Karma in Buddhism - Systematization of Karma Theory in The Early Schools

Systematization of Karma Theory in The Early Schools

As the earliest Buddhist philosophical schools developed with the rise of Abhidharma Buddhism, various interpretations developed regarding more refined points of karma. All were confronted with a central issue, as one scholar summarizes:

When understanding of karma is correlated to the Buddhist doctrine of universal impermanence and No-Self, a serious problem arises as to where this trace is stored and what the trace left is. The problem is aggravated when the trace remains latent over a long period, perhaps over a period of many existences. The crucial problem presented to all schools of Buddhist philosophy was where the trace is stored and how it can remain in the ever-changing stream of phenomena which build up the individual and what the nature of this trace is.

As the Buddha had not offered elaboration in the early sutras that addresses this, the various schools proposed various similar yet distinct solutions. As one scholar writes, "In certain cases it is apparent that concern with karma doctrine or vocabulary explanatory thereof played a distinctly causal role in sectarian evolution. In other cases it is safer to say that the concern for an intelligible karma vocabulary was one among many complex factors that helped give decisive shape and substance to already distinct or emerging sectarian positions."

One scholar summarizes the various orientations as follows:

Different sects gave different names to their theoretical candidates for the "carrier of the Karma" . . The following schools are associated with the following entities: Sammitīya—the avipranāśa or 'indestructible', a dharma of the citta-viprayukta class. Sarvāstivādin/Vaibhāṣika tradition—prāpti and aprāpti or adhesion and non-adhesion, and the avijñapti·rūpa or form that does not indicate. Sautrāntika tradition—the bīja or seed, the ekarasa-skandha or aggregate of unique essence, the mulāntika-skandha or proximate root aggregate and the paramārtha-pudgala. Yogācāra/Vijñānavādin tradition—the ālaya-vijñāna or store house' consciousness. Again, the central question that these entities seem to have been constructed to answer is that of how the karmic force inheres in the psychophysical stream without thereby coloring or pervading each discrete moment of that stream. What accounts for the "idling" or non-active aspect of defilement when a given thought is of a virtuous or morally indeterminate nature?