3.  What, then, is Kharma?  Literally it means “the doing.”  It is a man’s record, involving the consequences and liabilities of his acts.  It is a score which must be settled.  A question naturally arises, how the record of a soul can survive when the soul itself has been “blown out.”  The illustration of the candle does not quite meet the case.  If the flame were something which when blown out immediately seized upon some other substance in which the work of combustion proceeded, it would come nearer to a parallel.  One candle may light another before itself is extinguished, but it does not do it by an inherent necessity.  But this flame of the soul, this Kharma, must enter some other body of god, or man, or beast.

Again, the question arises, How can responsibility be transferred from one to another?  How can the heavy load of a man’s sin be laid upon some new-born infant, while the departing sinner has himself no further concern in his evil Kharma, but sinks into non-existence the moment his “conformations” are touched with dissolution?  Buddhism acknowledges a mystery here; no real explanation can be given, and none seems to have been attempted by Buddhist writers.  To be consistent, Gautama, in denying the existence of God and of the soul as an entity, should have taught the materialistic doctrine of annihilation.  This, however, he could not do in the face of that deep-rooted idea of transmigration which had taken entire possession of the Hindu mind.  Gautama was compelled therefore to bridge a most illogical chasm as best he could.  Kharma without a soul to cling to is something in the air.  It alights like some winged seed upon a new-born set of Skandas with its luckless boon of ill desert, and it involves the fatal inconsistency of investing with permanent character that which is itself impermanent.

But the question may be asked, “Do we not admit a similar principle when we speak of a man’s influence as something that survives him?” We answer, “No.”  Influence is a simple radiation of impressions.  A man may leave an influence which men are free to accept or not, but it is quite a different thing if he leaves upon a successor the moral liabilities of a bankrupt character.  Gautama’s own Kharma, for example, ceased to exist upon his entering Nirvana; there was no re-birth; but his influence lives forever, and has extended to millions of his fellow-men.

The injustice involved in the doctrine of Kharma is startling.  The new-born soul that inherits its unsettled score has no memory or consciousness that connects it with himself; it is not heredity; it is not his father’s character that invests him.  This Kharma may have crossed the ocean from the death-bed of some unknown man of another race.  The doctrine is the more astonishing when we consider that no Supreme Being is recognized as claiming this retribution.  There is no God; it is a vague law of eternal justice, a law without a law-giver or a judge.  There can therefore be no pardon, no commutation of sentence, no such thing as divine pity or help.  The only way in which one can disentangle himself is by breaking forever the connection between spirit and matter which binds him with the shackles of conscious being.