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KARMA AND TRANSMIGRATION

The conviction that karma, the law of cause and effect, worked so that every action must have a result, was well-established when the earliest Upanishads were written. The fruits of action - which included thoughts and desires as well as actual deeds - are inexorably fulfilled and according to necessity built into the structure of the universe. The idea of rebirth of the soul may well haves been an older idea, but in any case the two concepts fitted together, with actions in one life determining the conditions of future existences, and producing an endless cycle of rebirths. I this conception there is no thought of punishment and reward given by some deity external to man; indeed, many schools of thought which explicitly reject beliefs in gods accept the doctrine of karma. The system is one of perfect justice - a man reaps precisely what he sows. Nor is there anything inherently pessimistic about the scheme, since man is master of his fate.

According as one acts, according as one conducts himself, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.

But people say: "A person is made not of acts, but of desires only." In reply to this I say: As is his desire, such is his resolve; as is his resolve, such the action he performs; what action (karma) he performs, that he procures for himself.

On this point there is this verse:-

Where one's mind is attached - the inner self
Goes thereto with action, being attached to it alone.
Obtaining the end of his action,
Whatever he does in this world,
He comes again from that world
To this world of action.

-So the man who desires.

Now the man who does not desire. - He who is without desire, who is freed from desire, whose desire is satisfied, whose desire is the Soul - his breaths do not depart. Being very Brahman, he goes to Brahman.
(from Brihad Aranyaka, IV:4:5-6)

Accordingly, those who are of pleasant conduct here - the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a pleasant womb, either the womb of a Brahman, or the womb of a Kshatriya, or the womb of a Vaishya. But those who are of stinking conduct here - the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a stinking womb, either the womb of a dog, or the womb of a swine, or the womb of an outcaste (candala).
(from Chandogya, V:10:7)

By the delusions of imagination, touch, and sight,
And by eating, drinking, and impregnation there is birth and development of the self.
According unto his deeds (karma) the embodied one successively
Assumes forms in various conditions.
(from Svetasvatara, V:11-12)