How does Kamma
cause Rebirth?
In Majjhima Nikāya
135 a brahman raises the problem:
There are found people who are short-lived, and those that are long-lived;
there are found people
who are very sick, and those that are healthy;
there are found people who are
ugly, and also those
that are beautiful;
there are found people who are powerless, and those that
are powerful;
there
are found people who are poor, and those that are rich; there are found
people
who are of low
family, and those that are of high family; there are found
people who are
stupid, and those that
are intelligent. What then, Master Gotama,
is the reason for this diverse inferiority
& superiority
among human beings?
The Blessed One replied:
Beings are owners of their kamma, inherit their kamma, kamma is their maker
and creator,
they are born from and by their kamma, kamma is the womb from
which they
emerge,
they are linked and associated to their past kamma as their
friend and refuge...
Therefore does kamma divide beings into the high and low,
beautiful and ugly!
In
Anguttara Nikāya III,40 it is said:
"Killing, stealing, adultery, lying, backbiting, harsh angry speech
and empty
prattling, practiced,
cultivated and frequently engaged in, will lead
to hell,
the animal
world or the realm of ghosts."
Further: "Whoso kills and is cruel,
will either
go to hell, or if reborn
as a human, will be short-lived.
Whosoever
tortures other beings, will be afflicted
with disease. The
hater will be ugly &
hideous,
the envious will be without influence, the stubborn will
be of low rank,
the indolent will be ignorant.
In the reverse case, a person will be reborn in a
heavenly world; or, if
reborn as a human being, and
will be endowed with health,
beauty, influence,
riches, noble rank and
intelligence."
In the
Milindapañha the King asks
the Arahat Nagasena:
What is it, Venerable Sir, that will be reborn after death?
O King: A psycho-physical combination of mentality-&-materiality
(name-and-form
= nama-rupa).
But how? Is it the same psycho-physical
name-and-form combination as this
present one?
No, O King. But the present
psycho-physical combination produces kammically
advantageous and
disadvantageous intentional activities, and through such kamma a new
psycho-physical
combination
will
be created, conditioned and born.
Source: The Milindapañha
Buddhaghosa
explains in
his
(Path of Purification):
Whosoever has no
clear idea about death and does not know that death consists
in the dissolution of the five groups of existence (i.e. form,
feeling, perception,
mental formations, & consciousness), he thinks that it is a
person, or being, that
dies and transmigrates to a new body in a new place. And
whosoever has no clear
idea about rebirth, and does not know that rebirth consists in
the arising of the
five groups of existence, he thinks that it is a person, or
being, that is reborn, or
that the person reappears in a new body. And whosoever has no
clear idea about
Samsara, the round of rebirths, he thinks that a real person
wanders from this
world to another world, comes from that world to this world,
etc. And whosoever
has no clear idea about the phenomena of existence, he thinks
that the
phenomena are his ego or something appertaining to the ego, or
something
permanent, joyful, or pleasant. And whosoever has no clear idea
about the
conditional arising of the phenomena of existence, and about the
arising of
kammic volitions conditioned through ignorance, he thinks that
it is the ego that
understands or fails to understand, that acts or causes to act,
that enters into a
new existence at rebirth. Or he thinks that the atoms or the
Creator, etc., with
the help of the embryonic process, shape the body, provide it
with various
faculties; that it is the ego that receives the sensuous
impression, that feels,
that desires, that becomes attached, that enters into existence
again in another
world. Or he thinks that all beings come to life through fate or
chance. A mere
phenomenon it is, a conditioned thing, that rises in the
following existence. But
not from a previous life does it transmigrate there, and yet it
cannot arise
without a previous cause. When this conditionally arisen
bodily-mental
phenomenon (the fetus) arises, one says that it has entered into
a next
existence. However, no being (satta), or life-principle (jiva),
has transmigrated
from the previous existence into this existence, and yet this
embryo could not
have come into existence without a previous cause.
Source:
Path of Purification
(Chap. XVII)
