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What the Buddha Thought

An interview with Richard Gombrich, a historian of early Buddhism.

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One of the recurring debates taking place among contemporary Buddhists concerns karma and rebirth, which some say are holdovers from the Buddha’s era or are just not essential to his thought. How do you respond to this claim, and what do you think is at stake in this debate that gives it such persistence and emotion? There were both Brahmanical and Jain doctrines of karma before the Buddha. The Buddha’s greatest contribution was to say that the moral quality of an act lies in the intention behind it. However, all three traditions agree that the doctrine of karma is inextricably linked to the doctrine of rebirth. This is because the doctrine states that good acts produce good results for the actor, bad acts bad results, and yet it is obvious that this does not always happen in one lifetime. A baby may be born with a terrible disease or deformity; a criminal may benefit from his crime and evade all punishment.

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