On the tension between the Buddhist doctrines of karma and ‘not-self’

 

On the tension between the Buddhist doctrines of karma and ‘not-self’

Almost all Buddhist traditions agree on the doctrines of ‘karma’ and ‘not-self’ (anatman). The first doctrine says that each sentient being will experience the positive and negative effects of good or bad actions either in this life or in a future lifetime.  The second doctrine says that there is no temporal or eternal ‘unchanging self’ (atman) or static identity in each being[1].

Nowadays, the doctrine of ‘not-self’ is generally used by non-Buddhists (and even some Buddhist) to criticize the possibility of rebirth in a next life. Indeed, if there is no unchanging self, how can one speak of a future rebirth? However, it should be noted that precisely the doctrine of ‘not-self’ can explain how, for instance, a male human being can become a female ant, without contradiction.

Indeed, if sentient beings are ‘empty’ of an unchanging essence, they have no defining characteristics. So, in the above case, it is possible to posit a continuity between the states ‘male human’ and ‘female ant’ if one assumes that there is no being that has as an essential characteristic either being human, ant, male or female[2].

However, I believe that the Buddhist notion of ‘anatman’, at least if interpreted as a denial of a truly existing unchanging essence, leads to two serious difficulties:

1)       The first difficulty is how to make sense of a concept like ‘moral accountability’ if one holds to the doctrine of ‘not-self’. If we can’t say that the agent of an action and the agent that experiences the ‘karmic’ consequences of that actions are the same agent, how can we have an intelligible account of moral accountability? It doesn’t seem the case that continuity alone is sufficient to explain accountability.

2)       The second and, perhaps, more serious difficulty is the following one. Essences with defining characteristics posit a constraint on how something can change. We may say, for instance, that an acorn seed can become a oak tree but not a lemon tree because the acorn’s nature can only lead the seed to become an oak tree. If there weren’t essences, why changes present regularities? If the doctrine of karma was true, it is clearly an instance of an orderly change. However, if there are no essences, how can we explain these constraints on how ‘transformations’ happen? Why, for instance, isn’t karma totally unintelligible?

Personally, I never found convincing arguments against these two objections.

 


[1] Only the Pudgalavada school, to my knowledge, endorsed the idea of an ‘indeterminate self’. However, the second difficulty, in my opinion, also applies to their doctrine. If the self is indeterminate, how can we explain the orderliness of ‘karma’?

[2] In other words, if being a human is essential for a given sentient being, that sentient being can’t turn into an ant in a future lifetime without being annihilated and ‘replaced’ by a completely different being, an ant.

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