The most important argument for reincarnation is of a moral nature. It says that karma and reincarnation provide the perfect way to realize justice in our world, by rewarding all one’s deeds and thoughts in further lives. They will manifest as good or bad happenings and circumstances, with mathematical exactitude, so that everything one does will be justly punished or rewarded, at both a quantitative and a qualitative level. This would explain all inequalities we see among people, comfort those who cannot understand their present bad situation and also give hope for a further better life. According to karma, there is no forgiveness for the "sins" of the past, but only accumulation of karmic debt, followed by paying the consequences in further lives. Swami Shivananda states:
If the virtuous man who has not done any evil act in this birth suffers, this is due to some wrong act that he may have committed in his previous birth. He will have his compensation in his next birth. If the wicked man who daily does many evil actions apparently enjoys in this birth, this is due to some good Karma he must have done in his previous birth. he will have compensation in his next birth. He will suffer in the next birth. The law of compensation is inexorable and relentless.
(Swami Shivananda, Practice of Karma Yoga, Divine Life Society, 1985, p. 102)
As the karmic debt man recorded in his past is considerably large, a single life is not enough to consume it. Therefore, in order to attain liberation, many lives become a necessity. In pantheism, where a personal god as Ultimate Reality is absent, man is alone in his struggle with his past. Even the theistic branches of Eastern religions are incapable of solving man’s loneliness in this struggle, as karma and God’s grace cannot be properly reconciled without totally compromising one of them. Grace, granted by a god or a guru, contradicts the basic role of karma and would render useless its action. As a result, the claims of some gurus to be able to erase the karma of their disciples are absurd. Through asceticism and meditation, man has to work out his salvation alone, or rather to bear alone the dictates of karma.
Although it may seem that the mechanism of karma and reincarnation is the proper way to realize social justice, there are two main objections which contradict it:
1) As long as suffering (or the reward for good deeds) can be experienced only at a personal level (physical and psychical), and man ceases to exist as person at physical death, it implies that another person, generated in another physical body, will actually bear the consequences dictated by the karma of the deceased person. The impersonal self (atman or purusha) which reincarnates has nothing to do with suffering; it is a simple observer of the ongoing psycho-mental life. If, at the moment of death, there is no more karmic debt left, the separation of the self from the illusory involvement with the physical and psycho-mental world is permanent, and this represents liberation. If not, the self is forced to enter a new illusory association with personhood until all fruits of past lives are consumed. In order to realize this, a new person is born each time the self enters a new human body. The new person will bear the karma produced by the previous persons inhabited by the same self. This mechanism, of one person accumulating karma and another bearing the consequences, is rather unfair, fundamentally contradicting the idea of realizing perfect justice. This is why natural disasters, plagues and accidents that affect innocent people cannot be explained away as being generated by karma.
For this reason, the saying "a man reaps what he sows" cannot be used as a way of expressing one’s reincarnationist ideas. (Actually this saying is taken from the New Testament, Galatians 6,7, but there it has a different meaning.) According to the reincarnation mechanism one person sows and another one reaps, since no personal characteristics can be preserved from one incarnation of the impersonal self to the next. In Buddhism, where the very idea of a self who transmigrates is rejected, the idea of sowing and reaping is even more absurd. See for instance the following text:
If it be that good men and good women, who receive and retain this discourse, are downtrodden, their evil destiny is the inevitable retributive result of sins committed in their past mortal lives. By virtue of their present misfortunes the reacting effects of their past will be thereby worked out, and they will be in a position to attain the Consummation of Incomparable Enlightenment (Diamond Sutra 16).
Who will actually work out the effects of his past? A new distribution of the five aggregates? Or who will actually attain enlightenment? A certain configuration of those impersonal five aggregates? How could this process render perfect justice? Perfect justice for whom? For an illusory personhood that disappears at physical death?
