If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.
Karma and Rebirth
As Buddhists use the term karma, it means the principle that actions have consequences. The Sanskrit word karma simply means ‘action’, but from a Buddhist perspective we can’t think about our actions without taking account of their ethical character. In Buddhism this depends on the intention or state of mind that lies behind our actions, so karma means intentional actions that lead to future consequences. The term for the effects of those actions is karma vipaka.
It is easy to see how this works psychologically. How we think determines the person we become in the future by building the habits and traits that shape our personalities. In turn, our personalities give our lives their character.
The same is true of our actions: if you shout at someone they are likely to shout back, and if you’re dishonest, people are unlikely to trust you. Calling this karma is a way of saying that our ethics is more than a matter of personal preference. It really matters whether we act skilfully or unskilfully.
If some actions have immediately observable effects, what about consequences we can’t trace so easily? Here Buddhism speaks of a karmic order of conditionality that is important even if we can’t observe directly how it works. The karmic effects of an action can ripen in this life, or in a future life and, likewise, something that happens in this life might be the result of our actions in a previous existence. In every conscious moment, Buddhist teachings say, we experience the effects of past actions and have the capacity to respond skilfully or unskilfully.
Karma is particularly important when we come to the Buddhist teachings on rebirth, which state that the effects of karma continue after death and result in the life of a new being.
Rebirth Q&A
What is the basic Buddhist teaching about rebirth?
Buddhism sees the life we are currently experiencing as just the latest in a sequence of lives, with no discernible beginning. Likewise, after we die, our consciousness will give rise to a future being in a future life. The various Buddhist schools all teach that rebirth occurs, that how we are reborn depends on our ethical actions in this life, and that the goal of Buddhist practice is escaping rebirth. This belief, or a version of it, is commonly held in Buddhist cultures, along with Hindu ones.
Do I have to believe in rebirth to practice Buddhism?
Buddhism invites people to see for themselves if its teachings are true and effective. You can try them out and see if they make sense. However, it is hard to test out rebirth in this way, and to some people it seems that we are being asked to accept something without evidence.
Most Buddhist practices and teachings don’t depend on belief in rebirth, and you can practice them whether you believe in rebirth or not. That said, rebirth has an important place in many Buddhist teachings and traditions, so if you are sceptical about it, many Buddhist teachers encourage an attitude of open-minded curiosity.
Even if we can’t check out the truth of rebirth, we can explore the nature of consciousness by practising meditation, and many Buddhist practitioners find it makes more sense when they understand for themselves that the mind has a much larger scope than we usually think.
Traditionally it is said that if you believe you will continue after death, you will feel more motivated to act ethically and practice the Dharma than if you think death means complete annihilation. Rebirth places our experiences, and particularly our ethical actions, in this life within a journey that takes place over many lifetimes.
O, you, with your mind far away, thinking that death will not come, Entranced by the pointless activities of this life, If you were to return empty-handed now, would not your life’s purpose have been confused? Recognise what it is that you truly need! It is a sacred teaching [for liberation]! So, should you not practise this sacred teaching, beginning from this very moment?
Did the Buddha definitely teach rebirth, or was it a later addition?
Because the texts that tell us about the Buddha probably evolved before they were set down in writing we don’t know anything for sure about the Buddha. But rebirth is a consistent teaching in the earliest sources, so, if we can say anything about the Buddha at all, we can say that he taught rebirth.
He is also said to have experienced the truth of rebirth. On the night of his awakening the Buddha is said to have had three ‘visionary insights’. The first was the knowledge of his previous births; the second was knowledge of the previous births of other beings; and the third was knowing that the destructive forces that lead to rebirth had been destroyed within him. In other words, according to the sources, rebirth had a central place in the experience of Awakening that made him a Buddha.
If Buddhism teaches that there is no eternal soul or essence, what is reborn?
Buddhist teachings are very clear that, even in this life, we don’t exist in a fixed and final way – we are changing all the time. There is no fixed or eternal soul that can be ‘reincarnated’ in a fresh body, and this is explained in the teaching of insubstantiality. Something continues after death, but it isn’t a ‘soul’.
If this puzzles you, you are not alone. The Buddha never offered a systematic explanation of how rebirth works and the various Buddhist schools offered different explanations. The starting point is the Buddhist teaching of conditionality which sees life as a process in which future effects arise in dependence upon current conditions. In the same way, the next life arises in dependence upon the previous one. The exact connection between the two remains mysterious.
The Buddhist monk and scholar of early Buddhism, Analayo explains that Buddhist teachings see our identities as ‘a changing process of a plurality of interrelated mental and physical phenomena that operate under the overarching influence of a complex set of causes and conditions. Centrally important conditions here are one’s own intentional actions (karma) at the bodily, verbal and mental level.’
Is it true that Buddhism says I could be reborn as an animal or a spirit?
The after-death state is like a dream state, and its dreams are the children of the dreamer’s mentality
The teachings of rebirth are connected to the worldview in which Buddhism developed, which envisages a range of ‘spirit realms’ and ‘god realms’. The inhabitants of some are blissfully happy while in others they are in torment. In all, six main realms are listed, four spirit realms along with the animal and human realms.
In every pre-modern culture people believed in spirit realms like this, and many people still do. The Buddhist texts describe people seeing and speaking with spirits and gods of various sorts, and most accounts of rebirth in the Buddhist scriptures say that a dying person has been reborn into one of these spirit realms.
In Buddhism these spirit realms are largely irrelevant to the path of Buddhist practice, but they do help explain the thinking behind rebirth. If we can imagine beings existing in a non-physical form, it is easier to imagine them being reborn after death.
What decides how people are reborn?
It is traditionally said that we are reborn into one of the six realms according to the intentional actions, or karma, which have shaped our consciousness in the course of our life. After death that consciousness seeks a form that matches its character, so if the character traits that have developed throughout your life are animal-like then an animal rebirth is likely to follow, and so on.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thodol, dramatises this process by describing the period after death when a departed consciousness encounters and is attracted to one of the six realms.
Why do Buddhists want to escape from the cycle of rebirth?
Rebirth might sound exciting, and preferable to the complete annihilation that a materialist outlook envisages. However, for Buddhism, in our repeated rebirths we wander blindly between lives, and some of these are likely to be intensely painful. Following the Buddhist path to Nirvana means finding a progressive direction, leading towards complete and lasting happiness, that is free from attachment to re-becoming.
Transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found of sentient beings roaming and transmigrating, shrouded by ignorance and fettered by craving. For such a long time you have undergone suffering, agony, and disaster, swelling the cemeteries. This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions.
