Author – Bhanteji Dhammika of Australia

Kamma and its related concept of rebirth are two of the central doctrines of Buddhism but also amongst the most misunderstood by both Buddhists themselves and non-Buddhists. The most widespread of these misunderstandings is that kamma and rebirth were universally believed in ancient India and the Buddha simply took them for granted and incorporated them into his Dhamma. The usual claim is that he copied these doctrines from the Upaniṣads. Both of these assumptions are problematic, not only because the evidence does not seem to support them but also because they raise doubts about the assertion that the Buddha’s Dhamma was an outcome of his personal realization. In what follows each of these assumptions will be examined. 

The Tipitaka itself offers ample evidence that kamma and rebirth were by no means widely accepted in the fifth century BCE. The Samaññaphala Sutta, for example, gives an overview of the doctrines of six of the most prominent teachers of the Buddha’s time and only one of them taught a form of kamma. Likewise, there are frequent criticisms in both Buddhist and Jain scriptures of those who denied kamma and rebirth. For example, the popular teacher Makkhali Gosāla taught: “There is no kamma, no deed, no [point in making an] effort.” The Buddha mentioned several beliefs he considered to be false, one of them being that everything that happens is due to the will of a supreme deity and another that they have no discernible cause. Some teachers rejected kamma and rebirth as relatively new and non-traditional ideas, others such as Prince Pāyāsi dismissed them on rational grounds. Seeing no empirical evidence for them, this educated sceptic came to the conclusion that: “There is no other world, there are no spontaneously born beings, nor is there any fruit or result of good or evil deeds.”  

The Vedas, the oldest and foundational scriptures of Brahmanism and later of Hinduism too, show no knowledge of either kamma or rebirth. The word ‘kamma’, Sanskrit ‘karma’, occurs in the Vedas often although not in the sense of moral causation but in its original meaning of working, doing or particularly of performing Vedic rituals. According to the Vedas, the individual’s destiny after death was determined by performing certain rituals and by the gods. At death the individual was not reborn, he or she went to the world of the fathers (pitṛloka), an indistinct type of heaven where they were sustained by offerings (śrāddha) made by deceased’s son. This was why it was crucial for a man to sire at least one son. This concept is mentioned for example in Ṛgveda 10. 14, 2; Taittirīya Brahmaṇa 1.5,5,6 and Āpastamba Dharmasūtra 2. 24,1-7. One’s position in the world of the fathers depends on the merit created by performing sacrifices. 

What of the Upaniṣads? For the Buddha to have copied, borrowed or even been influenced by any Upanisadic ideas these texts would have had to predate him and it is by no means easy to demonstrate that this is the case. The reality is that the dates of the Upaniṣads and of the Buddha too, are at best guesswork. This makes it very uncertain about which came first. Complicating the issue further is the fact that few Upaniṣads are homogeneous, most had material added to them after their initial composition, sometimes as much as several centuries after. However, the general consensus amongst scholars is that the earliest Upaniṣads are probably the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, the Chāndogya, the Kauṣītaki and perhaps the Aitareya, and that they predate the Buddha, or at least their core material pre-dates the Buddha. For the sake of argument let us accept this. To assert that these texts influenced the Buddha two things would be needed, apart from predating him. (a) The Buddha would have had to have access to them, and (b) they would have to teach concepts of kamma and rebirth the same or recognisably similar to the Buddha’s presentation of these ideas. 

The internal evidence from the early Upaniṣads indicates that they were composed mainly in Madra; Matsya; Uśinara; Pañcālā; Kuru; Videha; Kosala and Kasi; some of them more so in some places than others. There is no record of the Buddha ever having visited the first four of these regions, he only ever went to Kuru and to Videha once, although he did spend much time in Kosala and at least sometime around Bārānasī, the capital of Kasi. But interestingly, of the four Upaniṣads thought to predate the Buddha, none of them mention Kosala and only the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Kauṣītaki mention Kasi, and only once each. This strongly suggests that the Buddha spent little or no time in the regions where the earliest Upaniṣads were being taught. 

