This panel explores the interplay between karma and time, examining diverse perspectives from Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources across different historical periods. Recent studies on karma have critiqued the individualist approach (that karma works on the basis of an individual who is both the doer of an action and the recipient of the action’s result) and the realist approach (that karma represents objective reality, separate from lived experience). Building on these studies, the panel investigates how individuals and groups have imagined time — as cyclic, apocalyptic, unreal, and non-linear — as a means through which they orient themselves and others in a world of inconceivable karmic causes and results. Each paper discusses a specific imagination of time to offer fresh insight into how individuals and communities and their karmic agencies have been conceived.
Is it possible for the concepts of Karma and Time to coexist harmoniously within a single worldview? From a perspective of the doctrine of cyclic time (kālavāda) as developed in Hinduism, particularly in the epics, there is a noticeable tension between these two notions. According to this system, Time is a power that effectively governs the degree of righteousness (dharma) in the world through cosmic cycles (yugas) determining human destiny and afterlife. Conversely, the karmic law is also viewed as a force that decides the afterlife, rebirth, and liberation of humans based on their actions. However, the two concepts in their preliminary form coexisted in the Vedic worldview. Multiple time-related Vedic notions, such as ṛta, ṛtu, and saṃvatsara, were congruously connected with karman, the ritual action. In the Vedas, it was Time that determined the destiny of a person and governed ritual actions by putting them in a sequence.
Among the earliest extant Tibetan writings from Dunhuang, there is a text that belongs to a cult that prays for the coming of an apocalypse known as the Tempest. This Tempest will put an end to the present Evil Age and usher in a new Good Age, at the beginning of which believers and their ancestors will live again. Though the cult seems not to have survived, it was the target of a Buddhist polemic that railed against how the Tempest allowed people to escape the logic of karma. The polemicist inveighs, "the coming of the Tempest will not expunge your sins!" Drawing on both this cult and the polemic against it, this paper queries the extent to which time itself can be a liberating force that acts upon a given group of people, and the putative threat that such an idea poses to certain Buddhist understandings of karma.
Based on Vasubandhu’s Vyākhyāyukti, this paper delves into the debate on the proper way to interpret the narratives detailing the karmic connections between the Buddha’s past and present lives. On one side of this debate is a realist interpretation, which views events in Śākyamuni’s past lives as real causes that lead to tangible effects in his present life. Conversely, an anti-realist interpretation, advocated by Vasubandhu, contends that the narratives of the Buddha’s lives do not posit real doers and real karmic actions and results. Examining the realist and anti-realist interpretations, the paper focuses on Vasubandhu’s anti-realist stance, grounded in the Mahāyāna concept of Śākyamuni as an emanation. The paper argues that, according to Vasubandhu’s anti-realist interpretation, the narratives of the Buddha’s lives are not descriptions of real events and individuals, but teachings crafted for specific audiences with shared karma which predisposes them to perceive buddhahood as a temporal progression.
The Vessantara Jataka, which tells of the Buddha’s penultimate life, is of particular importance in Thailand where it has been closely tied to popular merit making practices. This paper analyzes the relationship between Vessantara Jataka art and merit making. It compares case studies from three different periods—the nineteenth century, mid 1960s, and today—to argue that both the form of artistic production and the specific artistic details within each piece influence donor-merit relationships, co-opting, incorporating, or displacing community. The pieces present different relationships between narrative time and place, and the time and place of the recitation, which, in turn, inform the kinds of merit and karmic entanglements these artworks generate. Ultimately, this paper argues that close analysis of the visual and material aspects of these Vessantara Jataka ‘texts’ are integral for understanding how they produce merit and for whom.