Karma

The term "karma" is derived from the ancient Sanskrit language and carries an idea that is centrally important in the major religious traditions that come from India. The basic idea is that action (karma or karman) has consequences. The Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions share this assumption. To whatever extent one is capable of intentional and willful action, one is responsible for it and eventually will experience its consequences. The general assumption in the notion of karma is that whatever action you intend or actually carry out will reflect your present character and will determine your future destiny to an extent that you may not be able to anticipate at the time when you entertain or perform the act itself. In short, the idea of karma places a very high value on the cultivation of careful and consistent patterns of thought and behavior.

In the traditional religions of India, the context for taking account of karmic patterns of acts and consequences is greatly extended because of a second and closely related idea. This is the idea of rebirth or reincarnation. It affirms that any living entity is at most only a link in a longer and larger chain of life that extends far into the past and future. Although a living person may seem to be exclusively the product of a unique human birth that happened just a few years ago, from the perspective of karma and rebirth that person is a contemporary manifestation of earlier life-forms and a step on the way to later forms of life that are integrally connected to the present one. Although hardly anyone claims to remember his or her previous births or is capable of predicting future ones, the fact that a few rare people display or seem to display such powers is convincing to many Hundus, Buddhists, and Jains, who believe that every form of life is part of a universal karmic process that does not uniquely privilege humans over others.

The idea of karma, only sometimes combined with the notion of reincarnation, has been part of American religious thinking since the New England Transcendentalists, who were inspired by the religions of India and discussed the Bhagavad G?t?, which is the Hindu text best known to modern people. The work of the Theosophical Society, which had headquarters in America and in India and which contributed to the revival of Hinduism and Buddhism in South Asia during the colonial era, as well as the several visiting lecturers from Asia who came to the United States to speak at the first World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, did much to spread the idea. From World War I through the 1960s, this-worldly or ethical notions of karma were spread by the influence of great practitioners of civil disobedience such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Since the late 1960s, new religious movements and new immigrants from Asia have begun to make the idea of karma seem to be part of the American cultural fabric. Although Columbus did not find India, in time the karmic process brought India to America.

See alsoBuddhism; Hinduism; Jainism; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; New Religious Movements; Reincarnation; Theosophical Society.

Bibliography

Conser, Walter H., Jr., and Sumner B. Twiss, eds. Religious Diversity and American Religious History: Studies in Traditions and Cultures. 1997.

Ellwood, Robert S., ed. Eastern Spirituality in America. 1987.

Keyes, Charles F., and E. Valentine Daniel, eds. Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry. 1983.

Miller, Timothy, ed. America's Alternative Religions. 1995.

Neufeldt, Ronald W., ed. Karma and Rebirth: Postclassical Developments. 1986.

O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, ed. Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. 1980.

Tull, Herman W. The Vedic Origins of Karma: Cosmos as Man in Ancient Indian Myth and Ritual. 1989.

Tweed, Thomas A., and Stephen Prothero, eds. Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History. 1999.

Gene R. Thursby