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Escaping the Inescapable: Changes in

Buddhist Karma

Jayarava Attwood

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Escaping the Inescapable: Changes in

Buddhist Karma

Jayarava Attwood 1

Abstract

Early Buddhist karma is an impersonal moral force that

impartially and inevitably causes the consequences of actions

to be visited upon the actor, especially determining

their afterlife destination. The story of King Ajātasattu in

the Pāli Samaññaphala Sutta, where not even the Buddha

can intervene to save him, epitomizes the criterion of inescapability.

Zoroastrian ethical thought runs along similar

lines and may have influenced the early development

of Buddhism. However, in the Mahāyāna version of the

Samaññaphala Sutta, the simple act of meeting the Buddha

reduces or eliminates the consequences of the King’s patricide.

In other Mahāyāna texts, the results of actions are

routinely avoidable through the performance of religious

1 ℅ Cambridge Buddhist Centre, 38 Newmarket Rd, Cambridge CB5 8DT, U.K. Email:

practices. Ultimately, Buddhists seem to abandon the idea

of the inescapability of the results of actions.

Introduction

This article presents a study of the way the doctrine of karma changes

over time. The particular feature of the karma doctrine that is explored

is the inevitability of experiencing the consequences of actions. Part I of

this article recaps some points from “Did King Ajātasattu Confess to the

Buddha, and did the Buddha Forgive Him?” (Attwood Ajātasattu) and establishes

that karma was absolutely inescapable during the period represented

in the Pāli Nikāyas, which I take to cover the last half millennium

B.C.E., and perhaps a century into the Common Era. Inescapability of

karma remained a feature of Theravāda thought through at least to Buddhaghosa

in the Fifth century C.E.

Part II deals with the period from about 1000 B.C.E. to 500 B.C.E.

and looks at the precedents of Buddhist karma, particularly the changes

to Brahmanical eschatology that emerge in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.

Drawing on “Possible Iranian Origins of Śākyas and Aspects of Buddhism”

(Attwood), Part II will outline a possible prehistory for karma and

will explore the conjecture that Zoroastrian ideas influenced the development

of the Buddhist theory of karma. Part II will also try to show why

karma had to be inevitable to have moral force.

Part III will look at how karma changed in India during the first

millennia C.E.. Developments in karma theory can be seen in the

Śrāmaṇyaphala Sūtra, the Śikṣāsamuccaya of Śāntideva, and in the Sarvatathāgata-

tattvasaṃgraha (STTS). The Śrāmaṇyaphala is an early Buddhist

text that has been edited by and/or for a Mahāyāna milieu. The

Śikṣāsamuccaya, on the other hand, is firmly rooted in the Mahāyāna and

does not cite Early Buddhist sources, though it does show some possible

hints of tantric influence. STTS represents a mature Tantric Buddhist

attitude to karma. The neutralizing of bad karma, that is, the sidestepping

of inevitability, becomes an increasingly important theme. The nature

and role of ethics in this changed worldview is different from the

ethos of the early texts.

Over the course of this survey of Buddhist ideas, a major change

in the conception of karma is seen. This article suggests that a perennial

problem for Buddhists may have been influential in bringing about the

change: the problem of how the unawakened can escape their own negative

conditioning.

Part I: The Inevitability of Karma

In the Samaññaphala Sutta King Ajātasattu is troubled by his conscience

and goes to meet the Buddha. After hearing a Dharma discourse, he

confesses that he killed his father, King Bimbisāra, who was also the

Buddha’s patron.2 The Buddha accepts this news, and acknowledges that

the King intends to return to lawfulness (yathādhammaṃ paṭikaroti).

However, when Ajātasattu leaves, the Buddha says to the bhikkhus, “the

king is wounded (khata), and done for (upahata)” (D i.86). Had Ajātasattu

not killed his father, the text tells us, he would have attained the eye of

wisdom (dhammacakkhu) after hearing the discourse. Patricide is one the

five actions which result in immediate rebirth in hell after death. The

committer of patricide is said to be atekiccha (“incurable” or

“unpardonable”) and the discourse could have no effect on him (C.f. A

2 There is no suggestion of Ajātasattu’s collusion with Devadatta in this story.

iii.146). Buddhaghosa’s commentary records that after his death,

Ajātasattu goes to the Hell of Copper Kettles (DA 1.237).

