Buddhist Karma and Social Control

Author(s): Richard Gombrich

Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Apr., 1975), pp. 212-220
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/178004
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Buddhist Karma and Social Control
RICHARD GOMBRICH
Oriental Institute, Oxford

The contents of sacred texts are not simply reproduced in the doctrines of
the religions which venerate them; there must be interpretation and selec-
tive emphasis. This is most obviously true when the corpus of sacred
literature is large, as in Christianity and Buddhism. Historians of these
religions may therefore ask why certain doctrines and certain scriptures
have been emphasized at the expense of others.
Both Professor Melford Spiro and I have recently published studies of
Buddhism in Theravada countries, Burma and Ceylon respectively,1 in
which we consider how a religion which scholars have deduced from its
scriptures to be extremely negative and cheerless has come in practice to
look positive and cheerful. In his opening chapter Spiro has a section en-
titled 'The Problem: The Uniqueness of Buddhism' (pp. 6-11). Normative
Buddhism comprises a set of doctrines which one may with misleading
brevity summarize as nihilistic and pessimistic, and the adoption of these
doctrines should lead to an attitude of world-renunciation. This religion
'challenges some of our fundamental notions about religion and about
man' (p. 9); where, 'except in a clinical population of depressives' (p. 10),
could people believe that life is suffering-to the extent of being wholly
undesirable? But, he concludes, the problem turned out to be a pseudo-
problem, because in fact most Buddhists either ignore or reject this
normative religion, and 'Buddhists differ very little from people in general'.
He goes on to differentiate two soteriological systems in Buddhism: the
one which aims for nirvana he calls 'nibbanic', the one which aims for a
good rebirth he calls 'kammatic'.2 In his formulation these are cognitive
structures; it might be more helpful-and at least it is more readily intel-
ligible to the non-specialist-to differentiate two whole syndromes of

I Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Society, New York, 1970; Richard F. Gombrich,
Precept and Practice, Oxford, 1971.
2 Spiro's terms are derived from nibbana and kamma, which are Pali, the classical language of
Theravada Buddhism. The equivalent terms in Sanskrit, the principal vehicle of classical
Indian culture, are nirvana and karma; these are the forms which (without diacritics) are
familiar in English. In this article I have used the forms interchangeably.

212

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 BUDDHIST KARMA AND SOCIAL CONTROL 2I3

doctrine, values and behaviour which one could call 'life-denying' and
'life-affirming'.3
Approaching the subject from a slightly different angle-which was to
be expected, since we were not aware of each other's research before
publication-I did not in my book state the problem as explicitly or as
clearly as Spiro, but in my attempt to explain certain changes in Buddhism
I came to similar conclusions: the life-denying Buddhism has never been
the sole religion of an area or a people, because it runs counter to human
nature. For example, the strict normative doctrine that each man is solely
responsible for his own fate could not survive in its full rigour at the be-
havioural level, because it is too oppressive (pp. 242-3). Near the end of a
perceptive review of my book,4 A. Thomas Kirsch has complained that I
seem 'simply to assume that religious change results from affective
inadequacy without demonstrating why this should be so or considering
alternative views'. In fact I did consider alternative views, and very posi-
tively,5 for I do not believe that only one explanation at a time is required
for a social phenomenon (they are usually over-determined) or that psycho-
logical and sociological explanations are incompatible. However, Kirsch
has put his finger on a weak point, because I used 'affective inadequacy'
rather as a residual explanatory category when I could produce no more
specific reason for a change. Spiro seems to me to do the same, for after
referring to 'a restricted set of needs, fantasies, wishes, conflicts, aspirations
and so on which are deeply rooted in a universal human nature' he writes
(p. 14), 'It would seem, then, that man has certain universal needs which
will not for long be frustrated, and that ideas and doctrines-like some of
the ideas and doctrines of normative Buddhism-which frustrate or violate
these needs will eventually be modified or replaced.'
Now I am not suggesting that this explanation in terms of human
nature is false; but it is not very enlightening, and I feel the urge to try
to do a bit better. The problem of what a society of nibbanic Buddhists
would look like is a pseudo-problem, to be sure, but I am still a little
curious as why it should turn out to be one. Kammatic Buddhism is not
fully explicable as a product of the pleasure principle. I repeat: I am not
impugning the validity of the psychological type of explanation which
Spiro and I have put forward. But perhaps it could be reinforced by other,
more sociological (and ideally more refutable) explanations. Societies as
well as individuals have needs. One of them is some degree of consensus

