But karma could produce its effect in this life or any other life only when there were covetousness, antipathy and infatuation.  But “when a man’s deeds are performed without covetousness, arise without covetousness and are occasioned without covetousness, then inasmuch as covetousness is gone these deeds are abandoned, uprooted, pulled out of the ground like a palmyra tree and become non-existent and not liable to spring up again in the future [Footnote ref 2].”  Karma by itself without craving (ta@nha) is incapable of bearing good or bad fruits.  Thus we read in the Mahasatipa@t@thana sutta, “even this craving, potent for rebirth, that is accompanied by lust and self-indulgence, seeking satisfaction now here, now there, to wit, the craving for the life of sense, the craving for becoming (renewed life) and the craving for not becoming (for no new rebirth) [Footnote ref 3].”  “Craving for things visible, craving for things audible, craving for things that may be smelt, tasted, touched, for things in memory recalled.  These are the things in this world that are dear, that are pleasant.  There does craving take its rise, there does it dwell [Footnote ref 4].”  Pre-occupation and deliberation of sensual gratification giving rise to craving is the reason why sorrow comes.  And this is the first arya satya (noble truth).

The cessation of sorrow can only happen with “the utter cessation of and disenchantment about that very craving, giving it up, renouncing it and emancipation from it [Footnote ref 5].”

When the desire or craving (ta@nha) has once ceased the sage becomes an arhat, and the deeds that he may do after that will bear no fruit.  An arhat cannot have any good or bad

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[Footnote 1:  Warren’s Buddhism in Translations, p. 215.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid. pp. 216-217.]

[Footnote 3:  Dialogues of the Buddha, II. p. 340.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid. p. 341.]

[Footnote 5:  Ibid. p. 341.]

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fruits of whatever he does.  For it is through desire that karma finds its scope of giving fruit.  With the cessation of desire all ignorance, antipathy and grasping cease and consequently there is nothing which can determine rebirth.  An arhat may suffer the effects of the deeds done by him in some previous birth just as Moggallana did, but in spite of the remnants of his past karma an arhat was an emancipated man on account of the cessation of his desire [Footnote ref 1].