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244 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
III
Therefore, the Buddha’s admonition was: Do Kusala Kamma so that humanity may benefit by a good moral order which a Kusala Kamma helps to sustain ; do not do Akusala Kamma for humanity will suffer from the bad moral order which an Akusala Kamma will bring about.
It may be that there is a time interval between the moment when the Kamma is done and the moment when the effect is felt. It is so, often enough.
From this point of view, Kamma is either (1) Ditthadamma Vedaniya Kamma (Immediately Effective Kamma) ; (2) Upapajjavedaniya Kamma (Remotely Effective Kamma); and (3) Aporapariya Vedaniya Kamma (Indefinitely Effective Kamma).
Kamma may also fall into the category of Ahosi Kamma, i.e., Kamma which is non-effective. This Ahosi Kamma comprises all such Kammas which are too weak to operate, or which are counteracted by a more Kamma, at the time when it should have worked.
But making allowance for all these considerations, it does not in any sense derogate from the claim made by the Buddha that the law of Kamma is inexorable.
The theory of the law of Kamma does not necessarily involve the conception that the effect of the Kamma recoils on the doer of it and there is nothing more to be thought about it. This is an error. Sometimes the action of one affects another instead of the doer. All the same it is the working of the law of Kamma because it either upholds or upsets the moral order.
Individuals come and individuals go. But the moral order of the universe remains and so also the law of Kamma which sustains it.
It is for this reason that in the religion of the Buddha, Morality has been given the place of God.
Thus the Buddha’s answer to the question— “How the moral order in the universe is sustained?” is so simple and so irrefutable.
And yet its true meaning is scarcely grasped.