3 See my review of Spiro's book in Modern Asian Studies, 6, 4 (1972), 483-94. In my own
book I had not attempted to be so systematic, but talked in the last chapter (pp. 320-3) of
the contrasting ideals of self-restraint and of love. These would roughly match the cognitive
structures which Spiro labels nibbanic and kammatic.
4 Journal of Asian Stu(dies, XXXII, 3 (May 1973), 554-6.
5 I give examples of other explanations on pp. 16-17. 1 find it odd that in the next sentence
Kirsch complains when I use other explanations, as if I were only allowed one type of explana-
tion (which he calls a 'model') per book.

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214 RICHARD GOMBRICH

about the locus of authority, and an ideology which permits that authority
to exercise some control over deviance.
With this in mind I propose to take another look at the doctrine of
karma. Followers of these controversies will be aware that the doctrine,
especially in its Buddhist form, is remarkable for its intellectual power
but also for its emotional ambivalence. In pan-Indian terms, the law of
karma is simply a cosmic law that all crimes are suitably punished and all
good deeds suitably rewarded, in the long run. The doctrine originated
in Northeast India not too long before the time of the Buddha. The Buddha
specified that the moral quality of an act lies solely in its intention; this
differentiates Buddhism from e.g. Jainism, in which the operation of
karma is physically conceived and results from the act itself. Both Buddhists
and Jains posit free will. To the Jains I shall return at the end of this
article.
The Theravada Buddhist (Pali) canon in its final form has an extremely
elaborate theory of karma. In the Abhidhamma Pitaka, the latest of the
three main divisions of the canon, types of kamma are scholastically classi-
fied and elaborated at tedious length; and, on the more popular level,
comparatively late canonical texts such as the Peta-vatthu consist of
edifying stories of how punishments fit crimes and good deeds are appro-
priately rewarded. None of this elaboration seems to contradict in any
important way the basic teaching on karma which is found in the oldest
collections of doctrinal texts, the four Nikaya.6 Whether this last statement
may require some modification will soon be shown by the researches of
the Ven. L. Siridhamma, who is working with me at Oxford on kamma in
early Theravada. But what first struck me while guiding the Ven. Siri-
dhamma's research was the sheer meagreness of material on kamma in
the four Nikaya; there are quite a few references to it, but they are often
incidental and usually uninformative.
On reflection, the peripheral place of karma in the basic doctrinal
texts is perhaps not so strange. The Buddha was preaching a soteriology
rather than expounding a philosophy. And although the karma theory is a
philosophical assumption underlying his message, it hardly qualifies as
part of that message. It is in some form presupposed by his soteriological
aim, to escape from the round of rebirth; after all, the Buddha and his
listeners had presumably been brought up to believe in karma. But it
forms no explicit part of the core doctrines enunciated in the first sermon:
the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path;
nor of such a basic text on the way to deliverance as the S&maninia-phala-
sutta.
Perhaps the karma doctrine, for all its power to explain this world, is a

6 Digha, Majjhima, Anguttara and Sayrutta. Incidentally, almost all of the texts in the four
Nikdya are regarded as authoritative by all classical Buddhist schools.

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 BUDDHIST KARMA AND SOCIAL CONTROL 2I5

