HOW SIMILARITIES IN TERMINOLOGY CONCEAL FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE
- “No.”
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“Do you know that (in that former existence) you were guilty, and not guiltless, of this or that specific misdeed ?”
“No.”
Secondly the Buddha asserts that the status of a man may be governed not so much by heredity as by his environment.
In the Devadaha—Sutta this is what the Buddha says : Some recluses and Brahmins there are who affirm and hold the view that, whatsoever the individual experiences—be it pleasant or unpleasant or neither— all comes from former actions. Hence, by expiation and purge of former misdeeds and by not committing fresh misdeeds, nothing accrues for the future, the misdeeds die away ; as misdeeds die away, Ill dies away ; as Ill dies away, feelings die away ; and as feelings die away, all Ill will wear out and pass. This is what the Niganthas affirm.
If it is because of their birth’s environment that creatures experience pleasure and pain, the Niganthas are blameworthy, and they are also blameworthy, if environment is not the cause.
Now these statements of the Buddha are very relevant. How could the Buddha throw doubt on past karma if he believed in it ? How could the Buddha maintain pain and pleasure in present life being due to environment if he believed that it was due to past karma ?
The doctrine of past karma is a purely Brahminic doctrine. Past karma taking effect in present life is quite consistent with the Brahminic doctrine of soul, the effect of karma on soul. But it is quite inconsistent with the Buddhist doctrine of non-soul.
It has been bodily introduced into Buddhism by some one who wanted to make Buddhism akin to Hinduism or who did not know what the Buddhist doctrine was.
This is one reason why it must be held that the Buddha could not have preached such a doctrine.
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