The Indian philosopher Madhvacárya (1238-1317) observed that our souls have a plethora of innate characteristics and capacities; they were preordained to accomplish certain ends. This (r)evolutionary perspective puts Madhvacárya at variance with the traditional Indian view of the karma theory, all right - where differences ('bheda') in social and religious status are determined by way of past moral, or decadent
KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 15
The dictionary defines character as the embodiment of mental, emotional and moral qualities distinctive to the individual.
Our ancient philosophers defined it as karma - or, action, work, or deed.
Character, in other words, is also the spiritual principle of cause and effect, where the intent, or action, of the individual (cause) impacts the prospect, or future, of that particular individual (effect). In the context of Eastern philosophy, karma is believed to pass on from one life to another through a chain of transmigrations that are also modified in each life. This life 'drift' has got nothing to do with the confluence, or genetics, of pedigree, but with one's own - or, specific individual - acts.
The Indian philosopher Madhvacárya (1238-1317) differed from the classical Eastern pedestal of karma.
He articulated a postulate that mirrored the innate difference of one soul from the other. He proposed the existence of a grading of 'jivas' (individual souls), based upon their distinctive structure of virtues ('gunas') and faults ('doshas').
He observed that our souls have a plethora of innate characteristics and capacities; they were preordained to accomplish certain ends. This (r)evolutionary perspective puts Madhvacárya at variance with the traditional Indian view of the karma theory, all right - where differences ('bheda') in social and religious status are determined by way of past moral, or decadent, acts. He argued that each of us possesses a characteristic moral proclivity and that karma was, and is, merely the nature-propelled, or divine, instrument through which the given soul is prompted towards its 'chartered' destiny.
There is a striking parallel to Madhvacárya's maxim in Alexander Campbell Fraser's "Philosophy of Theism", "The mixture of good and evil in the Universe is a sure enigma to Theism, and a challenge to it: to believe that all is as it ought to be and this is destroyed if anything is found existing that ought not to exist, however insignificant the place in which it is found, or however rare the occurrence."
Adds Fraser, "Pain, error, sin and death are the chief evils in our world. Sin is absolutely evil. Pain is the correlative of pity and sympathy. It is natural and, therefore, a divine means of education of spiritual life. But, the continued presence of what is unconditionally bad cannot be disposed of in this way. How to relieve the mystery of moral evil, including what seems an unfair distribution of pleasure and pain and an unequal adjustment of opportunities for moral growth has been a human perplexity from the beginning. It finds expression in the Hebrew poets like Job, and in the Greek dramatists like Aeschylus. How can it be reconciled with the goodness of god?"
The German Indologist Wilhelm Halbfass too articulated a thoughtfully refined allegory, "The historical origins of the doctrine of karma and rebirth cannot be determined with certainty and precision. While the Vedas and Brāhmaṇas provide significant antecedents, they do not show any clear recognition of the doctrine as such. Even in the older Upanishads (prior to 500 BC), its formulations are still tentative, partial and more or less isolated. It seems that the teachings of the Buddha added a new and stricter notion of causality and a far more explicit sense of moral responsibility and universal applicability to the older versions. In Hindu literature, such texts as the great epic, the Mahābhārata (beginning around 400 BC), give clear evidence of a fully developed and generally recognised doctrine of karma and rebirth. Significant disagreements and debates occurred with regard to the status and character of the karmic agent and the subject of transmigration and rebirth (most conspicuously in connection with the Buddhist denial of a durable 'self', or 'ātman'). The moral relevance and metaphysical qualities of acts and decisions, the nature of karmic causality and the mechanism of rebirth, the possibility of a transfer of karma, the compatibility of knowledge and action, and the prospects of and problems concerning the elimination of karma and the ultimate transcendence of rebirth provided further topics of debate."
While certain Indian and Buddhist schools found a credible assertion of the modes of the Universe, or the Cosmos, to our life and existence, a host of Greek philosophers and other sages sculpted their own 'take' on the characteristic of the soul, not to speak of the doctrine of transmigration, whatever its source.
You'd think of a classical metaphor for the former - the world is full of pain and sorrow, as also grief and evil that fall like raindrops upon both the 'good' and the 'bad' among us. What does this connote? That there are cogs in the never-ending fetters of natural causation through which our past, or present, and the future are inseparably connected - with no more injustice prevailing in one case than the other. You'd think of such 'debts' as a sort of 'dangling storm' - because, as we are all witness, a phase of heavenly delight could be the paradoxical precursor of adversity, agony, or struggle, in a repulsive world - the arrears being the unpleasant gifts of a distant ancestral blemish, or fault.
Any which way you look at the whole spectrum, the doctrine of karma, like our evolutionary theory corresponds to one eternal canon - that transmigration has its roots in a world of reality, as Madhvacárya articulated.
What's more, it may just as well derive its existential buttress as a powerful contention for analogy that is also endowed with the capacity of learning from everyday experience - if only one would want to.
All of us are, more or less, the mirror images of our ancestry, or inheritance, that is resident to our DNA from the beginning of evolution, or time. This conforms to the sum and also total of our inborn and learned tendencies that operate in a certain predestined, or destined, mode - and, is inescapably passed on from one soul to another.
Nidamboor is a wellness physician, independent researcher and author
A version of this article appears in the print on November 16, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
