My thanks to Dr. Satyan Sharma for carefully considering my paper and for reaching out to discuss the analysis of saṃskāras, vāsanās, and karmāśayas in the Yogaśāstra (YŚ).[1] I find this discussion especially important, because it challenges the widespread assumption that the theory of karma in Hindu (and Buddhist) traditions can be analyzed in terms of moral character, action habits, dispositions, and so on. The influence of this contemporary account of karma can hardly be overstated. And yet, I count it as a dogma badly in need of revaluation – and rejection.
Dr. Sharma’s comments are a welcome contribution to this project. They have led me to see other possible implications of the text, and better appreciate the textual evidence for the competing view. I remain very skeptical about the plausibility of the standard reading, but I’ve come to accept that the most convincing objections against it are philosophical rather than exegetical. (While Sharma’s comments were just posted Saturday, I received them earlier and spent about a week writing my response.)
The claim from my original paper that Dr. Sharma disputes is my claim that the Yogaśāstra does not state that actions produce saṃskāras. I make this claim, however, in the context of reviewing the analysis of saṃskāras at YŚ 1.5. This passage states that saṃskāras arise from vṛtti – mental states – and dispose the agent to similar vṛtti in the future. A desire for chocolate ice cream, for example, might produce (or strengthen) the disposition to desire chocolate ice cream in the future. This disposition to desire chocolate ice cream would be a saṃskāra.
(1)
mental state ⇒ saṃskāra ⇒ mental state
Contemporary scholars tend to assume that something similar happens with action. I cite a number of authors who assert this view in the original paper (134-135). Saṃskāras arise from actions and dispose the agent to repeat similar actions in the future. A person tells a lie, for example, and becomes disposed to lie in the future. Another diagram:
(2)
action ⇒ saṃskāra ⇒ action
The standard contemporary view says that a cycle of bad behavior explains the “bad karma” that the agent eventually suffers – karmic “fruits” like loss of friendships, loneliness, and so on. A parallel cycle of good behavior, in contrast, might explain the good karma that the agent finally enjoys. The person who tells the truth becomes habituated to do so. They are eventually rewarded for their honesty, by winning the trust of others, being promoted, and so on:
(3)
action ⇒ saṃskāra ⇒ action ⇒ karmic result
My central thesis in the paper is that YŚ does not assert (3). More specifically, YŚ does not explain the production of karmic results in terms of habits of action.
Initially, I note that YŚ does not explicitly state that actions produce saṃskāras (136). I allow, however, that proponents of (2) might analyze the notion of karmāśayas in YŚ as dispositions (āśayas) to action (karma). The argument that I outline cites YŚ 2.13, which counts vāsanās as a type of saṃskāra and equates karmāśayas with vāsanās (138). If vāsanās are saṃskāras, and karmāśayas are vāsanās, then presumably karmāśayas are saṃskāras! For the rest of the paper, I reason under the assumption that karmāśayas are indeed saṃskāras, and hence, that actions do indeed produce saṃskāras (in the form of karmāśayas).
Sharma argues that YŚ claims that actions produce saṃskāras. Much of Sharma’s argument parallels my own preliminary argument for analyzing karmāśayas in terms of saṃskāras. Sharma’s analysis, however, is more comprehensive. In addition to reviewing YŚ 2.13-15, Sharma cites a number of passages that I had not considered. I review those citations here with some elaboration. (For someone who has just read Sharma’s post, feel free to skip the next four paragraphs!)
First, Sharma takes the first lines of the commentary to YŚ 1.24 to equate vāsanās with āśayas. He translates this as “āśaya means vāsanā which is in accordance [anuguṇā] with the fruits of action.”[2] This suggests that karmāśayas are karmavāsanās. Sharma also notes that YŚ 4.9 uses the term karmavāsanās explicitly. Again, this claim, when combined with the claim that vāsanās are essentially the same as saṃskāras (YŚ 2.13), entails that karmāśayas are a type of saṃskāra.
Sharma takes a related quotation at 4.6 to define āśaya as “the tendency of desire, aversion, et cetera.”[3] This might imply that karmāśaya, too, is a disposition to produce desire, aversion, etc. Alternatively, it might imply that karmāśaya is the tendency or disposition to act rather than desire, and so on.[4]
The commentary to YŚ 3.18, in turn, begins: “habits [saṃskāras] are of two kinds: first, those which cause memory and affliction (kleśa), and second, those which cause fruits of actions and are the form of merit and demerit” (Sharma translation). I point out in my original paper that YŚ repeatedly analyzes karmāśayas as merit and demerit (139, YŚ 2.12-13, 2.15). If karmāśayas are merit and demerit, and if the second type of saṃskāras “are the form of merit and demerit,” then presumably karmāśayas are a type of saṃskāra after all – they are just this second type of saṃskāra.
