Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices)

by Julius Lipner

  This composite belief was extended to explain a number of things, e.g. one's situation in life, which included one's sexual orientation, caste, dispositions, and even certain desirable and undesirable experiences. For example, we have seen that in a male-oriented, hierarchical society it was reckoned a disadvantage to be born a woman or in a low caste, so one must have acquired bad karma in a previous life to be born this way. On the other hand, being a male member of a twice-born caste is a good thing: this must be the result of past good karma. Again, being born poor or disadvantaged in some way is undesirable, while experiencing a windfall or a lucky escape is desirable. Both kinds of situation can be explained by the maturing of karma accumulated in a previous existence. Why only one previous existence? If karma and rebirth are a process, logically there is no cogent reason why they must have a beginning, so generally in the authoritative texts the process of saṃsāra or the flow of existence, represented by the cycle of karma and rebirth, is without beginning (anādi). This does not mean that it is endless, of course, and we shall see later how the round of rebirth may be terminated.

  Indeed, it is common for Hindus today to appeal to the teaching of karma and rebirth as the best solution to the problem of suffering and evil in the world. Why do good people, the morally innocent, suffer oppression, ill luck and grief of one sort or another? Why do evil people prosper, and prospering continue in their wickedness? Why is there such congenital inequality in the world? The answer to all these riddles is karma (see the defence of the belief by Dandekar in Morgan 1953). Evil deeds, if they do not find recompense in this life, will do so in a future existence;virtuous actions, though they may not get their just deserts now, will receive their appropriate post-mortem rewards. And so the idea of various heavens and hells, as part of the round of rebirth or saṃsāra, developed from early times, replacing or co-existing with the kind of post-mortem programme described in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad.

  The Purāṇas have many lurid descriptions of hells in which the punishment is made to fit the crime. The ninth-century C.E. Bhāgavata Purāṇa, for example, waxes strong on this (Canto 4, Chapters 26ff.). It declares that those who cook animals and birds alive (perhaps lobsters too?) in this life, are thrown into a hell called Kumbhīpāka where they are cooked in boiling oil; a person who indulges in illicit sex receives the hellish recompense of having to embrace red-hot effigies of men or women (as appropriate); rulers or their officials who extort what is not their due are consigned to a suitable hell where 720 energetic dogs with teeth like thunderbolts get to work on them, and so on. You get the picture.

  Alternatively, good karma can propel one into the appropriate heaven (there are numerous grades of heaven or svarga) where suitable reward is experienced in the form of heightened earthly pleasures in the company of the ‘gods’ (devas). After one's karmic recompense has been meted out in heaven or hell one is reborn again in the appropriate sphere of existence. Note, that unlike ‘God’ or the Supreme Being (e.g. Viṣṇu, Śiva or the Goddess), the ‘gods’ or devas in this belief (Indra, Yama and so on) are generally no more than ‘firsts among equals’ – holders only of the different godly offices or designations (such as the demiurge Brahmā), who themselves, when their good karma is expended, will have to abandon their positions to a successor and be reborn in the manner and place that their freshly maturing karma dictates. Thus a karmic heaven is not ‘heaven proper’ where karma no longer holds sway. Heaven proper – in devotional Hinduism given different names by the various Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva etc. traditions – is usually described as a place/state in which one is permanently liberated (mukta) from conditioned worldly existence – the effects of karma – and enjoys a form of blissful communion with the Supreme Being and other liberated souls. A karmic heaven, on the other hand, is a happy state or place that is the non-permanent reward for good karma and from which one returns to saṃsāra when this particular segment of karma is expended.

  From these currently still widespread beliefs in karmic heavens and hells, we note that the saṃsāric cycle is three-tiered – earth, heaven and hell;that neither heaven nor indeed hell in this context is a permanent condition (in fact, there is no universally held doctrine of permanent hell in Hinduism);that liberation from saṃsāra is attained only by a selfless morality rather than by the karmic ethic of reward and punishment;and that embodiment of some kind is a feature of the whole saṃsāric cycle. Even ghosts, demons and ghouls, in which many Hindus believe, have subtle bodies of some kind.

