or act, is the name of the force which finds expression in the fact that every event is the result of causes and also is itself a cause which produces effects; further in the fact (for Indians regard it as one) that when a life, whether of a god, man or lower creature, comes to an end, the sum of its actions (which is in many connections equivalent to personal character) takes effect as a whole and determines the character of another aggregation of skandhas—­in popular language, another being—­representing the net result of the life which has come to an end.  Karma is also used in the more concrete sense of the merit or demerit acquired by various acts.  Thus we hear of karma which manifests itself in this life, and of karma which only manifests itself in another.  No explanation whatever is given of the origin of karma, of its reason, method or aims and it would not be consistent with the principles of the Buddha to give such an explanation.  Indeed, though it is justifiable to speak of karma as a force which calls into being the world as we know it, such a phrase goes beyond the habitual language of early Buddhism which merely states that everything has a cause and that every one’s nature and circumstances are the result of previous actions in this or other existences.  Karma is not so much invoked as a metaphysical explanation of the universe as accorded the consideration which it merits as an ultimate moral fact.

It has often been pointed out that the Buddha did not originate or even first popularize the ideas of reincarnation and karma:  they are Indian, not specifically Buddhist.  In fact, of all Indian systems of thought, Buddhism is the one which has the greatest difficulty in expressing these ideas in intelligible and consistent language, because it denies the existence of the ego.  Some writers have gone so far as to suggest that the whole doctrine formed no part of the Buddha’s original teaching and was an accretion, or at most a concession of the master to the beliefs of his time.  But I cannot think this view is correct.  The idea is woven into the texture of the Buddha’s discourses.  When in words which have as strong a claim as any in the Pitakas to be regarded as old and genuine he describes the stages by which he acquired enlightenment and promises the same experiences to those who observe his discipline[428], he says that he first followed the thread of his own previous existences through past aeons, plumbing the unfathomed depths of time:  next, the whole of existence was spread out before him, like a view-seen from above, and he saw beings passing away from one body and taking shape in another, according to their deeds.  Only when he understood both the perpetual transformation of the universe and also the line and sequence in which that transformation occurs, only then did he see the four truths as they really are.