2) A second objection concerns the actual possibility of attaining liberation from karma and reincarnation. Normally it is supposed that the person who is living out the consequences of his karma should do it in a spirit of resignation and submission. But this ideal is far from reality. Instead of adopting a passive attitude concerning the hardships that have to be endured, man almost always reacts with indignation, and so accumulates a constantly growing karmic debt. Common human experience proves that evil almost always generates evil and therefore a balance between good and evil cannot be reached. As a result, a vicious cycle is generated in which karmic debt is constantly growing. This happens with most people of our planet, as it is said that most of us live in ignorance (avidya). From one generation to the next, the sum of karmic debt is always growing and this situation can never be solved. What kind of a justice is that which starts more problems than it solves?
If it is most likely that one will always accumulate new karma instead of getting rid of it, probably the best solution to attain liberation from reincarnation would be the Jain fasting to death, as stated by Mahavira:
If this thought occurs to a monk, "I am sick and not able, at this time, to regularly mortify the flesh," that monk should regularly reduce his food; regularly reducing his food and diminishing his sins, he should take proper care of his body, being immovable like a beam; exerting himself he dissolves his body....
This is the truth: speaking truth, free from passion, crossing the samsara, abating irresoluteness, knowing all truth and not being known, leaving this frail body. Overcoming all sorts of pains and troubles through trust in this, he accomplishes this fearful religious death. Even thus he will in due time put an end to existence. This has been adopted by many who were free from delusion; it is good, wholesome, proper, beatifying, meritorious. Thus I say.
(Acaranga Sutra 1,7,6)
This should be the logical solution for anyone trying to escape his karma. However, this radical solution is far from being accepted by most adherents of reincarnation. But even if they would literally fast to death, it still could not guarantee the decrease of mankind’s karmic debt, as one accumulates more karma till the moment he adopts this kind of "holy" mortification than he could annihilate by using it.
Reincarnation and cosmic justice
Moderators: eye_of_tiger, shalimar123
Let’s take an example and see how the two objections actually work in the case of a real person. If we take the case of Adolf Hitler, the results are astounding. (For a detailed study of this case and other important aspects of reincarnation see Mark Albrecht’s book Reincarnation - InterVarsity Press, 1982.) There is no doubt that all adherents of reincarnation agree that many lives are needed for consuming his karmic debt. Hitler died in 1945 and had to reincarnate as a child in order to bear the harsh consequences of his monstrous deeds. The two objections can be stated as following:
1) The person of Hitler ceased to exist at the moment of his physical death. Only the impersonal self will reincarnate, accompanied by its karmic deposit. However, there is no continuity between the person of Hitler and that of the individual who has to endure the hardships imposed by Hitler’s karma. The newborn person doesn’t know that he has to work out Hitler’s karma. After the cruel life and death of this person, other millions of reincarnations will succeed with the same tragic destiny. The most disgusting fact is that the person of Hitler, the only one who should have endured at physical and psychical level the results of his foolish deeds, was dissolved at his physical death, while other persons, totally unaware of this situation and innocent, have to work out his bad karma.
2) As a result of the hardships that have to be endured by the new incarnations of Hitler, it is almost certain that they will react with indignation instead of resignation to their situation, and thus will accumulate a growing karmic debt. Each new reincarnation of Hitler becomes a source of newly acquired karma, initiating a new chain of individuals who have to pay the consequences. The same happened in the case of Hitler himself. Whoever he was in a previous life, he made his karma a lot worse during the years of The Third Reich. Therefore, instead of solving the puzzle of global justice, the problem worsened. Starting with a single individual such as Hitler, we reach a huge number of persons who pay his karma and accumulate a new one. This is just one case of human history. Any attempt to imagine what happens at a larger human scale would reveal a catastrophe impossible to ever be solved.
As a result, karma and reincarnation cannot provide any kind of justice. Reincarnation cannot solve the problem of evil but only amplify it, leaving the original evil unpunished. If reincarnation were true, Hitler will never be punished for his deeds because he ceased to exist, right before any human person or circumstance of life could truly punish him.
Even if disagreement persists in accepting the growth of evil as an effect of karma and reincarnation, at least its conservation should be admitted in human history. This results from analyzing the links that exist between people and their karma from a global perspective. There are two points to be made here.