fifth wheel in nibbanic soteriology. Although the theory of karma is well

integrated into Buddhist doctrine from the very beginning (notably in the
theories of 'dependent origination' and of the five constituents of the
phenomenal person), the central message could be philosophically re-
constructed without any recourse to it: one could logically accept the Four
Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the tilakkhanza, the tenet
that all phenomenal existence is suffering, impermanent, and devoid of
soul, without believing in either rebirth or a cosmic moral law of retribution.
A profound pessimist who accepted the First Noble Truth (that life is
suffering) might thirst for nirvana in this life even if he believed that if he
did not attain it he would simply die-or go to reside eternally in heaven
or hell; and a belief that the world was unjust would merely reinforce his
pessimism.
This seems to be the philosophical reason why the karma teaching is
not prominent in the basic doctrinal texts: it could easily be dispensed
with. This of course makes it the more interesting that it later became so
prominent-the point with which this paper is primary concerned. But the
Buddha and his followers inherited the theory, at least in a crude form, as
part of their mental equipment; and so I would like to adduce two further
reasons, of a rather more practical kind, for its original de-emphasis.
(1) Karma means 'act', a simple meaning which it always retains besides
its technical ones. But the aspirant for salvation is being directed to in-
action, to the physically inactive occupation of meditation. Moreover, if
we consider karma again in its technical meaning as 'the moral quality
of an action', the aspirant for salvation is being directed to withdraw from
society and thus from those actions which are most commonly held to
have a moral quality, namely actions affecting other people. Karma is
typically social.
(2) The theory of karma in all its forms is intimately linked with the
theory of rebirth. It is unfortunately manifest that people do not always,
or even normally, get their just deserts in this life. Karma is therefore a
theory which on the one hand explains why some have good and others
bad luck in this life (in particular Buddhists use it to explain why people
are born in fortunate or wretched circumstances), and on the other hand
reassures one that all will work out fairly in the end. But the Buddha, like
all great religious teachers, was not interested in gradualism, in the long
view; he was preaching salvation here and now, in this life, and that is
certainly the spirit in which his disciples received his message. They be-
lieved that they, as human beings, could attain nirvana whatever their
station in life, so that their past karma was no longer very important;7
7 Though this statement is a simplification, I would defend its essential truth by reference
to the extreme case of Moggallana, who had actually not yet expiated the murder of his
parents in a former life, and yet was able to attain nirvana in this. That the story is late does
not affect my point.

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2I6 RICHARD GOMBRICH

and that they would not be reborn, so that their future fate was also
not a subject of curiosity.
The former of these points underlines what has often been said before:
that the first Buddhists were asocial, even anti-social.8 Salvation lay
outside society. Once one had taken the Buddha's message seriously
enough to act on it, one abandoned all social ties, and had as little human
company as possible-'Go lonely as the rhinoceros'. Authority no longer
lay in human institutions, but in the Dharma, the truth which was pro-
claimed by the Buddha and interpreted by oneself. Gradually a secondary
source of authority arose in the shape of the Sangha, the monastic Order;
but it is crucial in the historical study of Buddhism to remember that
the Sangha did not exercise its authority on matters of soteriological
doctrine; its corporate acts concern the maintenance of Buddhism
(especially of the Sangha itself) as an institution, not the ultimate goal
achievement of its members, in relation to which its role is always recog-
nized as unauthoritative and purely instrumental. Moreover, throughout
the history of Buddhism the real salvation seekers have usually become
hermits, 'forest-dwellers', and have kept fairly well clear of the organized
Sangha. So nibbanic Buddhism, to use Spiro's term, is individualistic,
and because it does not regard human institutions as authoritative it
provides nothing for the political or administrative regulation of society.
Further, one might claim that it provides little or nothing for the
regulation of the individual in society. Here it is essential to differentiate
between the philosophy, the logic of the karma doctrine, and its psycho-
logical, its affective, impact. (In my book I called these the cognitive and
the affective levels.) Philosophically, the doctrine declares that the moral
quality of actions lies solely in the intention behind them. It does not
detract from the philosophical excellence of this doctrine to point out that
it seems a natural corollary of a withdrawal from society. Not only is
attention drawn inwards, so that in a general way the focus moves from
a man's actions to his moral character; more particularly, moral qualities,
such as perseverance, are shown in the pursuit of private, not public
goals; and when kindness is practised by wishing well (maitrT bhavand)
rather than by doing good, an ethic of intention lies at hand. This on the
cognitive level. But the meditator has been socialized in an ordinary family,
in which value is attached to doing good rather than to thinking it. Thus,
when Buddhist philosophy declares that good karma = good intentions =
purification of the mind spiritual progress, i.e. progress towards
nirvana, terms are being equated which have quite different emotional im-
plications and moral overtones. Passing above and beyond everyday moral
acts (actions affecting other sentient beings, who are all likewise moral

8 In a sociological context the locus classicus for this argument is L. Dumont, 'World
Renunciation in Indian Religions', Contributions to Indian Sociology, IV (1960), 33-62.

