Nyanatiloka Buddhist Dictionary

ignorance and ensnared by craving, are hurrying and hastening through this round of rebirths."Compare here Grimm's German fairy-tale of the little shepherdboy: 'In Farther Pommerania there is thediamond-mountain, one hour high, one hour wide, one hour deep. There every hundred years a little birdcomes and whets its little beak on it. And when the whole mountain is ground off, then the first second ofeternity has passed."karma (Sanskrit), Páli: kamma: 'action', correctly speaking denotes the wholesome and unwholesomevolitions (kusala- and akusala-cetaná) and their concomitant mental factors, causing rebirth and shaping thedestiny of beings. These karmical volitions (kamma cetaná) become manifest as wholesome or unwholesomeactions by body (káya-kamma), speech (vací-kamma) and mind (mano-kamma). Thus the Buddhist term'karma' by no means signifies the result of actions, and quite certainly not the fate of man, or perhaps even ofwhole nations (the so-called wholesale or mass-karma), misconceptions which, through the influence oftheosophy, have become widely spread in the West."Volition (cetaná), o monks, is what I call action (cetanáham bhikkhave kammam vadámi), for throughvolition one performs the action by body, speech or mind. . There is karma (action), o monks, that ripens inhell.... Karma that ripens in the animal world.. Karma that ripens in the world of men.... Karma that ripens inthe heavenly world.... Threefold, however, is the fruit of karma: ripening during the life-time(dittha-dhamma-vedaníya-kamma), ripening in the next birth (upapajja-vedaníya-kamma), ripening in laterbirths (aparápariya-vedaníya kamma) ...." (A.VI, 63).The 3 conditions or roots (múla, q.v.) of unwholesome karma (actions) are greed, hatred, delusion (lobha,dosa, moha); those of wholesome karma are: unselfishness (alobha), hatelessness (adosa = mettá,good-will), undeludedness (amoha = paññá, knowledge) ."Greed, o monks, is a condition for the arising of karma; hatred is a condition for the arising of karma;delusion is a condition for the arising of karma ...." (A. III, 109)."The unwholesome actions are of 3 kinds, conditioned by greed, or hate, or delusion."Killing ... stealing ... unlawful sexual intercourse ... lying ... slandering ... rude speech ... foolish babble, ifpractised, carried on, and frequently cultivated, leads to rebirth in hell, or amongst the animals, or amongstthe ghosts" (A. III, 40). "He who kills and is cruel goes either to hell or, if reborn as man, will be short-lived.He who torments others will be afflicted with disease. The angry one will look ugly, the envious one will bewithout influence, the stingy one will be poor, the stubborn one will be of low descent, the indolent one willbe without knowledge. In the contrary case, man will be reborn in heaven or reborn as man, he will belong-lived, possessed of beauty, influence, noble descent and knowledge" (cf. M. 135).For the above 10-fold wholesome and unwholesome course of action, see kamma-patha. For the 5 heinouscrimes with immediate result, s. ánantarika-kamma."Owners of their karma are the beings, heirs of their karma, their karma is their womb from which they areborn, their karma is their friend, their refuge. Whatever karma they perform, good or bad, thereof they will bethe heirs" (M. 135).With regard to the time of the taking place of the karma-result (vipáka), one distinguishes, as mentionedabove, 3 kinds of karma:1. karma ripening during the life-time (dittha-dhamma-vedaníya kamma);2. karma ripening in the next birth (upapajja-vedaníya-kamma);3. karma ripening in later births (aparápariya-vedaníya-kamma).The first two kinds of karma may be without karma-result (vipáka), if the circumstances required for the