  In fact, the belief in karmic heavens and hells is an attempt to articulate the doctrine of karma and rebirth as an expression of a cosmic moral law, valid for all human beings. Modern believers in the doctrine can make much of this. The philosopher Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950) has written:

  To be assured that there is an all-pervading mental law and an all-pervading moral law, is a great gain, a supporting foundation. That in the mental and moral as in the physical world what I sow in the proper soil, I shall assuredly reap, is a guarantee of divine government, or equilibrium, of cosmos;it not only grounds life upon the adamant underbase of law, but by removing anarchy opens the way to a greater liberty.

  (1971 (vol.16):131)

  Modern surveys show that people believe in karma and rebirth because they think the concept expresses what should be the case, namely, a law of causation operating in the moral world as invariably and inviolably as it does in the physical world (see Ayrookuzhiel 1983: Chapter 6; and Gosling 1974). But there is a complication. The moral force of the doctrine can be diluted by another, also popular, belief in the outworking of karma. This is the belief that one can receive karmic recompense for actions performed inadvertently or mistakenly. For example, it is not uncommon for people to believe that an honest mistake, say in punishing or censuring someone, will nevertheless yield undesirable karmic fruit. There is thus a mechanical dimension to this view of karma that militates against its moral rationale.

  Attention to Aurobindo's words in the passage quoted above indicates another popular reason for recourse to the doctrine: it allows one to believe that personal and spiritual growth, or at least progress up the scale of the human condition, can take place. This is an ancient facet of the teaching. We find it expressed in the Gītā: ‘But the aspirant (yogī) cleansed of stain, with mind controlled through much effort, is perfected after many births and thence treads the highest way’ (6.45). But this idea can also be expressed tendentiously. We have seen that Manu declares that if the Śūdra behaves himself he will be rewarded with rebirth in a higher caste. Aurobindo, in his modern interpretation of the belief, goes so far as to say: ‘The true foundation of the theory of rebirth is the evolution of the soul, or rather its efflorescence out of the veil of Matter and its gradual self-finding’ (op.cit, p.86).8 Further, since the closing decades of the nineteenth century, educated believers of the doctrine have gone on to claim that it accords with or is an expression of the scientific theory of evolution. Justifying this claim is another matter, of course. However, if one were to ask how the numerical increase in the population of the world could be explained in terms of the doctrine of karma and rebirth, more than one answer is possible: it could be said that larger numbers of individuals formerly in sub-human forms of life on earth have taken on human birth, or that increasing numbers of individuals from other domains of existence (viz. the heavenly or nether worlds) have entered the human realm.

  Scientifically acceptable or not, on the popular level the doctrine enables its believers to hope that they have a chance of improving their lot, if not in this life then in some future existence, especially if they feel weighed down by circumstances beyond their control. Later we shall inquire as to whether this hope might stand up to philosophical scrutiny. Sometimes the belief that one can be reborn as a human in this world in order to progress morally and spiritually is contrasted with the teaching of other faiths that we have only this one life, after which we are subject to a divine judgement that will last for eternity. On this, hea
r Aurobindo again:

  The difficulty [with the one-life doctrine is] that this soul inherits a past for which it is in no way responsible, or is burdened with mastering propensities imposed on it not by its own act ... We are made helplessly what we are and are yet responsible for what we are – or at least for what we shall be hereafter, which is inevitably determined to a large extent by what we are originally. And we have only this one chance ... The fortunate child of saints ... and the born and trained criminal plunged from beginning to end in the lowest fetid corruption of a great modern city have equally to create by the action or belief of this one unequal life all their eternal future. This is a paradox which offends both the soul and the reason, the ethical sense and the spiritual intuition.

