philologists had celestialised. Saṅkhāra in the Buddha’s

4
“World” has to be understood in the Buddha’s own terms. The world of
humans is their world, their construct. It is not the “cosmos” of
ontological philosophies – a physical reality existing independent of
human perception and practice.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 19

transvaluation is not the rituals of the priests (saṃskāras) or the

action of a heavenly or earthly cosmocrat (Brahma or a Wheel-
Turning Monarch), but the everyday practices of ordinary men and
women. It is they who produce (birth) and reproduce (rebirth) social
order. The woman at the potter’s wheel or the weaving-wheel, the
carter, the charioteer, the smith, the sweeper, the priest, repeat
specific life-practices and together turn the saṃsāric wheel by their
actions (kamma). Masters and slaves, priests and devotees, kings and
subjects are not separate individuals. Their identities are mutually
conditioned-conditioning relationships, and they reproduce each
other by their respective practices. Not by birth nor divine blessing
is one a king, and not by birth nor a divine curse is one a slave.
Human perfection or human degeneration is ultimately a human
responsibility. The key to the Buddha’s revolutionary ethical
practice is his penetrating insight into the “nature” of “things”:

yathābhūtaṃ kammaṃ – paṭiccasamuppādadasā,

kammavipākakovidā.

Thus-become action, conditionally co-arisen, results of action.

By situating karma within the law of paṭiccasamuppāda, the

Buddha ended the false dilemma created by the binary opposition
of freedom and necessity. Ideologists had blinded the people by
presenting their oppressive conditions as the product of cosmic or
meta-cosmic necessity, whereas the Buddha pointed out that these
were humanly produced “necessities” and as such eradicable. Every
human is a wheel-turner. His/her actions can produce either a world
of woe or a world of happiness. The Buddha unfolds the vision of a
new possibility:

Sharing, kind words and benevolence,

And treating all alike as each deserves
These bonds of sympathy, are in the world,
Just as the linchpin of a moving chariot. (a.ii.32)

All the skills the Buddha mentions in this verse are social skills.
This is not a vision seen from the narrow perspective of the
separate ego and its preoccupation with personal reward and
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 20

punishment. The Buddha is speaking of the historical possibility of

living in peace and harmony in a reconciled world. To do this,
humans have to reverse the motions of the Wheel of Saṃsāra by
turning the Wheel of Dhamma together.

III. Karma as Praxis

The Buddha often insisted that he was a teacher of action

(kammavādin), a teacher of effective action (kiriyavādin), and one
who speaks of summoning up energies for self-overcoming
(viriyavādin). We could, following Ñāṇajīvako Thera, understand
karma in early Buddhist usage as:

a designation for the whole range of problems concerning the

organic connectedness of vital processes whose ripening results in
creative activity. (1990: 122)

Karma is creative vital process or saṅkhāra. The word saṅkhāra is

derived from sam-s, plus the root √kṛ. Its indeclinable Sanskrit
participle, saṃskṛtya, corresponds to the Pāli saṅkhata. Sam -s- kṛ
has the meaning of “to put together, forming well, join together,
compose;” thus saṃskāra refers to “putting together, forming well,
making perfect, accomplishment, embellishment.” Kāra is derived
from the same root as the word kamma and signifies “to do, make,
perform, accomplish, cause, effect, prepare, undertake” (SED, 301).
The root √kṛ has the same connotation as the Latin creare. Kata
(past participle) is “what has been done,” “accomplished” (SED,
1120-1121). Saṅkhāra, as the Buddha uses the term, is the co-
ordination of synergies in practical activity. Even thinking alone,
for the Buddha, is karma – practical action. Physical, discursive,
and mental activities are saṅkhāras – “constructurations.”

Saṅ-khata, the past participle of saṅkhāra refers to the product;

what has been done by the coordination of the mind and the other
senses – in other words what has been “con-structured” by practical
action. What humans perceive and conceptualize are not the simple
products of nature. They are human constructs. Humans are also
capable of exteriorizing their ideas through speech, actions, and
artifacts. Rice growing in a paddy field is qualitatively different to
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 21

grasses growing in the wild. It is a cultural product and expresses a

changed relationship between human beings and nature and
between themselves. Humans, however, do not create out of
nothing. They combine their capacities and the resources available
to them in their environment to produce effects that fulfill their
needs. In the Mahāsudassana Sutta (D.ii.169), the Buddha describes
not only “natural” phenomena like elephants and horses, but also
artifacts like cities, royal treasures, palaces, and carriages as
saṅkhatas. All human products, from the most elementary forms of
language and the simple tools of labor to imaginative and symbolic
representations of the world of gods and humans, works of art,
irrigation works, temples and palaces, are saṅkhatas or
crystallisations of human energy and the forces of nature. Human
ingenuity brings these together and rearticulates them in a
creatively new fashion.

