THE BUDDHA'S AWAKENING1.2 THE WORLDVIEW OF EARLY NORTH
INDIAN THOUGHT9By the first millennium B.C.E., north Indian thought had accepted the no-
tion-based on astronomers' calculations of planetary cycles-that time is
measured in aeons, incomprehensibly long cycles that repeat themselves end-
lessly. The thinkers of the time presented their views of the drama of human
life and the search for ultimate happiness against this vast temporal frame, but
they differed widely in their interpretations of the main issues around which
that drama revolved. The primary differences centered on two issues:
- Survival beyond death. Most Vedic and sramalJ.a schools assumed that per-
sonal identity extends through countless lifetimes in a vast cycle of
repeated birth, death, and rebirth. Although early Vedic thought had ex-
pressed a positive attitude toward the idea of rebirth, by the time of
Siddhartha Gautama most of those who believed in rebirth felt that true
happiness could be found only through release from the otherwise endless
cycle. However, a sramalJ.a band of hedonist materialists called Lokayata
denied the existence of any identity beyond death and insisted that happi-
ness was to be found by indulging in the pleasures of the senses here and
now. - Causality. Vedic thinkers and some of the sramal).a schools accepted the
idea that human action played a causative role in providing for one's hap-
piness both in this lifetime and on into future lives. Views about how this
causal principle worked, however, differed from school to school. For
some Vedists, the only ~ffective action was ritualistic. The Jains, one of the
sramal).a schools, taught that all action fell under linear, deterministic
causal laws and acted as a bond to the recurring cycle. According to them,
the only escape from the cycle lay in a life of nonviolence and inaction,
culminating in a slow suicide by starvation. Some Upani~ads-Brahmani
cal speculative texts-expressed causality as a morally neutral, purely phys-
ical process of evolution. Others stated that moral laws are intrinsic to the
nature of causality, rather than being mere social conventions, and that
the morality of an action determines how it affects one's future course in
the round of rebirth. There is no way of knowing, though, whether these
last texts were composed before or after Buddhist texts expressing this
view. At any rate, all pre-Buddhist thinkers who accepted the principle
of causality-however they expressed it-viewed it as a purely linear
process.
On the other side of the question, the Lokiyatas insisted that no causal
principle acts between events and that all events are self-caused. Thus actions
have no consequences, and one may safely ignore morality and ritual ortho-
praxy in one's pursuit of sensual pleasure. Another sramal).a school, the
oAjivakas, who specialized in astrology and divination, insisted that human life
was entirely determined by impersonal, amoral fate; that human action played