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April 2007

This article contained a fair amount of nonsense, and hardly anything is sourced. For the monent I've altered it to agree with Theravada doctrine, except where it specifically refers to Mahayana. I hope people who know about other schools can note any differences. Peter jackson 14:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed External Link: karma-Buddhism Yahoo Group

karma-Buddhism Yahoo Group with researched posts Dhammapal 12:44, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Errors in the article?

I'm note sure how the following quote from the page makes sense: "In Buddhism, Karma is simply there as a guide and an indication of what the reason for your present state is and how one's future can be made better by self effort. Fatalism and pre-determinism is the anti-thesis of the notion of perfection or self-conquest -- which is the primary aim of Buddhism." In particular, Buddhism never advocates any "self effort" as there is no "self" to excert the effort, and an enlightened being only observes (hence, generating no karma). There are no goals of "perfection or self-conquest" in Buddhism, only the idea of realizing the truth (since an elightened being has no clinging, it can't possibly have goals). It seems as the entire passage is wrong, but I don't feel I have sufficient knowledge to modify the article.

I'm not sure that the revisions improve the article. This article lacks citations for assertions such as Karma only refers to "cause" -- and this is important because if you look at the way Karma is generally used everywhere, nobody uses such a definition in practice. This might be a place where one should talk about the different views of Karma within Buddhism rather than adding a sectarian view and not citing the source other than a personality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.74.203 (talk) 00:51, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Universal karma

• Seems to be important, but maybe it does not match with wikipedia's linklines.

Austerlitz -- 88.75.71.123 (talk) 10:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

the article has the word arhaticide, can someone please explain what that is, word is not found in any online dictionaries, is it spelled correctly?

someone needs to explain the meaning of "arhaticide" please. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.108.114.107 (talk) 21:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

It's a neologism for sure, but it seems like the most concise way to spell it out - it means just what it appears to mean: killing an arhat. The meaning should be clear from both the construction and the context.Sylvain1972 (talk) 05:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

"Killing an arhat" would probably be a more straightforward way of doing this than a neologism. Human fella —Preceding undated comment added 07:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC).

AN.5.110?

This sutta is given as a source for a claim which is controversial in some circles about whether or not karma is the supreme natural law. The Theravada position seems to be that it is just one of several laws, but I'm trying to clarify my understanding. However, I can't find this sutta online; or else I did find it but didn't see how it supported the claim -- see http://www.metta.lk/tipitaka/2Sutta-Pitaka/4Anguttara-Nikaya/Anguttara3/5-pancakanipata/011-phasuviharavaggo-e.html linked from http://www.suttacentral.net/disp_sutta.php?subdivision_id=63&subdivision_name=Pañcaka%20Nipāta&collection_name=Pali&division=AN&acronym=5&type=Subdivision Paxfeline (talk) 07:27, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the only public English translation of it is the Pali text society edition. The sutta you linked is AN 5.11 not AN 5.110, unfortunately. You could ask User:Peter jackson for more about this. He has the PTS translation I believe, and I think he knows Pali anyway, so he could look at the Pali source too, which is online. Mitsube (talk) 08:12, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I also noticed that the text is labeled "011" instead of "110" but wasn't sure if I was just missing something else. I suppose I should email suttacentral.net to let them know their link is incorrect. Thanks for the pointers on where to look. Paxfeline (talk) 09:21, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Fallacious justification for claim of non-determinism

In the section on "Karmic action & karmic results vs. general causes and general results", we find the following text: "The theory of karma is not deterministic, in part because past karma is not viewed as the only causal mechanism causing the present. In the case of diseases, for instance, he gives a list of other causes which may result in disease in addition to karma (AN.5.110)"

This reasoning is fallacious. If a given type of event can be brought about by multiple types of causes, it doesn't either: A) Imply that causation by a given type of cause (here, karma) is non-deterministic (i.e. that that type of cause "could have" failed to bring about that effect in any given case), or B) That there is not deterministic causation by the whole list of possible types of causes.

There seems to be a misunderstanding here whereby "the doctrine of karma is deterministic" is confused with "the doctrine of karma holds that karma is the only type of cause." I'm not expert enough to correct this confidently, but I would be pleased if someone who was took care of this. Human fella (talk) 07:56, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, let's first define determinism. American Heritage Dictionary has the following: "n. The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs." The Online Etymology Dictionary has "in theology (lack of free will); in general sense of 'doctrine that everything happens by a necessary causation.'" Maybe the sentence in question should read, "The theory of karma is not comprehensively deterministic"? Sylvain1972 (talk) 14:13, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Hm. Not sure I see how that helps. The point is that the text in question implicitly presents itself ("karma is not deterministic... because..." etc.) as offering some point against the view that the karma doctrine is deterministic (the definitions you present seem perfectly workable), but in fact it does no such thing. Asserting that there are other types of causes fails altogether to bear on the question of whether the actions of karma are deterministic, or indeed whether the world view that it forms a part of is deterministic. Imagine if I were to say "The doctrine of people falling off a cliff because they slip on a banana peel is not deterministic, because people are caused to fall off of cliffs by events other than slipping on banana peels." You can see that this makes no sense, because the existence of other causes of falls off of cliffs bears neither on the question of whether banana-peel induced cliff falls are deterministic (ie brought about inevitably by antecedent events), nor on whether falls off of cliffs in general are deterministic (in that same sense). Human fella (talk) 13:44, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, it seems to me that what the article is trying to say is that there seems to be a sense that in theories of determinism, particularly theological determinism, everything is said to happen by a necessary causation and furthermore the agent of necessary causation is ultimately singular--an omnipotent deity. In which case, a model whereby causation can be attributed to multiple factors cannot be properly called determinism.Sylvain1972 (talk) 18:14, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