Human beings have historically “gone forth” (pabbaja) from the

conditions, cultural as well as environmental, in which they have
found themselves. Instead of being totally determined by pre-given
conditions they have reshaped these life-conditions through
innovative action. It is the ability of humans to create new realities
by “putting together, to form, to make” (in thought, imagination
and exteriorized works) which makes the world in which they live,
their own “accomplishment” and “embellishment” or their saṃ-s-
kṛtya.5 The term saṅkhāra-saṅkhata can therefore be understood as
cultural practices and cultural products. Culture understood here
not in the elitist sense of the “fine” arts or as “high culture,” but in
the fundamental sense of what all human beings produce in and
through nature. The peasant is as much a cultural being as the
intellectual and the artist. In fact the accomplishments of the latter
are very much dependent on the farmer’s agri-“culture”. Saṅkhāra-
saṅkhata cuts through the conventional and taken for granted
division between “nature” and “culture”; between “human nature”
and “external nature”; between “nature” and “super-nature.” The
Buddha sees these as “constructions” (saṅkhāras). In his
epistemology, nature and super-nature are human constructs. One

5
The word in usage for “culture” in Sinhala is sanskrutiya. Etymologically
it has the same meaning as saṁ-s-kṛtya.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 22

cannot speak of the “natural law” or “The Law of Karma” as if they

exist independent of the people who perceive recurring patterns of
relationship between events (not things). Humans have conceived
“nature” in a variety of ways according to the level of their mastery
of external forces, as “gods,” as exteriorizations of a divine mind,
or of a rational logos, or as the workings of objective scientific
laws. In each case, an imaginative construct of the mind is projected
on to nature. Nature is culturized as the preliminary step for the
naturalization of culture. On critical examination, it will become
apparent that the decision as to what is really natural has been
conditioned by factors such as gender, class, and racial interests.
The naturalization of culture has been an ideological strategy of
dominant groups to reproduce their privileges from generation to
generation as if these were as recursive as the cycles of natures.

From the time that humans began to produce their own means of
subsistence, no child has been born into an abstract cosmos or a
social vacuum. Every child finds itself in a world conditioned by
the actions of the generations that preceded it. It is the ripening of
human action into effects which gives moral content. The Buddha
understood the momentous responsibility humans carry for the
world and for themselves because of the effects of their actions,
which are independent of their subjective intentions. They can
overcome themselves or live like herd animals mutely reproducing
the world as they find it or degenerate into a condition lower than
that of beasts by turning against their own kind. The Buddha
shifted the perspective from transcendence to a metaphysical realm
to concrete and practical transcendence of limiting conditions in
this very life. The Buddha believed that all human beings can
achieve nobility of conduct.

There were four main theories of causality debated by the

philosophers of the Buddha’s day and indeed in our own times: Are
suffering and happiness in this world the result of a) an accidental
conjuncture of events (adhiccasamuppanna)?, b) the free, yet
arbitrary act of a transcendental agent (paraṃkataṃ), c) the
mysterious concurrence of our actions and that of an external agent
(paraṃkataṃ-sayaṃkataṃ)?, or d) the free determination of
sovereign, unconditioned individuals (sayaṃkataṃ)? When these
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 23

various theories of causality were put to the Buddha, he answered

that none of them provide a satisfactory answer to the problem of
human suffering. He then presented his own explanation: happiness
and suffering co-arise under specific and determinate conditions
(paṭicca samuppanna sukha-dukkha) (S.ii.17-19).

Siddhartha Gotama realized that the solutions to the problem of

suffering offered by conventional religions and philosophies lead
literally to a dead end. They cannot ultimately satisfy those who
probe beneath the surface of things and see clearly that there is
only perpetual flux and mindless repetition of things as they are.
Knowing that we must all die one day, how should we live? The
answer lies in the comprehension of the conditioned co-genesis of
happiness and sorrow. Human beings, as a species, are not the pure
products of conditions; neither are they sovereign agents who are
totally independent of conditions. Events have conditionally co-
arisen – thus become through action. The processes that produce
suffering in the world can be reversed. What has been constructed
can be unconstructed, if through proper investigation one tracks
down the conditions which give birth to it. This is the basis of the
Buddha’s optimism. To understand karma as collective action is to
understand the necessity of collective action for freedom.

