A view from the other side

In thinking about reincarnation, I decided to read some literature that's prepared to vigorously argue against it. I picked out a book that amazon.com recommended through it's pseudo-omniscient algorithm called "Reincarnation: a critical examination" by Paul Edwards. Leafing through, this is not meant to convert anyone. Rather it has the form of preaching to the choir, treating the views of his "opponents" contemptuously and impatiently. A section of the book that caught my eye is about karma. Here is an excerpt


Anybody not intimidated by the virulence with which the champions of Karma brush off objections to their theory will want to raise a very simple and, as it seems to me, utterly devastating question about the execution and more generally the "administration" of Karmic ordinances...

The claim that Karma operates autonomously invites the following questions: How, to begin with, are good and bad deeds registered? Is there some cosmic repository like a huge central social security office in which the relevant information is recorded and translated into some kind of balance? Next, how and where is it decided what will happen to a person in his next incarnation as a result of the balance of acts in his or her life?...

The believer in Karma,[...], must be prepared to claim that the earthquake was brought about in order to punish or reward the various people who suffered or benefited from the earthquake.


First off, I have to ask why this author's attack has such a personal quality to it. (Witness his first sentence which is a personal attack.) But let's accept that and try to get to his actual objections, which do not conform to my understanding of the Buddhist view of karma. Admittedly, there are many takes on karma, from Hindu to Jain to New Age, and some people in those schools may hold views that are susceptible to his attack, but maybe not. I will simply argue from the standpoint of my own understanding.

First, karma is indeed an autonomous process. I like to think of it as spiritual physics. There's no need for a cosmic moderator when it comes to the standard laws of physics such as gravity and quantum physics. So why should one be needed for karma? The author also refers to a "balance" revealing the common idea, which is not the Buddhist view, that karma reflects some kind of ledger with good deeds in one column, bad deeds in another, and then an overall balance. So if you kill someone and then save someone you are karmically neutral. This is not the Buddhist view at all. Put simply, virtuous actions will ripen beneficially in the future, negative actions will ripen negatively in the future, and this is essentially a definition of virtuous and unvirtuous. There's nothing about cancellation. In fact, karmic acts interact in complex ways, often having a snowball effect where one small deed will continue to magnify in importance as it informs your later actions. It is taught that these karmic seeds are embedded in our mindstream and flower when appropriate conditions arise. So it is not simply that karma causes things to happen, but that we encounter conditions based on our karma. So as for Edwards' question about how it is "decided" how one is reborn based on karma, there is no external agency that decides. Indeed, the bardo being is blown by the winds of karma (that is the tendencies embedded in its own mind) to a certain womb. One would think that coming from a critical scientific perspective, Edwards would not automatically criticize a theory based on anthropomorphizing it.

The final point I want to talk about is Edwards' describing karma as punishment and reward. In all three eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, karma is regarded as an unconscious automatic process, not a process of punishment and reward. If we see someone who is suffering and don't help them because we think it's their own karma that got them their and hence they deserve what they are now getting, then we are abusing the teachings and will ourselves experience suffering in the future as a karmic ripening of our own miserliness. This attitude also neglects the fact that everyone has accumulated vast amounts of negative and positive karma, and we just happen to be in a relatively fortunate situation at the moment. So to accuse someone else of having negative karma is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I'm not saying there is original sin, in fact, quite the opposite, all beings are Buddhas at their core, but by our very nature as sentient beings in the world of samsara, we are prone to act in ways nonbeneficial to ourselves. One further aspect about this I'd like to mention, and this is something I've brought up before, is that because the events which befall us are the result of our own past actions, that means we have the power to transform those circumstances. That doesn't mean we can wish really hard for something and it will come true. It is much more difficult than that. All the specialized practices taught by the Buddha are designed to transform one's mind. They work, but they require diligence and patience.

In a subsequent section Edwards points to the fact that the law of karma has no predictive value, and, as I understand him, is therefore of no practical use. His point is that when an earthquake happens, we can say after the fact that it was maturation of the karma of the people affected, but we could never predict the earthquake. Of course, I agree that karma has no specific predictive value, and so I will agree that it is not a scientific law, but that hardly closes the case on the matter. Karma has general predictive value, for if I kill someone, I will suffer as a result. Even if I get away with it, I will be tortured internally. I admit that there is no way to prove that everything that currently happens to me is a maturation of something I did in a previous life. Clearly I'm not going to be able to logically demonstrate this, but what I can say is that as I progress along the Buddhist path, as I gain more insight, those teachings of the Buddha and the Lama which I can check out for myself all turn out to be true, and this gives me increased faith that as I develop more, some of those items which I currently accept on faith will become evident.

To me, there is a fundamental wonder and mystery at the center of our ordinary, banal experience. This is our awareness, our consciousness. This is also the core of Buddhism, the star player as it were. Our own awareness, omnipresent and locationless. This is the mind of Buddhahood. (Do you think our awareness has a location? If so, doesn't that mean it has a physical shape? How can awareness have a physical shape?) So, as far as I'm concerned, Buddhism is homing in on exactly the right thing, and this view of mine is strengthened through my continued meditation practice. So even though karma is not a traditional scientific theory, I have faith that it is true nonetheless, and I certainly don't feel like Edwards has raised and "devastating" objections to it.