9/1 edits

I reverted these because reliably sourced sections were deleted and too many tags were added to what are clearly reliable sources. You may not agree with David Loy (and I myself don't), but he is an academic who is published widely and his opinions are valid in the section.Sylvain1972 (talk) 14:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Most of my edits were valid, and you should not have mass reverted all of them, just because you disagreed with some of them. If you disagreed with something, you should say why, and discuss it here or re-add that part, not blanket remove everything. I've undone your removal of my edits, and we can discuss each of them here. I'll momentarily discuss each of them. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 14:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

A few notes on my edits:

• Tagged sources -- You said "many tags were added to what are clearly reliable sources". No, they were not. Academic publishers and scholarly journals were not tagged. These are "clearly reliable sources". Things like "kalachakranet" were tagged. Could you explain to me how this is a "clearly reliable source" under WP:RS? In general, we should use scholarly sources, per WP:RS, since this topic is widely covered enough in the scholarly literature, that we don't need to resort to less scholarly sources.-- Jrtayloriv (talk) 15:04, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
• Loy -- I did not say that Loy's views were removed because they are not valid. I said that they were given undue weight. See WP:UNDUE. His views on Karma do not warrant 3 or more paragraphs. After hundreds of years of Buddhist studies, why do David Loy's views warrant such enormous weight? (Especially when there are plenty of higher-quality scholarly sources on the subject)

This not even close to an undue weight problem. We're talking about three short paragraphs in a relatively small section of a long article. In this particular section ("Modern interpretations and controversies") most of the hundreds of years of Buddhist studies are not relevant--they were already given a thorough airing in the balance of the article. Aside from his academic credentials, Loy is widely published and read by the general Buddhist audience and is one of the most most prominent voices on the subject.Sylvain1972 (talk) 19:03, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Anyhow, I don't know if there is anything else you disagreed with, but that's because you didn't say what you disagreed with and why. If you have any other problems, please let me know, and we'll discuss them. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 15:04, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

My concern is that if you can't recognize Lamotte's translation of the Karmasiddhiprakarana as a reliable source, then you don't have sufficient familiarity with the field to be weighing in on what is and isn't a reliable source. You are tagging Numen, which is easily verifiable as a leading academic journal by anyone remotely familiar with Buddhist Studies, as not being a reliable source? Seriously? And to add an RS tag to a book by a tenured professor of Buddhist studies and published by a leading Buddhist publisher? That's just ridiculous. The RS tag isn't something to be added indiscriminately to articles when you have zero familiarity with what is and isn't a reliable source on the topic in question and can barely be bothered to find out.Sylvain1972 (talk) 18:33, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Shoot for FA?

This article is amazingly thorough. Perhaps we should aim to get some recognition for this. Credit goes mostly to Sylvain! Mitsube (talk) 05:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that the sections on East Asian and vajrayana needs substantial improvement before it could deserve any recognition. but some parts are definately good.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu quote

The article, directly under the Mahayana heading, contains this quote without any context:

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a Theravādin monk, speculates that the development of the karma doctrine in the direction of determinism necessitated the development of the Mahāyāna concepts of Buddha-nature and savior Buddhas (see Pure land):

n later centuries, when the principle of freedom was

forgotten ... Past bad kamma was seen as so totally deterministic that there seemed no way around it unless you assumed either an innate Buddha in the mind that

could overpower it, or an external Buddha who would save you from it.

Now, I do not know exactly why Thanissaro Bhikkhu is being used as an expert on Mahayana, because he is certainly not a specialist in this area. He is widely respected in Theravada Buddhism, but there should be no illusions that he is NPOV regarding Mahayana. His writings often contain tinges of spite and derision regarding Mahayana or bodhisattvas, or subtle attempts to write them off as being spurious inventions. In this case, Mahayana belongs to the dark "later days" of Indian Buddhism when "freedom" had been forgotten, and all the ignorant Buddhists could do was cling to nonsensical whims about savior buddhas. Frankly, this sort of quote isn't even on the NPOV radar, so I have removed it from the article. Tengu800 (talk) 00:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

1. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, "Freedom from Buddha-nature", page 4. Available online: .

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