Another thing that needs to be taken into account is Upaniṣadic esotericism. Upaniṣadic doctrines, like the Vedas before them, were from the very beginning considered secret and meant only for a small inner circle of initiates. The Kaṭha says if a brahman keeps the teaching secret he will have eternal life (3,7), which of course also cancels out the idea of kamma. The Śvetāśvatara calls its doctrines “the supreme secret” which should never be revealed to anyone who is not tranquil, a son or a pupil (6,22). The Chāndogya says: “A father should reveal this formulation of truth only to his eldest son or to a worthy student, and never to anyone else…” (3,11,5-6) because its teachings are secret (guhya ādeśa, 3,5,2). Indeed, the very word upaniṣad means ‘to sit near’ and implies secrecy, i.e. sitting near the teacher as he explained his teaching so that the uninitiated could not hear it. Even centuries after the Buddha the Manusmṛti referred to the sacred texts, probably meaning the Upaniṣads, as rahasya, i.e. confidential or hidden (2,140; 165). Given this, it is unlikely that the Buddha, the worst type of heretic in the estimation of most brahmans, would have known any Upaniṣadic doctrines, although he might have heard second-hand version of them. 

The Buddha’s frequent claim that his Dhamma was for all and that he did not have a “teacher’s fist” (ācariya muṭṭhi) which keeps something back, could be taken as evidence that he at least knew about the Upaniṣads. However, it is more likely that he was contrasting his Dhamma with the Vedas which by his time were mainly available only to brahmans and perhaps to some of the warrior caste. He described the Vedic hymns as being paṭicchanna, or veiled.   

The next thing that needs to be examined is whether the Upaniṣads, particularly the supposedly pre-Buddhist ones, teach kamma and rebirth or something like the Buddhist versions of them. The Upaniṣads teach a range of post-mortem destinies and about what determines them, but only some of these resemble the Buddhist understanding of them and only in the vaguest terms. For example, the Kauṣītaki says that when people die they all go to the moon which is the gateway to heaven. In order to pass they have to answer a question. Those who cannot answer this question become rain which then falls to earth, then they become worms, insects, fish, birds, lions or humans according to their kamma. Those who can answer the question enter heaven and go into the presence of Brahmā (1.2). Whether kamma here means moral causation or the proper performance of Vedic rituals is unclear; but it very likely means the latter. The Chāndogya teaches something similar but when the dead fall to the earth as rain they become plants which when a man eats them pass with his semen into his wife’s womb and become a new being. Interestingly, the Chāndogya also says that “this [teaching] has not been known to brahmins before”, in other words, it was something new to the Vedic tradition. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka posits two destinies after death. Those who love truth pass through the moon and the sun, to the region of lightning and from there into the world of Brahman. Those who have performed the sacrifice and given gifts to brahmans go the world of the fathers and from there to the sun where the gods feed on them. After that they pass to the sky, the wind and the rain which falls to the earth where they become food again which someone offers into the sacrificial fire from where they go up to heaven. Those who are unaware of these two destinies become, worms, insects or snakes (6.2,15-16). In another section of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Yājñavalkya does expound something that resembles the Buddha’s teaching of kamma in the sense of moral causation although only briefly and without any details. But then he makes it clear that this is a secret teaching (3.2.13). But why should this be so? Perhaps because all Upanisadic doctrines were secret but also because not being part of traditional Vedic thought Yājñavalkya wanted to avoid accusations of unorthodoxy. 

Complicating the issue is that another passage in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka clearly denies kamma as a form of moral causation, asserts the traditional Vedic belief that one’s post-mortem destiny is determined by having a son, and that the highest post-mortem state is to go to heaven. “There are three worlds – that of men, of the fathers and that of the gods. The world of men is obtained through having a son, not by any other means. The world of the fathers is obtained by rituals, and the world of the gods by knowledge. The best of these clearly is the world of the gods and that is why it is highly praised.” (1. 5, 16). In another passage in the same text it asserts yet another theory – that when the individual dies he goes to the wind, from there to the sun, then to the moon which he ascends out of and arrives in a world without heat or cold to abide there forever (5.10,1). The Śvetāśvatara rejects a variety of explanations, including kamma, and maintains that actually everything is controlled by God (1.2-3). Upaniṣads such as the Kauṣītaki and the Taittirīya do mention forms of kamma and rebirth roughly approximating the Buddha’s but seemingly tentatively, only as possible explanations. 