All of this suggests that actions might produce saṃskāras after all. This seems to be the sense of the last lines of Sharma’s piece. Sharma says, “[s]o if karma leads to karmāśaya, and if karmāśaya is a kind of saṃskāra, saṃskāra being habit as per [Framarin’s] translation, it could imply that actions lead to habits as per Yogaśāstra.”
At first, I was not sure that Sharma and I disagreed. As I mentioned, my paper grants the point that actions might be taken to produce saṃskāras in the form of karmāśayas. So Sharma’s citations might be taken to simply bolster the assumption under which I argue throughout the paper. Sharma says, “actions produce saṃskāras,” and I might respond, “sure, let’s assume they do.” Indeed, I’m more confident that actions produce saṃskāras now, having read Sharma’s piece, than I was before. In light of this, I see little reason to doubt the first part of (3) above:
(3a)
action ⇒ saṃskāra
At the same time, I argue in the second half of my paper that a plausible explanation of how agents become conditioned to repeat actions does not require saṃskāras/karmāśayas that result directly from actions. Instead, the desires that motivate action produce saṃskāras that dispose the agent to desire, and these subsequent desires motivate repeated action. I won’t take the time to summarize the details of those arguments here. They are in the original paper. But the outcome is this (with the second desire leading back to a repetition of action):
(3)
action ⇒ direct result ⇒ desire (for result) ⇒ saṃskāra ⇒ desire (for result)
⇐====================================
On this account, the repetition of action is a result of the saṃskāras that dispose an agent to desire the results of past actions. They are not a result of any saṃskāra that disposes an agent to act directly – although the desires that arise from the saṃskāras do dispose the agent to act indirectly.
Near the end of the paper, I reconsider the role of the saṃskāras that arise directly from actions. If the saṃskāras produced by actions are karmāśayas, and if karmāśayas are analyzed in terms of merit and demerit (as YŚ repeatedly says), then these saṃskāras function to produce karmic consequences, whatever they might be. YŚ mentions three types of merit and demerit (trivipāka) that arise from karmāśayas: attributes and abilities in a subsequent birth (strength, intelligence, species, etc.), lifespan, and experience (of pleasure and pain) (janmāyur bhoga) (2.13). These saṃskāras are indeed dispositions – āśayas – and they are the result of past actions. The dispositions are not obviously dispositions to act, however. Instead, they might simply be understood as dispositions to experience various karmic consequences. My analysis of karmāśayas, then, is this:
(4)
action ⇒ saṃskāra/karmāśaya ⇒ karmic result (attributes/experience/lifespan)
These karmic results, in turn, are not obviously the result of repeated actions in the past. This seems most obvious in the case of lifespan. A person dying at a young age is not generally linked in any common sense, straightforward way to the repetition of wrong action. The most common causes of death – cancer, heart disease, freak accidents, and so on – are not simple, direct results of those vices that garner the most attention – lying, stealing, and so on. Such outcomes are more plausibly the result of some other disposition in the agent – like a disposition to disease – or facts entirely unrelated to the agent – like the fact that some stranger has chosen to drive a car while impaired.
It might be argued that a disposition to disease is a result of past actions, but this would not be a simple matter of actions being repeated. There would have to be some additional mechanism that allowed past actions – like stealing – to produce a disposition to cancer. And most proponents of what I call the standard view do not attempt to argue for this kind of view, preferring, instead, a more “common sense” view, according to which karma is simply the cultivation of dispositions and character that then play out in their ordinary way to give the agent what they deserve. (The liar loses friends, etc.)
As I said at the outset, I think many of the most convincing objections to analyzing karma in terms of action habits are philosophical rather than exegetical. The standard view cannot easily explain how merit and demerit are exhausted, how merit and demerit are related to harming others, and so on (143-146). When karmāśayas are analyzed simply as dispositions to experience karmic results, however, these problems do not arise.
At the same time, this alternative account leaves much of the mystery of how karma functions intact. This is unwelcome to those who would prefer a demystified, naturalist, “common sense” – and I would say apologist – account of karma. (Although I’ve already suggested with the example of cancer that such proponents might owe a non-naturalist explanation nonetheless!) If the most popular contemporary account is implausible, however, then it is best to continue the search for a more plausible alternative.
