The Age of the Sages

by Mark W Muesse

  But in India, the premise of rebirth was so widely accepted that it became the fundamental assumption of virtually all Indian religions and philosophies, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and much later, Sikhism. These traditions understand rebirth in different ways, but the basic sense that existence is characterized by an endless series of births, deaths, and rebirths is common to them all. The term used by these traditions to denote this situation is samsara, a word that literally means “wandering,” suggesting a kind of aimlessness or pointlessness to the process of moving from one condition to another.

  “In India, the premise of rebirth was so widely accepted that it became the fundamental assumption of virtually all Indian religions and philosophies, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and much later, Sikhism. These traditions understand rebirth in different ways, but the basic sense that existence is characterized by an endless series of births, deaths, and rebirths is common to them all. The term used by these traditions to denote this situation is samsara, a word that literally means “wandering,” suggesting a kind of aimlessness or pointlessness to the process of moving from one condition to another.”

  The Upanishads

  The first place in the ancient Indian texts where we get a clear sense of the idea of transmigration is a collection of writings called the Upanishads. The most important Upanishads were probably composed between 800 and 400 bce, which places them squarely within the Axial Age. The authors of these works—and there were many of them—are not known to us today, but clearly they were individuals of a philosophical mind-set, seeking answers to the fundamental mysteries of life.

  By the time the Upanishads appeared, the concept of rebirth had begun to enjoy widespread acceptance. Even so, no clear or systematic understanding of the nature of this process is found in these writings. Most of the Upanishadic passages dealing with rebirth do so by means of metaphor or analogy. Here is a typical and well-known selection from one of the Upanishads, often called The Supreme Teaching, one of the oldest texts in the collection:

  [Rebirth] is like this. As a caterpillar, when it comes to the tip of a blade of grass, reaches out to a new foothold and draws itself onto it, so the self, after it has knocked down this body and rendered it unconscious, reaches out to a new foothold and draws itself onto it.

  [Rebirth] is like this. As a weaver, after she has removed the coloured yarn weaves a different design that is newer and more attractive, so the self, after it has knocked down this body and rendered it unconscious, makes for himself a different figure that is newer and more attractive—the figure of a forefather, . . . or of a god, . . . or else the figure of some other being.[4]

  These excerpts imply that continued existence is driven by desire, that the self that is reincarnated wills to be reborn. Indeed, as we will see later in the development of Indian philosophy, desire is precisely what propels the process.

  But this view of reincarnation was not universally accepted among the sages composing the Upanishads. A different passage from another early Upanishad offers an alternative perspective. Here, the author hypothesizes that the cremation fires convert corpses into smoke, which carries them to heaven on the wind, and there, after other transformations, they become food for the gods. After being consumed by the gods, “they return by the same path they went—first to space, and from space to the wind. And after the wind has formed, it turns into smoke; after the smoke has formed, it turns into a thunder-cloud; after the thunder-cloud has formed, it turns into a rain-cloud; and after a rain-cloud has formed, it rains down. On earth they spring up as rice and barley, plants and trees, sesame and beans . . . . When someone eats that food and deposits the semen, from him one comes into being again.”[5] Apparently, this reincarnation theory is a further refinement of the old Vedic view that the corpse is cooked and consumed by the gods. It simply follows that process to its logical end, based on the ancient belief that the male semen actually contains the complete incipient human and the female womb serves as a kind of incubator but does not contribute materially to the embryo. It is quite an ingenious theory. This effort to explain rebirth is, in its own way, empirical in the way it reasons inductively from observable phenomena.

  In both selections, we see that although the idea of rebirth gained wide acceptance during this period of Indian history, there was no consensus about how it worked or what it actually meant. It is not even clear what these sages believed was reincarnated or what determined the form of one’s next life. One of the passages suggests that one gets a newer and more attractive body, such as that of a god, but the later Hindu tradition will come to believe that rebirth does not always imply progress or improvement. In fact, rebirth might very well mean going from being human to being a dog or an insect.

  Karma and the Ethicization of Rebirth

  As the Axial Age progressed, and as the Upanishads developed further, many of these issues were addressed and refined. One of the most important developments was the concept of karma. Karma adds a unique dimension to the Indian view of rebirth. Whereas the idea of rebirth is not exclusive to India, the belief that one’s future incarnation depends on how one behaves in this life is a distinctive Indian contribution. The ethicization of rebirth is the principal upshot of the doctrine of karma. The Upanishads make one’s moral behavior the decisive element in human destiny. In the Upanishads, as for the Indian religions generally, karma determines the form and status of one’s next birth.

  “The Upanishads make one’s moral behavior the decisive element in human destiny. In the Upanishads, as for the Indian religions generally, karma determines the form and status of one’s next birth.”

  Karma is a term with which most Westerners are now familiar, but many who use it are not completely sure about its meaning. Some treat it as a synonym for luck. On occasion, a person might say “Well, I guess that’s just my bad karma” to explain an unfortunate situation. Karma is not luck, if luck is understood as a random or chance occurrence, nor is it technically analogous with fate, if fate is a preordained sequence of events determined by a god or superhuman power. In fact, karma means just the opposite of luck and fate in these senses. According to the theory of karma, the events in one’s life—good or bad—are not chance occurrences, nor are they foreordained by realities outside of oneself.