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 BUDDHIST KARMA AND SOCIAL CONTROL 2I7

agents), meditation too is held to be good karma; from the doctrinal, philo-
sophical point of view one does not stop acquiring good karma till nirvana
itself is attained. (Western confusion on this point has been common; in
my review I mentioned that it even occurs in Spiro's book.) But the matter
is subtler: meditation is not, in the earliest texts, specifically referred to as
'good kamma'; being asocial, it is not typical karma. Moreover, the
advanced meditator has in fact taken up an autonomous ethic: the good
act is now its own reward. Remember I am now talking of the affective,
the psychological position; granted, developed doctrine homologizes the
higher heavens with the meditational states, so that he who attains to
meditational state X is reborn in a corresponding heaven; but this scholas-
tic invention cannot mirror the meditator's motives. The autonomous
ethic is the very antithesis of the karma doctrine in its original (and again,
as we shall show, in its vulgar) form: that good will be rewarded.
Moreover, the de-emphasis of future lives weakens the theodicy: true,
evil deeds will be punished, as the karma doctrine says, but this is not
psychologically important if we will not be around to see it. Karma retains
its interest mainly in relation to past lives rather than as a predictor of the
results of present conduct, and inquiry into its workings shows a slightly
vulgar curiosity, typical of the unenlightened. I find it significant-though
I would not stress the point-that of what one might reasonably consider
the two main texts in the four Nikaya devoted to karma, the one9 is an
answer to a layman's request to explain present disparities in human
fortunes, the other10 discusses rewards and punishments as the results of
past conduct. The emphasis is on 'Be done by as you did'; 'Do as you
would be done by' is implied rather than stated.
Even the theory of rebirth itself seems somewhat awkward in classical
Buddhist doctrine. It is notorious that the question of what is reborn is
addressed rather infrequently and inconsistently in the Canon, so that
although scholasticism contrived a definitive answer the problem has
always puzzled newcomers to Buddhism. Less well known is the curiously
fossilized position of the belief that spiritual adepts can recollect their
former lives. Such recollection was said to be one of the attainments which
the Buddha acquired immediately before Enlightenment, presumably
because this was expected of yogis in that milieu; on that pattern it became
part of the standard description of any Enlightenment. But after con-
sidering every classical Buddhist text on the subject, Demieville con-
cluded"l that there was no proper Buddhist theory about it, and that its

9 Cula-kamma-vibhanga-sutta, M.N. III, 202-6.

10 Mahd-kamma-vibhanga-sutta, M.N. III, 207-15.
11 The words of his final paragraph merit reproduction: 'Vu l'importance capitale du
dogme de la transmigration dans le systeme bouddhique, on aurait pu s'attendre a trouver sur
la memoire des existences anterieures une theorie bouddhique originale et bien etablie. C'est
ce qui ne semble pas ressortir de notre enquete sommaire. Les Agama-Nikaya en font une

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2i8 RICHARD GOMBRICH
only elaboration was in the unphilosophical sphere of popular religious
literature, exactly as the theory here propounded would lead one to expect.
It has been a commonplace of sociology that religion provides a means
of social control. Social control implies a system of rewards and punish-
ments, either internalized during socialization or externally supplied by
institutions, or both. Nibbanic Buddhism does not legitimate social
institutions; and I have further suggested that it so de-emphasizes rewards
and punishments that it would be a poor instrument of socialization in
the normal sense. Thus it cannot appeal to rulers of society at large, or
to primary agents of socialization, namely parents: it is dysfunctional
both for the polity and for the family. This does not deny that it runs
counter to the normal urges of individual human beings; my argument
attempts to reinforce that conclusion with more sociological considerations.
By the same token, the Buddhism that has flourished in societies has
not merely been congenial to the pleasure principle, but has also permitted
those societies to function. I need not labour the point. The karma doctrine,
perceived as a system of inevitable rewards and punishments, is inculcated
as basic to morality and to a correct view of the world; and the texts most
widely selected for sermons, for school text-books, even for art and litera-
ture, are mostly tales of who got what for doing what; the purport is
educational and edificatory, no less so for the matter's being entertaining.
Modern apologists for Buddhism (e.g. K. N. Jayatilleke) lay great stress
on the 'proven' validity of the theory of karma and rebirth; even though a
modified Buddhism without karma is (as suggested above) philosophically
quite conceivable, and might appeal to some socially atomized Westerners,
it has no attraction for those who remain embedded in society. Regulatory
institutions, such as the existing legal system, and indeed the pantheon,'2
are indirectly legitimized as agents of the reward and punishment; even
if punishment appears unmerited, it may result from bad acts in a former
life. (This is not to say that karma is necessarily a conservative doctrine;
its generality allows it to legitimate social or political change, once this is
perceived as normal and/or desirable.) Ultimately karma is itself the law
(behind all other laws) which will catch out the malefactor; it has an
authority over and above the authority of its agencies, which is, however,