  (1971 (vol.16):110)

  As this passage implies, for Hindu adherents of the belief in karma and rebirth, the notion of one's span-of-existence carries a distinct perspective, one that accommodates not only the potential for human and spiritual development but also the realization that this life is not a guillotine. No doubt the prospect of an indefinite series of lives-to-come may and does sometimes lead to apathy in the face of hardship for oneself and other beings, and the stimulus for action to alleviate one's own lot as well as that of others in the here and now is thus dampened. But from early times there has been a strong current of thought to counter this negative reaction. This comprises the belief that it is only as a human being that one may work for, and attain, liberation from the round of rebirth: life in non-human forms, whether on earth or in the heavenly or nether realms, is only for expending good or bad karma, not for creating a fresh supply. According to this understanding, birth as a human is the karma bhūmi, the ‘field of (consequential) action’, whereas non-human life is bhoga bhūmi, the ‘field for experiencing’ (karma).9 Thus even though the belief in karma and rebirth might allow for traffic between humans and non-humans of one kind or another, giving the impression that no strict boundary is drawn between human and non-human forms of existence, de facto this impression is countered by the fact that Hindus have usually acted, through such cultural artefacts as legal and moral laws, to accord a uniquely irreducible value to human life. It is important, therefore, to take one's chance as a human in this existence to do all that is possible to attain ultimate fulfilment and this includes the effort to follow an altruistic ethic. As long ago as the sixth century B.C.E or so, the Aitareya Āraṇyaka declared that:

  The spirit (ātman) is most manifest in man (puruṣa), for he is the best endowed with intelligence. He speaks ... he recognizes ... he knows the future, he knows the visible and the invisible. Being mortal, he desires the immortal. But these others, the animals, they know only hunger and thirst. They don't speak what they have known ... they don't know the future ... they exist only within the scope of their [empirical] knowledge.

  (ta etāvanto bhavanti yathāprajñaṃ hi saṃbhavāṣ; 2.3.2)

  We shall inquire into the model of personhood that the teaching about karma and rebirth entails, in due course.

  Aurobindo's words, in particular, imply that the doctrine of karma and rebirth enables one to reconcile belief in free will with belief in determining forces such as ‘fate’. On the determining side, we have the accumulated karma of a beginningless chain of previous existences. The maturing of this karma can be resorted to in order to explain various factors that the individual cannot control, e.g. one's gender, genetic make-up, status and situation at birth, various experiences and circumstances that life deals out. In the tradition, one's accumulated karma tends to be viewed as a bank account or store in which balances of credit and debit co-exist. This results in the maturing of karma in a particular life in a way that cannot be predicted, though there has always been a view that certain deeds, both bad and good, e.g. the murder of a parent and sacrificing one's life for another, respectively, receive quick and corresponding recompense in the next existence (that is, if in the latter case, the selfless intensity of the good deed has not already wiped out one's previously accumulated karma). Generally, in theistic traditions, only God can predict, in each individual's case and cumulatively for the various worlds, the outworking of karma. It is this knowledge that makes God God (īśvara, the Lord of all possibilities), and in the philosophical system of Nyāya (see earlier), it is one of the arguments for the existence of īśvara that He is needed to shape each new world-cycle on the basis of his unique knowledge of the collective karma of all its inhabitants so that each creature is placed in a life-context appropriate to its maturing karma. Īśvara alone transcends the sway of karma per se.

  One's karmic store has been distinguished as consisting of three kinds of karma:

  (i)

  Prārabdha karma: this is the karma ‘that has begun’ to mature in one's life. One can do nothing about this, irrespective of whether the karma is good or bad; one must experience it. This concept has been invoked to explain how it is possible for even a manifestly saintly person to suffer acute pain or oppression, and how a villain of the first order can prosper, viz. their prārabdha karma is at work, and must needs expend itself. How the individual concerned deals with this outworking, however, is up to him or her.

  (ii)

  Kriyamāna karma: this is karma ‘in the making’, the merit or demerit that one is freshly storing up.