It is a central feature of karma in the Pāli texts that the consequences

of actions manifest as rebirth in one or other of the realms in

which one can be reborn. In the Cūlakammavibhaṅga Sutta, for instance,

using a stock phrase, the fruits of actions are experienced “with the

breaking up of the body after death” (kāyassa bhedā paraṃ maraṇā M

iii.203) as a happy or miserable destination (sugati/duggati). However, the

moral force of karma would be weakened if it did not allow for actions to

ripen in this life as well. The technical term for this is: “actions to be experienced

in this life” (kammaṃ diṭṭhadhammavedanīyaṃ).3

The phrase yathādhammā paṭikaroti “returning to lawfulness” had

previously been misinterpreted (Attwood Ajātasattu 298f). When Ajātasattu

told the Buddha of having killed his own father he cannot be considered

to be “making amends” (as some translators suggest), nor does

the Buddha “forgive” him since such a thing is not in his power. Ajātasattu

confesses and makes a resolution to return to moral behavior,

nothing more. The Buddha acknowledges the confession and resolution,

but does not intervene in any way, because in the worldview of that text

there is no conceivable intervention. This is why the Buddha says the

King is “wounded and done for.” It is simply not possible for him to intervene

between a person and the consequences of their actions. This is

borne out by comparing all the uses of yathādhamma- paṭi-kṛ in the

Nikāyas.

In the early Buddhist texts the results of actions are inescapable;

there is nothing that stands between us and the consequences of our ac-

3 diṭṭhi-dhamma is a Pāli idiom which more literally means “whose nature is visible,” but

is understood to mean “here and now,” or “in this life.”

tions. The Theravāda tradition came to see this belief as epitomized in a

verse from the Dhammapada (Dhp 127):

Not in the sky, nor the middle of the ocean,

Nor in a mountain cave;

Though terrified, there is nowhere on earth

Where one might escape from an evil action.4

Buddhaghosa, for example, cites this verse while explaining the

term dhammatā, “naturalness,” in his commentary on the Mahāpadāna

Sutta. He uses it to demonstrate the inevitability of karma (kammaniyāma),

which is one of the five kinds of inevitability (pañcavidhaṃ niyāma).

5 To illustrate the principle, he tells the story of a woman who

quarrels with her husband and murders him. She is about to hang herself

when a man with a knife comes to rescue her. But in order to ensure that

the consequences of the woman’s action manifest, the rope she is hanging

herself with turns into a snake and frightens the man off. The woman

dies a short time later (Itarā tattheva mari DA 2.431), though we are not

told how.6 In the Atthasālinī (272-274) Buddhaghosa uses the commentarial

back-story for Dhp 127 to illustrate the inevitability of karma at

4 All translations are my own unless stated.

5 The inevitability of actions (kammaniyāma); of seasonal change (utuniyāma); of seeds

(bījaniyāma); of thoughts (cittaniyāma); and of natures (dhammaniyāma). The last describes

the inevitability of the miracles accompanying the birth of a Buddha. This list

occurs in the Sumaṅgalavilāsinī (DA 2.431); Atthasālinī (272-274); Abhidhammāvatāra (VRI

66; vs. 468-473; PTS 54); Abhidhamma-mātikā (VRI 58); and Abhidhammāvatāra-purāṇa tīkā

(VRI 1.68). See also Jones.

6 The morality in this episode is perhaps a little strange from a standard Buddhist point

of view. The story seems to suggest that death by suicide is a fitting result for a murderer,

and that nature would miraculously intervene to make sure that it occurred. It

emphasises the heterogeneity of Buddhist morality.

greater length. For Buddhaghosa, the results of actions are absolutely

inescapable.

The Nikāyas do suggest ways in which one might lessen the impact

of the consequences of our previous actions. For instance, the Lonaphala

Sutta (AN 3.99) tells us that “When someone practices awareness,

ethics, and dwells in the immeasurable . . . then they are less bothered by

the consequences of small evils” (Attwood Ajātasattu 296). However there

is no way to avoid the consequences entirely. This is a distinctive moral

teaching of the Early Buddhists, and it is precisely this aspect of Buddhist

morality that changes.

Before looking at how this distinctive teaching changes, and why,

we need to consider why karma had to be inevitable in the first place. In

order to discover this, we must look at its precedents.