First, there is a moral issue involved. As suffering is the result of one’s bad deeds performed in previous lives, a possible way of reacting consistently with the law of karma might lead to a total lack of compassion toward people who suffer. One might think that the person who suffers deserves to be equitably punished, and anyone who dares to help him interferes with the unrolling of his karma and consequently is gathering bad karma for himself.
1) The person of Hitler ceased to exist at the moment of his physical death. Only the impersonal self will reincarnate, accompanied by its karmic deposit. However, there is no continuity between the person of Hitler and that of the individual who has to endure the hardships imposed by Hitler’s karma. The newborn person doesn’t know that he has to work out Hitler’s karma. After the cruel life and death of this person, other millions of reincarnations will succeed with the same tragic destiny. The most disgusting fact is that the person of Hitler, the only one who should have endured at physical and psychical level the results of his foolish deeds, was dissolved at his physical death, while other persons, totally unaware of this situation and innocent, have to work out his bad karma.
2) As a result of the hardships that have to be endured by the new incarnations of Hitler, it is almost certain that they will react with indignation instead of resignation to their situation, and thus will accumulate a growing karmic debt. Each new reincarnation of Hitler becomes a source of newly acquired karma, initiating a new chain of individuals who have to pay the consequences. The same happened in the case of Hitler himself. Whoever he was in a previous life, he made his karma a lot worse during the years of The Third Reich. Therefore, instead of solving the puzzle of global justice, the problem worsened. Starting with a single individual such as Hitler, we reach a huge number of persons who pay his karma and accumulate a new one. This is just one case of human history. Any attempt to imagine what happens at a larger human scale would reveal a catastrophe impossible to ever be solved.
As a result, karma and reincarnation cannot provide any kind of justice. Reincarnation cannot solve the problem of evil but only amplify it, leaving the original evil unpunished. If reincarnation were true, Hitler will never be punished for his deeds because he ceased to exist, right before any human person or circumstance of life could truly punish him.
Even if disagreement persists in accepting the growth of evil as an effect of karma and reincarnation, at least its conservation should be admitted in human history. This results from analyzing the links that exist between people and their karma from a global perspective. There are two points to be made here.
First, there is a moral issue involved. As suffering is the result of one’s bad deeds performed in previous lives, a possible way of reacting consistently with the law of karma might lead to a total lack of compassion toward people who suffer. One might think that the person who suffers deserves to be equitably punished, and anyone who dares to help him interferes with the unrolling of his karma and consequently is gathering bad karma for himself.
Second, the man who is the instrument of karma’s punishment records bad karma for himself and therefore will have to be punished at his turn, in a next life. Then the next person who acts as the instrument of karma will have to be punished in his turn, etc. A possible solution to this endless cycle would be that the one who acts as the instrument of karma in another one’s life should do it in a completely detached manner, without any interest in the results, according to the demand of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (2,47; 3,19; etc.). In this case it is considered that he doesn’t acquire new karma. However, such a solution would be limited, at best, to the few "detached" people that actually follow this rule, and thus has no significance on the larger scale of human society. Most people are far from considering themselves as detached executioners of karma in their neighbor’s life.
Let’s examine these two points in the case of the millions of Jews who were killed in gas chambers by the Nazis during World War II. First, it would seem absurd to have any feeling of compassion towards them, because they deserved to be killed like that, as a result of crimes done by them in previous lives. One could conclude that, after all, the Nazis did the right thing against the Jews, according to the dictates of karma. Using this reasoning any conceivable crime of the past or present could be justified, without bothering about moral values. This opens a horrifying perspective on the past and future of mankind, with implications difficult to grasp.
Second, the killing of millions of Jews requires that their executioners should be killed in their turn, in a similar way, in further lives. But this implies that the executioners of the reincarnated Nazis will be killed in their turn, etc., etc. The cycle would never end. The same reasoning could be used also back in time, which would require finding in each generation those millions of people executed and their executioners. An objection to this could be that killers may be punished (killed) in turn by other means, not necessarily by involving other new acquirers of karma. Natural calamities such as earthquakes could be the instrument of karma. However, this option doesn’t work because karma is generated not only by the actions themselves, but also by the desires that lead to the actions. The desire to kill has to be rewarded as well, not only the killing. Therefore, if reincarnation were a logical concept, it would imply that it has neither a beginning nor an end. This cannot be a solution for justice, but only a kind of eternal circus.