  (iii)

  Saṃcita karma: this is already ‘accumulated’ karma that is not being activated. When and how the combination of (ii) and (iii) will mature to produce (i) is generally not predictable.

  Free will has a role to play in the context of all three kinds of karma. Thus, it is up to the individual, as noted above, to decide how to cope with one's maturing karma, i.e. whether one will bring dharma or virtue into play or not. True, one cannot normally control one's genetic make-up and the other determinants of life, but generally one has a decisive say in what one makes of life. For Hindus it is a question of balancing determining forces and the strength of free will (aided by God's grace if one is a theist), and, in weighing up the scales, some give more weight to one side, some to the other. In the case of kriyamāna karma, the exercise of free will can be given much significance. One can strive to integrate forces beyond one's control – and this can include what is perceived to be ‘the will of God’ – in building up one's life, or paradoxically, one can choose to be overwhelmed by them. In the case of saṃcita karma, one is given the option of seeking to wipe the karmic slate clean. This brings us to the question of annulling accumulated karma.

  In Hindu teaching, the process of saṃsāra is generally without beginning, as has been mentioned, but it is not necessarily endless. We have already implied that action (including mental acts) that is not motivated by personal gratification of some kind, namely, action that is disinterested or non-egoistic, does not generate fresh karma. Such action is called niṣkāma, i.e. non-covetous. But the niṣkāma individual need not be lacking in personality; he or she need not come across as a kind of bland non-entity from whom life's emotional sap has been squeezed out. Far from it, if the lives of acknowledged saints and gurus are anything to go by. In fact, the dissolution of self-centredness, of those tight little knots (granthinaṣ) of egotism that make up the covetous self (as some texts put it), frees up the individual to be truly himself or herself in a realization of personality that enables the self to retain its charm, while at the same time expressing a full measure of compassion and humanity. The sage Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836–1886), who is widely regarded as a liberated soul, was full of humour, as also partial to mangoes throughout his life, while Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950), enlightened guru in the estimation of many, was noted for his searching questions and bright-eyed smile. Thus, there can be a prophetic quality to the lives of such holy persons that enables them to become strong and colourful personalities. Besides, it is thought that the karmic dross almost inevitably brought about by the foibles and peccadilloes of everyday existence even for the saintly, is continually consumed in the altruistic fires of enligh
tened living. No new karma is thus being accumulated. But what about the self's, even the newly enlightened self's, vast burden of saṃcita karma, viz. the karma already built up through a beginningless series of previous lives and waiting to be activated in future existences? What happens to this kind of karma? Can it be done away with too? It is generally believed that it can, though different explanations are given as to how this can happen. Let us consider some of the chief of these.

  Though it is generally believed that the karma doctrine has an individualistic application as the expression of a cosmic law of personal morality, viz. ‘As one sows, so one reaps’, from early times one encounters exceptions, or perhaps inconsistencies, with respect to this rule. In certain circumstances or traditions, Hindus are prepared to entertain the notion of the transfer of merit or demerit, or of a suspension of the law of karma. For example, there are passages in the Upaniṣads that speak of the store of one's good and/or bad deeds being passed on either to one's son or to relatives (see, e.g. the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad, 1.4 and 2.15;see also the story of King Yāyati in Mbh.1.76f), or of one being deprived of merit accumulated (Kaṭha Upaniṣad, 1.1.8; Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 6.4.12). Again, in the Tantric tradition of Pāśupata ascetic practice:

  [which is] restricted to Brahmin males who had passed through the orthodox rite of investiture (upanayana) ... in the second stage [of his practice, the ascetic] left the temple. Throwing off all the outward signs of his observance, he moved about in public pretending to be crippled, deranged, mentally deficient or indecent. Passers-by being unaware that these defects were feigned, spoke ill of him. By this means the Pāśupata provoked an exchange in which his demerits passed to his detractors and their merits to him ... Purified by this period of karma-exchange, the Pāśupata withdrew in the third stage to a remote cave or deserted building to practise meditation.