IV. Karma as Liberative Praxis

The truth of karma as creative potential was understood and put

into practice by the Buddha’s first disciples, men and women.
Perhaps the most remarkable example of self-transformation and
self-perfection is the case of Aṅgulimāla a notorious brigand “who
was murderous, bloody-handed, given to blows and violence,
merciless to living beings” (Ñāṇamoli & Bodhi, M.ii.97). He had
unleashed a reign of terror across villages and entire districts. To
strike fear into the hearts of the populace, he wore a necklace of
fingers chopped off from his murdered victims’ hands, hence his
name Aṅgulimāla – “The Finger-Garlanded”. The life of
Aṅgulimāla after his conversion exemplifies the personal and social
dimension of the Buddha’s teaching. Under the Buddha’s guidance,
the former terrorist became an extraordinarily kind and gentle
person, so that he came to be known as Ahiṃsaka – “the Harmless
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 24

One”. Before his conversion Aṅgulimāla had been a brahmin and

old prejudices die hard even if the master is a buddha. Once, when
returning from his begging round, Aṅgulimāla saw on the wayside a
poor woman in protracted and difficult labor. He was filled with
disgust because he still nursed the belief that birth from woman was
in itself foul. Self-complacent about the disgust he felt, he reported
the sense of revulsion he felt to the Buddha. Much to his surprise,
the Buddha reminded him that his own conversion proved that birth
in itself does not make a human sublime or mean. He asked
Aṅgulimāla to go back and assist the woman.

Aṅgulimāla reached the goal of moral perfection and was venerated

as an arahat. He did not retire to the wilderness to enjoy the bliss of
solitude. He returned to the people he had once terrorized to share
with them the Dhamma of non-injuriousness:

Hear the Dhamma of those who preach forbearance

Of those who speak in praise of kindness
And let them follow up that Dhamma with kind deeds...
Nor would they think of harming other beings

So those who would protect all, frail and strong,

Let them attain the all-surpassing peace. (Ñāṇamoli & Bodhi,
104)

From around the 8th century BC, intrepid pioneers had transformed
the marshes and forests of the Majjhimadesa into arable and
habitable lands by collective action. The transition to agriculture
and sedentarism enabled the development of a host of ancillary
technologies that increased and diversified the productive capacity
of human beings. The mighty elephant and the wild buffalo had
been tamed to do man’s bidding and serve his material well-being.
Metal like iron, silver, and gold extracted from the earth was
turned into plough heads and beautiful ornaments. Tragically, these
developments grew apace with infinite wants and desires, driving
people belonging to the same society into two ways of life – one
leading to unbridled pleasure for a few, and the other to misery for
the many. Humans had mastered the powerful forces of external
nature, but had become the slaves of their inner impulses. However,
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 25

in the very capacity to develop technologies for regulating the

forces of nature towards envisaged ends, the Buddha discovered the
key to resolve the problem of suffering. He developed a “tekhne,”
an art,6 for human beings to understand the workings of their
impulses and to gain mastery over them. With consummate
patience, he trained Aṅgulimāla in the art of self mastery. What
human beings lack is not the capacity or the Way, but the wisdom
and the will to realize this truth. What the Buddha taught needs to
be heeded with urgency today if we and the very conditions of the
existence of all living beings are to be saved from extinction:

Canal diggers divert the waters,

Smiths hammer arrows into shape,
Carpenters fashion the wood,
The wise tame themselves. (Ñāṇamoli & Bodhi, 104)

References

Balandier, G. (1972). Political Anthropology. New York: Pelican.

Chalmers, R. (1894). “The Madhura Sutta Concerning Caste” in the

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. London: The Royal Asiatic
Society.

Foucault, M. (1970) The Order of Things. London: Tavistock.

The Book of Gradual Sayings (Aṅguttara Nikāya) (1932-36). (F.L.

Woodward & E.M. Hare, Trans.) London: Pāli Text Society.

6
The term “meditation” is an inept translation of the term bhāvanā used
by the Buddha. It is derived from the root bhū – “to make grow” or “to
cultivate”. He taught a method or art not for the repression of the senses
but for the proper cultivation of the senses so that they will become truly
skilful (kusalāni), capable of true enjoyment, freed from the craving to
possess what produces delight or to destroy what is experienced as a
threat to ego-existence. See for example Indriyabhāvanā (Development
of the Faculties) Sutta (M.iii.298). The Buddha did not speak of good and
evil, but of skillful and unskillful responses to life’s challenges.
 Karma: The creative life-force of human beings – 26

Jennings, I.G. (1947) The Vedantic Buddhism of the Buddha

London: Oxford University Press.

Kalupahana. (1976) Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism

Hawaii: University Hawaii Press.

The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation

of the Majjhima Nikāya (1995) (Ñāṇamoli & Bodhi, Trans.). Boston:
Wisdom Publications.

The Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima Nikāya) (1954-56). (I.B.

Horner, Trans.) London: Pali Text Society.

Nyanaponika (ed.) (1990). Kamma and its Fruit. Wheel Publications

No. 221/224. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society.

Pali English Dictionary [PED] (1925). (T.W. Rhys Davids & W.

Steede, Eds.). London: Pali Text Society.

Sanskrit English Dictionary [SED] (1899/1960). (M. M. Williams,

Ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wijesekera, O.H. (1951). Buddhism and Society. Colombo: M.D.

Gunasena.

* Where not noted, the Pāli translations have been done by the
author himself.