  In its most basic sense, karma refers to the actions that one performs and the consequences of those actions, in a cycle of cause and effect. Just as dropping a pebble into a pond creates ripples that reverberate on the surface of the water, so our every action has reverberating consequences. There is no way to separate action and consequences; the effects of one’s act can be considered as part of the act itself, according to most Hindu thinkers. The doctrine of karma maintains that those effects will at some point return to the agent, to the one who performed the act in the first place. So the waves created by a dropped pebble reach the edge of the pond and then continue to ripple back to the point where the pebble was dropped. The return of the consequences of action to the agent is called the “fruiting” of karma.

  The fruiting of karma is inevitable, and it always returns to the agent who created it, no matter how long it takes. We sometimes experience the consequences of our actions soon after they are committed. An angry person might quickly reap the fruit of her anger as other people act out of anger in response to her. Or it may take another lifetime or two for karma to come to fruition. But about this you can be sure: “karma is gonna get you,” as John Lennon suggested in his popular song “Instant Karma.” It is important to remember, however, that you are the one who generated the karma in the first place.

  Karma can be of two basic kinds: good and evil, or positive and negative. Actually, the philosophical literature on the kinds of karma is quite complex; we are reducing the idea here to its elemental forms. In essence, we can say that by performing good actions, one produces “positive” karma; wicked, immoral, irresponsible actions create “negative” karma. And at some point, whether in this life or another,
the karma we have generated returns to us—to our benefit, if good; to our detriment, if evil.

  In short, the concept of karma means that every person gets what he or she deserves. Karma is a principle of justice. This process occurs ineluctably and impersonally, just as the law of gravity acts on physical bodies. In the general understanding, there is no divine being meting out justice; in fact, according to Hinduism, even the gods themselves are subject to the law of karma. What Hindus mean by karma is reflected in the Western expression “What goes around comes around.” For better or worse, we cannot escape the consequences of our actions.

  * * *

  Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973). ↵

  TheRig Veda, 10.14.2, trans. Wendy Doniger (New York: Penguin, 2005), 43.↵

  Some have suggested that perhaps the idea of rebirth developed initially within the old Indus Valley Civilization and then reappeared centuries later after a period of suppression by the Aryans. But there is really no evidence to support that conjecture.↵

  Brhadāranyaka Upanishad, 4.4.3-4, in Patrick Olivelle, trans. Upaniśads (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 64.↵

  Chandogya Upanishad, 5.10.5-6, in Olivelle, trans. Upaniśads, 142.↵

  7

  The Quest for Liberation

  So far, we have observed the development of two key ideas about the nature and destiny of human beings that arose in India during the early Axial Age. The first was rebirth, the concept that our present earthly existence is only one in a series of lifetimes; and the second was karma, the belief that our deeds have positive or negative consequences that return to the agent according to the nature of the act. These two concepts come together in the notion that the state of one’s future existence is determined by how one acts in this present life. Good karma ultimately determines a favorable rebirth; bad karma means an unfavorable rebirth.

  To speak of a “good” or “bad” rebirth implies a hierarchy of being. One might be reborn at any place on this hierarchy, ranging from plant life to the various levels of animal life to the human realm, which is stratified from low caste to high caste, and then to various states of divinity. A preponderance of bad karma might take you from human to buzzard; an abundance of good karma might enable the low-caste person to be reborn as a Brahmin.

  To have a “high” birth—to be reborn as a god or a Brahmin or, in some senses, as simply a human person—is extremely rare and requires a great deal of karmic merit. For the vast portion of our infinite number of rebirths, most of us have been reborn as insects or other animal forms. That we have achieved a human rebirth in this life is a wondrous—almost miraculous—occurrence, because it is such a difficult feat. An ancient parable from this era makes the point in a vivid way. The parable invites us to imagine that the entire world is covered with water and that floating on the water’s surface is a yoke with a single hole, like a collar used to harness an ox. An eastern wind pushes the yoke west; a western wind pushes it east. A wind from the north pushes it south, and a southern wind drives it north, so the yoke is constantly moving. Now, suppose a blind sea turtle lived in this vast ocean and came to the surface once every century. How often do you think that blind sea turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick its neck into the yoke with a single hole? The parable suggests that a human rebirth occurs with the same frequency.

  The Tibetans, who adopted one of the Indian views on rebirth, frequently refer to existence as “this precious human birth.” What makes it so precious is not just its rarity, but also its great significance. Humans, more than other animals or even the gods, have the ideal opportunity for positively affecting their future existence. One of the reasons that beings spend a great number of lifetimes at the animal level is that animals simply are not capable of generating much karma, good or bad. Those beings are not in a position greatly to affect their rebirth, but humans, by the nature of their very makeup, have almost limitless opportunities to act morally, that is, to produce karmically relevant deeds. To squander this precious human life would be tragic, to say the least.