A further analysis of karmic justice proves that the basic principle of Hindu morality, that of non-killing (ahimsa), is absurd. According to this principle we should not participate in the killing of any living being, otherwise we will reincarnate in order to pay the consequences. (This is the basis of eastern religious vegetarianism.) For instance, the butcher who slaughters a pig will have to reincarnate as a pig in order to be slaughtered in his turn. However, the very principle of reincarnation contradicts the meaning of ahimsa and proves it to be futile. The pig had to be slaughtered, because he probably was the reincarnation of another butcher, who had to be punished that way. Neither in this case can the vicious cycle be stopped by natural means (i.e. the pig dying of a disease) because the butcher’s desire to kill the animal (for food or to earn his salary) also generates karma. Therefore the infringement of the non-violence principle becomes a necessity in order to fulfill karmic justice. The butcher was at the same time the instrument of working out one’s karmic debt and the generator of a new one for himself. In a strange and contradictory way, the fulfilling of karmic debt requires the punishment of its executioners. In other words, karma paradoxically acts through condemning the executioners of its "justice".
In conclusion, the concept of reincarnation stands in contradiction with logic, social justice, morality and even common sense. Looking beyond the apparent comfort it provides to this life by promising further lives in which perfection may be attained, belief in reincarnation cannot bring any beneficial result, but only resignation and despair in facing fate. Why then accept it as a major spiritual belief?
Let’s examine these two points in the case of the millions of Jews who were killed in gas chambers by the Nazis during World War II. First, it would seem absurd to have any feeling of compassion towards them, because they deserved to be killed like that, as a result of crimes done by them in previous lives. One could conclude that, after all, the Nazis did the right thing against the Jews, according to the dictates of karma. Using this reasoning any conceivable crime of the past or present could be justified, without bothering about moral values. This opens a horrifying perspective on the past and future of mankind, with implications difficult to grasp.
Second, the killing of millions of Jews requires that their executioners should be killed in their turn, in a similar way, in further lives. But this implies that the executioners of the reincarnated Nazis will be killed in their turn, etc., etc. The cycle would never end. The same reasoning could be used also back in time, which would require finding in each generation those millions of people executed and their executioners. An objection to this could be that killers may be punished (killed) in turn by other means, not necessarily by involving other new acquirers of karma. Natural calamities such as earthquakes could be the instrument of karma. However, this option doesn’t work because karma is generated not only by the actions themselves, but also by the desires that lead to the actions. The desire to kill has to be rewarded as well, not only the killing. Therefore, if reincarnation were a logical concept, it would imply that it has neither a beginning nor an end. This cannot be a solution for justice, but only a kind of eternal circus.
A further analysis of karmic justice proves that the basic principle of Hindu morality, that of non-killing (ahimsa), is absurd. According to this principle we should not participate in the killing of any living being, otherwise we will reincarnate in order to pay the consequences. (This is the basis of eastern religious vegetarianism.) For instance, the butcher who slaughters a pig will have to reincarnate as a pig in order to be slaughtered in his turn. However, the very principle of reincarnation contradicts the meaning of ahimsa and proves it to be futile. The pig had to be slaughtered, because he probably was the reincarnation of another butcher, who had to be punished that way. Neither in this case can the vicious cycle be stopped by natural means (i.e. the pig dying of a disease) because the butcher’s desire to kill the animal (for food or to earn his salary) also generates karma. Therefore the infringement of the non-violence principle becomes a necessity in order to fulfill karmic justice. The butcher was at the same time the instrument of working out one’s karmic debt and the generator of a new one for himself. In a strange and contradictory way, the fulfilling of karmic debt requires the punishment of its executioners. In other words, karma paradoxically acts through condemning the executioners of its "justice".
In conclusion, the concept of reincarnation stands in contradiction with logic, social justice, morality and even common sense. Looking beyond the apparent comfort it provides to this life by promising further lives in which perfection may be attained, belief in reincarnation cannot bring any beneficial result, but only resignation and despair in facing fate. Why then accept it as a major spiritual belief?
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