Finally, given the strength of the textual evidence that Sharma outlines, there might be more reason to think that actions produce saṃskāras that dispose the agent to repeat actions after all. This account, again, would resemble (2) above. If actions do this, then more thought should be given to how this works in the context of actions being motivated by desires for the expected outcomes of action (some of which dispose the agent to never repeat past actions again!). Put another way, we might combine the account diagrammed in (2) above with (3), as follows (where, again the second desire leads back to a repetition of action):
(5)
saṃskāra ⇒ action
⇗
action
⇘
direct result ⇒ desire (for result) ⇒ saṃskāra ⇒ desire (for result)
⇐ ============================= ==============
We might then wonder how – and whether – these processes might operate in tandem to deliver the agent those consequences that they morally deserve. I don’t believe other scholars have appreciated this complexity. But it is certainly time to stop simply asserting something like (3) above as if it unproblematically explains the mystery of karma.
[1] The Handbook of Indian Philosophy is generally devoid of Sanskrit terms, for the sake of accessibility. In this post, I revert to the Sanskrit terms, so a simple glossary might help to align the original paper with this post and with Dr. Sharma’s comments.
saṃskāra: habit (My preferred translation would be simply ‘dispositions’. I chose ‘habit’ for dramatic effect.)
vāsanā: deep dispositions
karmāśaya: action deposits
[2] Sharma transliterates the Devanāgari as follows: “kuśalākuśalāni karmāṇi. tatphalaṃ vipākaḥ. tadanuguṇā vāsanā āśayāḥ.”
[3] tatra yad eva dhyānajaṃ cittaṃ (of these, only that mind which is born from meditation) tad evānāśayaṃ tasyaiva nāsty āśayo rāgādipravṛttir (that alone does not have āśaya having the activity/manifestation of rāga, and so on) nātaḥ puṇyapāpāpbhisambandhaḥ… (thus, it is not connected with merit and demerit).
[4] I speculate here on what Sharma takes to be the important implication of this verse. I assume he means to assert the latter rather than the former.
Dear Chris Framarin,
I think there is a fundamental fault in your understanding of Karma, Samskaras, and Vasanas. I would like to elaborate on these as follows:
1. Sanatan Dharma has certain fundamental principles on which it is based. For example, the core principles are
(a) Following and speaking truth always.
(b) Ahimsa means not tormenting or killing innocent living beings.
(c) Brahmacharya means not making sexual relations before marriage and after marriage being faithful to your partner.
(d) Asteya meaning not thieving.
(e) Aparigrah means not grabbing other people’s property.
These are core principles on which the Hindu society is based. These are passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth or general societal behavior among Hindu families. These comprise Samskaras. Samskaras are not just any kind of mental state. So definitely Samskaras do not arise from actions but from principles.
2. Karma consists of ALL actions, whether by habit or otherwise, whether good or bad, or whatever actions are performed by a person all are his Karma.
3. Vasanas are a person getting infatuated and addicted to certain actions such as good food, sex, good clothes, etc.
Also, note that ‘bad behavior’ is a very general term. Following the five principles stated above is the right societal behavior. Not following one or more of these principles is considered a sin. Both of these behaviors get registered as your Karma. The result of accumulated Karma cannot be described in specific terms like loss of friendship, loneliness, etc. The results of Karma are the broad favorable and adverse situations a person faces throughout his or her life. So results of Karma have nothing to do with habits.
So I suggest you get a more in-depth and profound study of ancient Indian texts and Sanatan Dharma.
Regards
Thank you for your comment, Nutan. I’m not sure I see your objection. I see that you reject the habit analysis of karma. So do I. Where exactly do you see your view diverging from mine, and what is the textual evidence for your view in YŚ?
It is all defined in many texts. Please read the following texts in detail to understand the meanings of the words. Also, do not read English-translated versions as there are a huge number of inaccuracies in most of them because there are no English words for many terms in Sanskrit texts. However, Hindi-translated versions are much closer to the Sanskrit original versions. Also, read not one but several translated versions from different authors. For example, Shrimad Bhagwad Gita read Hindi-translated versions from different authors. Also read Manusmriti, Shiv Puran, Shri Durga Saptashati, Shrimad Bhagwad Puran Ekadash Skandh, Garud Puran. Reading these alone in depth will take you several years. You can also check the Sanskrit-Hindi dictionaries, especially by Kamal Publishers. Also, it’s important to note that without devotion to God Almighty not much knowledge can be obtained. If you are purely working for literary objectives then nothing much is possible in understanding ancient Hindu texts.
I only discovered this beautiful blog today, but I am glad I did because I have already read a couple of really interesting and insightful articles like this one. I am a fan of philosophy and spirituality and I love to discuss ideas. Now I will look for more of these engaging articles! My sincere thanks to the author!