Talk:Objections to the Doctrine of Karma and Responses:Karma and Rebirth
By Vishal Agarwal
Objection: Question: Why does the doctrine of Karma have to be tied to the doctrine of Rebirth? There are several cultures that believe in rebirth but have no definite views on the doctrine of Karma. Likewise, Abrahamic religions believe in a rudimentary form of the doctrine of Karma but do not subscribe to the doctrine of Rebirth. Secondly, when we are reborn, we become a different person from what we were in our previous life. Therefore, rebirth implies that one person commits the actions and another (reborn) person reaps their fruit.
Response: The Science of Karma taken together with the Doctrine of Rebirth, is the best possible explanation of the diversity of our human experience. If God is just, he cannot create people unequal at birth with respect to their wealth, state of health, abilities and so on. As a modern teacher explains-
“One of the most powerful inferential arguments for upholding the fact of reincarnation is that, without the existence of reincarnation and karma (reincarnation and karma are inseparable in the philosophical system of Santana Dharma; you cannot have one without the other), the existence of human suffering has no satisfactory explanation and no coherent meaning. Logically speaking, we can only explain the meaning of suffering that we observe in the world by inferring the fact of reincarnation and karma.”
“The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) especially find it difficult to explain the reason for suffering and evil. Throughout the two-thousand-year history of Christian philosophy, for example, Christian philosophers and theologians have attempted to create innumerable explanations for the existence of suffering – so many, in fact, that these attempts at explanation became a whole category of philosophical argument called “theodicies”. None of these attempts, however, have ever been proven philosophically sustainable, demonstrable or satisfactory. The reason why this is precisely because it is impossible to explain the existence of suffering without turning to the concepts of karma and reincarnation.
Without the soul being an eternal reality that existed before the creation of the material body, there is no explanation whatsoever that can be offered for why a good, merciful, all-knowing and allpowerful God would allow some of His children to be born less than whole. Only the Dharmic path can give in intellectually satisfactory and spiritually comforting explanation for this reality of human suffering.”
The subtle body is the true seat of Karma and pain and pleasure resulting from Karma. When a person dies, it is only his physical body - the outermost sheath, that perishes and is replaced with a new physical body upon rebirth. The subtle body travels from one body to the other. Therefore, essentially, it is the same person who experiences the fruit of his own actions in the present life due to the continuity of the subtle body. For this reason, it is wrong to say that one person does the actions whereas another person reaps the fruit due to rebirth.