Pallis Karma

Marco Pallis   — Iluminações Búdicas
Excertos do capítulo "Viver seu karma"

Let us now pass over to the more detailed consideration of karma, the impelling force behind every rebirth or redeath, that is to say action taken in the broadest sense of the word (including its negative aspect, omission) together with its inseparable accompaniment, the reaction it inescapably provokes, the two being strictly proportioned to one another. The physical principle that action and reaction are equal and opposite is but one example of this universal cosmic dispensation.

Now, like everything else the mind is concerned with, this law of karma were best contemplated in a purely detached, impersonal way, as if we ourselves were standing outside the Round of Existence and looking at it from the vantage point of a lofty and distant peak. But in point of fact such is not the case. We are deeply involved at every moment of our earthly sojourn and consequently, insofar as we feel ourselves to be ‘this person so-and-so’ distinct from all the beings who, for us, fall under the collective heading of ‘other,’ we cannot help assessing this cosmic play going on all around us in terms of plus or minus, profit or loss, pleasure or pain, ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ as we call them. This it is that accounts for the fact that in religious life karma has been explained, more often than not, in terms of moral sanction, as reward for good deeds and punishment for ill deeds, and this is how the matter is regarded, almost always, by the popular mind.

Such a view is not in itself false; indeed it can be salutary. The only falseness is if one imagines this to be the whole story, the first and last word to be said on the subject. A full awareness of the implications of karma will carry one outside the circle of moral alternatives and of the attachments that a personally biased view inevitably will foster   in the long run; but nevertheless, for the common run of mortals, the view of karma as immanent justice, in the moral sense, is not unwholesome, since it inclines a man at least to take the lessons of karma seriously and apply them in his day-to-day life. All ethical laws, in every religion, have this character; they are upayas, ‘means,’ far-reaching but still relative in scope, a fact that incidentally explains why the most hallowed of moral laws sometimes will not work, so that even in this sphere one must expect the occasional exception, if only ‘to prove the rule’.

Immanent justice, in its fullest sense, is nothing else but the equilibrium of the universe, that state of balance between all the parts that the quivering scales express but do not visibly achieve; but here again we have come outside the moral perspective which, though includable in the general panorama of ‘justice,’ no longer needs to be given privileged emphasis in view of a particular human interest.

It is a commonplace with Buddhist controversialists, out to criticize what they look on as the arbitrary explanations offered by the theistic religions, to argue that the doctrine of karma, by accounting for the apparent irregularities of fate in terms of antecedent action leading to present sanction, is ‘more just’ than other views relating to the same facts. It is well to point out that once such an argument becomes clothed in a moral form it becomes every bit as anthropomorphic as the teachings about ‘the will of God’ in relation to sin current in the Christian and kindred religions. The use of this kind of language and all arguments taking this form can be justified empirically, as satisfying the need of certain minds and, if so, it is no small profit. However, any simplification of this kind must always be accounted an expression of ‘popular apologetics’ rather than of deep awareness of what really is at stake. It is nevertheless a mistake to laugh at such a view of things; if one is able to see the fallacy behind the argument, one is free to transcend it in deeper understanding of the same truth, without taking up a patronizing attitude toward the simple souls for whom this argument has provided a stepping-stone in the way.