  Samsara: The Problem

  The ideas of rebirth and karma may have arisen independently of one another. If so, it is clear they came to be inextricably linked in the Indian imagination during the Axial Age. When that connection was made and widely accepted throughout India, then a completely new attitude toward life came to pervade the Indians’ view of the world. In the preaxial era, the Aryans took delight in the pleasures of this life and beseeched their gods for the goods that could make their lives more comfortable and enjoyable. Death was accepted as a fact of life and perhaps as the transition to an agreeable existence in heaven. That perspective changed significantly when the concept of samsara was adopted.

  The Reevaluation of the World

  One of the first tenets of the theory of rebirth that must be grasped—and this is especially true for many of us living in the West—is that samsara is not a desirable situation. Most people who believe in reincarnation do not want to be reborn. Usually, those who look forward to rebirth imagine continual existences much like the current (and probably privileged) life they presently enjoy. They do not think of themselves as living as an aardvark or a cockroach, or imagine themselves as lunch for a tiger in the jungle. But perhaps because the ancient Indians were closer to the natural world than most modern people are, such possibilities were very much on their minds.

  Yet no matter how confident one is that his or her good behavior is sufficient to merit better and better rebirths, there comes a point when one realizes that even the best possible life is fraught with suffering, pain, and grief and must eventually end in death. Just reaching the top of the great chain of being, therefore, cannot be the ultimate goal. Even at the summit of the hierarchy of life, rebirth continues without end. The good karma we have acquired will eventually exhaust itself, and reincarnation will be inevitable, along with the suffering that accompanies every life.

  It may take a million more lifetimes, but the individual will eventually become convinced of the futility of samsaric existence. In the end, one must seek the ultimate aim of life: liberation from samsara altogether. This is moksha, complete release, the end of reincarnation. Thus, seeking a favorable rebirth can only be a preliminary or proximate goal. One hopes to maximize one’s good karma, steadily improving rebirth, until one is has attained a life in which realizing moksha is possible.

  From this point of view, existence does not seem so agreeable. To be sure, the worldly life has its pleasures: the warmth of family and children, the joys of eating good food and seeing beautiful sights, the love of friends and companions. Still, from the samsaric standpoint, which assumes an endless number of previous lifetimes and anticipates the prospect of an infinite number more, this world did not carry quite the same attraction for Indians in the Axial Age as it did to the Aryans centuries before. Recall the words of Nachiketas to the King of Death: “All these pleasures pass away, O End of all! They weaken the power of life. . . . Man cannot be satisfied with wealth. Shall we enjoy wealth with you in sight? Shall we live while you are in power?”[1]

  The Quest for Liberating Knowledge

  The idea of samsara thus brings with it a new existential problem: how to attain moksha and escape the endless round of rebirths altogether. This is the fundamental problem of Indian religion in the Axial Age. Virtually every school of philosophy and religious sect—and there have been very many throughout the history of India—tried to understand and resolve this issue.

  “The idea of samsara thus brings with it a new existential problem: how to attain moksha and escape the endless round of rebirths altogether. This is the fundamental problem of Indian religion in the Axial Age.”

  As the idea of samsara caught on in the Axial Age, it spurred a widespread movement of individuals who decided that nothing in this world compared to the necessity of ending samsaric existence. So they left their homes and families and jobs to seek a way to escape rebirt
h. This mass movement included men and some women, of all ages and castes, but it tended to attract persons from the upper castes especially. For the most part, the principal activity took place in the years 800–400 bce in the plains area of the Ganges River, in northeastern India, where Aryan culture had expanded many years earlier during the second urbanization of India.

  During these years, the Gangetic plains region was marked by economic, social, and religious ferment. Farming and commerce flourished, and more people came to enjoy material prosperity. Over a dozen small republics and kingdoms emerged. Traditional practices and beliefs were no longer taken for granted, and the Brahmin priests lost some of the prestige and power they once enjoyed. Modern historians consider this period to be of such significance that it may have been the “most decisive phase for the development of Indian culture.”[2]

  It was in this context of great change that the new movement of moksha-seekers arose. Many of those who joined this movement were beginning to experience dissatisfaction with the shape this emerging culture was taking. One individual who left home during this period to join the renouncers described his motivation this way: “I thought: ‘Household life is crowded and dusty; life gone forth is wide open. It is not easy, while living in a home, to lead the holy life utterly perfect and pure as a polished shell.’”[3] In these words, we hear a discontent with ordinary domestic existence and a yearning for high adventure, for the quest of the perfect life that very few persons ever dare to try. In other words, those who joined the homeless and ascetic life did so not just to escape a world they found abhorrent, but because they saw in renunciation their only hope for a life of freedom and fulfillment. For this reason, the new axial outlook in India can be characterized as ultimately optimistic, despite its negative assessment of the phenomenal world. Although the world as we know it is indeed a vale of tears, the sages were saying that by perfecting the spiritual life, one might conquer the samsaric realm and enjoy an even greater bliss. That was the conclusion of the individual who left his home because it was cramped and dirty, the man who later became known as the Buddha.