With all these competing claims it is hardly surprising that the Kaṭha actually says that no one knows what happens to a person after he or she dies (1.20-24). The upshot of all this is that the Upaniṣads that do teach something like kamma and rebirth are undecided about these ideas and present them as just some of many possible explanations which have not yet been fully worked out or accepted. Clearly, these ideas were new ones drawn from somewhere else. One is tempted to think that it was not that the Buddha adopted kamma and rebirth from the Upaniṣads but rather that the Upaniṣads were being influenced by Buddhism and probably Jainism too. 

The earliest unambiguous and detailed mention of kamma and rebirth is asserted in the Jain scriptures. Jainism pre-dates Buddhism by perhaps a decade and its founder, Mahāvīra and his teachings are frequently mentioned in the Tipitaka. However, while being a recognizably kamma concept the Jain doctrine of kamma differs in important ways from the Buddhist one. For example, Jainism teaches that every action, intentional or not, creates kamma, and that kamma is a kind of material substance (paudgalika) that adheres to the soul and weighs it down. Jainism also posits a soul passing from one life to the next, something that the Buddha rejected. It is certainly possible that the Buddha was influenced by the Jain doctrines of kamma and rebirth but it is equally clear that he did not simply take them for granted and unthinkingly and uncritically adopt them. It is much more likely that Mahāvīra’s spiritual insights gave him a partial vision of kamma and rebirth while the Buddha’s awakening gave him a complete understanding of them. 

By about the turn of the first millennium, diverse ideas about kamma and rebirth were on the way to being integrated into Hinduism. But even then and later these ideas were by no means universally accepted. Hinduism generally evolved or absorbed new concepts without abandoning earlier ones, meaning that it presents a wide range of sometimes contrasting or even contradictory doctrines on most matters. Even when some theories of kamma and rebirth became widely accepted in Hinduism they fitted into it somewhat awkwardly, often jarring with other doctrines. The belief that the gods can and do intervene in human affairs, that devotion (bhakti) to a particular god leads to salvation, that evil can be washed away by bathing in sacred rivers, that performing certain rituals, visiting holy shrines or passing away in Varanasi guarantees salvation, clearly cancel out the idea of kamma. 

Some spiritual movements in Hinduism rejected kamma in favour of fate (daiva) while others maintained that the individual’s destiny was determined by time (kāla), inherent nature (svabhāva), chance (yadṛccha) or that it is predetermined (bhāvivaśāt). Many passages in the Dharmaśāstras and the Purāṇas mention kamma while in the next breath recommending various ways it can be circumvented or negated. And on the functioning of rebirth the Purāṇas present a truly bewildering range of theories, each contradicting the other. The prologue of the Manusmṛti for example says: “As they are brought forth one time after another, beings follow their individual behaviour as assigned to them by the Lord. Aggression or peacefulness, gentleness or cruelty, goodness or evil, honesty or dishonesty, whatever is assigned to each at the time of their creation sticks automatically to that creature” (1.28-29). And yet in several other places in the same text it says that how one has acted, either good or bad, will determine one’s destiny after death. 

The Caraka Saṁhitā, one of the two seminal texts on Ayurveda (circa first century BCE/second century CE) correctly pointed out that not everyone believed in rebirth and that even the Hindu scriptures presented different post-mortem theories. It says: “There are some people who trust only what they can see, and because rebirth is something beyond the senses they do not believe in it. There are others, solely in the strength of religious faith, who believe they will be reborn. But the scriptures are themselves divided in this matter” (I,11). Thus it is not far wrong to say that Hinduism does not teach a doctrine of kamma and rebirth: it teaches dozens of them, and that they are but some amongst a multiple of explanations for why things happen and one’s post-mortem destiny. The Buddha’s doctrines of kamma and rebirth by contrast, are fully developed, fit harmoniously together with his other teachings and are explained in a clear and consistent way.

A, Anguttara Nikāya

D, Dīgha Nikāya

M, Majjhima Nikāya