Karma
...ence, for example, if a person in a low caste has been very good in their past existence they will be born into a higher caste in their next life. The ideas of Karma and Samsara have justified the unequal Caste system, which has been an integral part of Indian society for hundreds of years. At the time of the Rig Veda (the earliest Hindu scriptures around 1000 B.C.E) (Smart 1989: 60) the key concepts of Karma and Samsara had not actually been stated. However, it does mention that a person’s conduct in this world determines his life after death. The brahmins (the religious leaders) stressed the importance of the sacred act of sacrificing which was supposed to have a bearing on man’s fate in the next world, and consequently the Satapatha Brahmana 11.1.8,6, states that “the Sacrifice becomes the self of the sacrificer in the next world”(Stutley 1985: 23). So, even at this early stage of Hinduism, the idea of Karma played an important role in the Hindu’s worldview. It was not until the Upanishads (the principal ones dating from 800-400B.C.E) (Smart 1989:49) that we first meet with the doctrines of Karma and Samsara. The Upanishads are concerned essentially with the meaning of the sacrificial rites, and come to the conclusion that knowledge in the ‘true reality’ is the key rather than expertise in rituals like the Rig Veda’s were. In the process they introduce profound metaphysical and religious ideas, such as Karma and Samsara. The Chandogya Upanisad sums up the ideas of Karma and Samsara “those who are of pleasant conduct here the prospect is indeed that they will enter a pleasant womb, either the womb of a Kshatriya or the womb of a Vaisya (high Indian Castes). But those who are of a striking conduct here the prospect is indeed, that, they will enter the womb of a dog, or the womb of a swine, or the womb of an outcast”(Lipner 1994: 45). The central concept in the Upanishads is that of Brahman. Brahman is the highest truth, the eternal being on which all other beings depend on. Brahman is the same as the atman, in other words, that ultimate being out there, is the same as that eternal something within you. The goal for many Hindus became at this time to gain Moksha (release from Samsara) which meant a person’s atman would be released from the cycle of rebirth and therefore become one with the ultimate reality, Brahman, like a drop of water into an ocean. To understand the Hindus preoccupation with breaking the cycle of Samsara and gaining Moksha one must understand the Hindu’s view of time and space. For Hindu’s the world was not created once and for all, nor was their an end to it, for all eternity it has been recreating itself and dissolving back into its ‘unformed’ and ‘unmanifest’ condition. These periods of evolution and devolution were called days and nights of Brahma, which convert into Billions and Billions of human years. The Hindu’s eternal life becomes a crushing burden in it’s endless, pointless, senseless repetitiveness and as the twin doctrines of Karma and Samsara developed the revulsion against never ending-life through never ending death in a manifestly imperfect world become more and more extreme (Zaehner 1966: 61). Therefore, the aim is to escape from this continuos rebirth (Samsara) by obtaining Moksha. Since it is Karma that binds one to the cycle of repeated births and deaths, to achieve Moksha a way must be found so a person will not accumulate any further Karmic forces and will also ‘burn up’ any Karmic forces already accumulated (Koller 1982:59) Almost all of India’s religious and philosophical thinkers have addressed the way in which this could be done and they came up with several differing ways of...