The surviving sources indicate that, outside Bud-
dhism, especially two methods believed to lead to the
desired goal had found acceptance among practition-
ers. On the one hand there were those who drew the
conclusion that, if acts are responsible for the conse-
quences that one tries to avoid, the solution can only
lie in the practice of complete motionlessness of body
and mind. This form of asceticism, preferably per-
formed until death, found followers among the Jainas,
the Ajivikas, and elsewhere. There were, however, oth-
ers who preferred a second method. This method is,
in its conception, as simple as it is elegant. If acts lead
to undesired consequences, it is sufficient to realize
that one has never committed those acts to begin with.
And indeed, one has never committed those acts, be-
cause that which one really is, one’s true self (atman),
does not act by its very nature. This second method,
in which transcendental insight plays a central role,
found entrance into the Vedic Upanisads and is almost
omnipresent in later Hindu religious literature.
Both of these methods are based on a simple and
straightforward notion as to what are acts; clearly all
forms of bodily and mental motion, and only bodily
and mental motion, are involved here. Complete phys-
ical and mental immobility would obviously be a poor,
or exaggerated, response if only certain acts (such as,
for example, only morally relevant acts) have karmic
consequences.
Early Buddhism did not accept these two methods
because it did not share with the other religious cur-
rents of that period this specific notion of karma. Early
Buddhism does not identify bodily and mental mo-
tion, but DESIRE(or thirst, trsna), as the cause of karmic
consequences. Neither physical and mental immobility
nor insight into the true nature of a presumed self will
have any effect on the presence of desire, which means
that Buddhism had to find a different method. This is
what the Buddha is reported to have done; his method
is psychological, and it is said to destroy desire.
It should be clear from the above that the Buddhist
understanding of the doctrine of karma and the Bud-
dhist PATHto liberation are intricately linked. Both the
rejection of extreme ASCETIC PRACTICESand the doc-
trine of no-self (though variously interpreted, even by
the later Buddhists themselves) owe their origin to the
specifically Buddhist understanding of the doctrine of
karma.
The authentic Buddhist path to liberation, however,
is difficult to understand and difficult to practice.
Moreover, it appears that the canonical passages that
describe it were not sufficiently clear even to many
early Buddhist converts. This would explain why Bud-
dhism in India, from its early days onward, time and
again reintroduced, in various shapes, the methods
that had been rejected by its founder. In particular, al-
ready in canonical times, ascetic practices that were
centered on the suppression of mental activity made
their way into Buddhism. More recent texts speak of
the suppression of all activity, both mental and phys-
ical, as a desirable aim. An idea that is structurally sim-
ilar to the non-Buddhist atman doctrine found its way
into the Buddhist canon in the form of the Buddhist
anatman (no-self) doctrine; in both cases the doctrine
implies the realization that one does not really act.
More recent developments in Indian Buddhism intro-
duce notions, such as that of the TATHAGATAGARBHA,
that are even more similar to the initially rejected at-
man doctrine.The causal process leading to karmic retribution is
described, from canonical times onward, in terms of
the causal chain of items called PRATITYASAMUTPADA
(DEPENDENT ORIGINATION). This causal chain has been
variously interpreted and elaborated in the Buddhist
scholastic tradition.However, problems linked to karmic retribution re-
mained. How, indeed, should one imagine that a bad
deed committed in one life will give rise to punishment
in another one without the intervention of a conscious
and all-powerful agent who keeps account of all the
acts carried out by all living beings? The problem of
karmic retribution presented itself to various non-
Buddhists in India as well, who often solved it precisely
by postulating the existence of a creator God who was
in charge of it. Buddhism, on the other hand, had no
place for a creator God. The workings of karmic retri-
bution, though essential to Indian Buddhists, re-
mained therefore a mystery to many of them.A daring attempt to solve this mystery finds expres-
sion in the YOGACARA SCHOOLof Buddhist thought,
and most clearly in the writings of VASUBANDHU(ca.
fourth century C.E.), who presumably converted to Yo-
gacara later in life. It starts from the question of what
exactly links an act with its (often much later) retri-
bution. In his early work, the ABHIDHARMAKOS ́A-
BHASYA, Vasubandhu stated already that this link is
constituted by a series of mental events. Furthermore,
he conceived of the initial intentional act, too, as a
mind-event. Its fruition, however, is not normally a
mind-event, but an event in the world. How is this to
be explained? Vasubandhu does not attempt to answerKARMA(ACTION)