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5. Karma and Moral Agency

Author Mohammed Efaz Channel DawahWise DawahWise Idea Hinduism Words 825 Read time ~4 min

5. Karma and Moral Agency

quick read

The karma and rebirth framework is the engine of Hindu ethics. Every action produces a result. Those results accumulate across lifetimes. Ones current birth, family, caste, body, fortune, is the fruit of past life karma. Ones current actions determines their next birth.

The traditional teaching lists the number of life forms. The Padma Purana (Srsti-khanda 36.7-8) catalogues them. 9 lakh aquatic species, 20 lakh plants, 11 lakh insects, 10 lakh birds, 30 lakh animals, and 4 lakh human forms. That is 8.4 million yonis total. The soul wanders through all of them before reaching human birth.

The Srimad Bhagavatam 11.9.29 says,

"After many, many births and deaths one achieves the rare human form of life, which, although temporary, affords one the opportunity to attain the highest perfection. Thus a sober human being should quickly endeavor for the ultimate perfection of life... After all, sense gratification is available even in the most abominable species of life, whereas Krishna consciousness is possible only for a human being."

So human birth is indeed privileged and a window, of sorts. But what are the other 8.4 million life forms doing?

The honest answer, supported by expositions drawn from the Narada Purana and Garuda Purana, is that in non human births the soul largely "exhausts" previous karma. The animal does not generate new significant karma. It cannot choose between dharma (righteous duty) and adharma (unrighteousness). It just lives, suffers, enjoys, and ultimately dies. The swadharma (one's natural role) of a tree is to grow. It cannot commit a crime, nor can It pray or choose.

Now, If the karma cycle is a moral system, if birth as a dog or a pig is a punishment for past bad karma then the punishment is inflicted on a being that cannot understand why it is being punished. The animal cannot learn from the punishment. It cannot reform or improve. It simply endures.

Bhagavad Gita 3.27 says,

"All actions are carried out by the three modes of material nature. But in ignorance, the soul, deluded by false identification with the body, thinks itself the doer."

Gita 14.19 reinforces this,

"When a man of insight beholds no agent other than the gunas, and also knows Him who is beyond the gunas, he attains My being."

The message, therefore, is that the individual soul does not act and it is the material nature that does. The soul swatches.

Bhagavad Gita 18.14 says that five factors produce any action - the body, the doer, the senses, the effort, and the divine (daiva). Individual will is one of five, not the sole cause. This is closer to what philosophers call compatibilism - the view that free will and determinism can coexist because "free will" just means acting according to one's nature, not acting without any prior cause.

But even compatibilism requires some moral agency. And the Upanishadic "two birds on one tree" metaphor, found in the Rig Veda 1.164.20, Mundaka Upanishad 3.1.1-2, and Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.6-7, shows the problem. One bird eats the fruit. The other merely watches. The eating bird is the jiva (the individual self bound by karma). The watching bird is Ishvara (the Lord, the higher Self). If the eating bird eats, it acts. If it acts, it has agency. But, according to the Gita 3.27 says the soul is not the doer.

The practical consequence is that a moral universe is easier to defend when moral agency is available to all beings in the cycle. If only humans have agency, then the vast majority of the cycle is morally empty. And if even humans do not truly have free will then the whole system becomes a type of machine, a robot, if you will, without any will of its own, making the concept of "deserving" ones birth position meaningless.