Buddhist Causality and Compassion

Abstract

Karma and Saṁsāra are ideas common to both Hinduism and Buddhism. They cannot be properly applied to the latter, however, without a critical modification of their significance. For at the heart of Buddhism lies an apparent ethico–metaphysical accountability which implies an ‘agent’ who is accountable; yet the personal existence of such an agent has not been held as philosophically admissible. While a familiar moral emphasis and relative freedom are integral to the faith's dukkha motif, one scarcely exaggerates in saying that ‘perhaps one of the hardest of the Buddhist doctrines is that of Karma’.