faculte commune aux religieux bouddhistes et heretiques; I'Abhidharma l'attribue aux

profanes: n'ayant en elle-meme aucun caractere de saintete, elle ne prend de valeur religieux
que par les reflexions qu'elle suggere; enfin les conteurs eludent toute systematisation.'
(P. Demieville, 'Sur la memoire des existences anterieures', Bulletin de l'Ecole FranVaise
d'Extreme-Orient, XXVII (1927), 298.)
12 The co-existence of Theravada Buddhism with other systems of belief is luckily now a
commonplace in the literature. Any moral authority that gods may possess is held to derive
from Buddhism; e.g. in Sinhalese belief supernatural beings hold warrants (varam) which
derive ultimately from the Buddha. (This is of course not to say that the Buddha invented
karmic law, only that he explained it.) Gods, even demons, are all subject to the law of karma,
and may reward or punish only as agents of law enforcement-though, like their human
equivalents, they too may do wrong, for which they are in turn liable.

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 BUDDHIST KARMA AND SOCIAL CONTROL 2I9

still not a religious (i.e. perceived as 'Buddhist') authority, but a condition

of the universe. Nature itself thus has a kind of immutable authority:
its essence (svabhiva) is in part normative ('natural law'). Wrong-doing is
ultimately imprudence, and, perhaps, a matter for shame rather than guilt.
Everything is under control, and the control is all the more complete for
being, in the last resort, impersonal. The totally controlled, ethicized
universe is the polar opposite to the solitary seeker for salvation.

In conclusion I would like to offer a hazardous speculation about how

the histories of Buddhism and Jainism have been affected by the differences
in their theories of karma. Jainism entered history at the same time and
the same place as Buddhism, and there are great similarities between the
two religions. But the Jains conceive of all karma, good or bad, as material
particles which adhere to the soul and thus prevent its liberation, which
again is physically conceived, as it floats to the top of the universe. The
Jain who seeks salvation must therefore annihilate all traces of previous
actions, which he does by asceticism, and abstain totally from all further
action. Optimally he dies of starvation.
Now the number of true religious virtuosi is nowhere very high, so the
fact that few wish to starve to death is probably not significant for Jaina
social history. Rather it is surprising that some do court this fate. But the
peculiar form of Jaina karma theory may help to explain why Jainism
has been so much less successful than Buddhism at establishing itself in
society. In the past, of course, it has had many more adherents (at least, as
a percentage of the population) than it has to-day, but only within India;
unlike Buddhism, it has never spread.
Weber already noted one reason for this. As Jain karma is accumulated
automatically, killing an insect, for example, is in effect murder even if it
was unintentional. Moreover, Jains are hylozoists, and believe that matter
is everywhere inhabited by souls. Plants too have souls, so that to kill or
hurt them is an evil, to say nothing of worms. Agriculture thus becomes an
occupation in which one necessarily accumulates a great deal of bad
karma. Jains have thus tended to specialize in the physically inactive
occupations of commerce, to the economic benefit of the community.
While there have been and are Jain agriculturalists, and even Jain soldiers,
Jainism does not provide legitimation for the status quo in peasant societies.
I would like to go further than this. Jainism reinforces the clear-cut
institutional distinction between laity and monks, which it shares with
Buddhism, with a clear-cut ideological distinction between those who are
acquiring karma and those who are getting rid of it. The Buddhist layman,
who merely by living in his village is a donor (dayaka) to his village temple,
is already on the same moral continuum, from his point of view, as the
solitary Buddhist meditator; for the list of Ten Good Deeds (dasa kusala

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220 RICHARD GOMBRICH

kamma), which he is constantly hearing and perhaps repeating, begins-

not very logically-with three which subsume them all: dana, stla, bhavanM:
giving, morality, meditation, an ideal and also a realistic progression.
But the Jain layman who is supporting Jain monks is merely acquiring
good karma; that is better than acquiring bad karma, but not nearly so
good as doing nothing. His really is an insufficiency ethic. The soteriologi-
cal position of the Jain layman, even if he is a sedentary banker, is too
unattractive to be widely adopted by choice. Although the Jaina theory
of karma functions as a theodicy, it furnishes only very partial legitimation
for any social activity at all.

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