Buddhism is so systematically and eminently rationalistic throughout its teaching that one feels impelled to a supreme effort to sustain its reputation in this one respect. In any case it would seem just to assume that it had a rationalistic basis in the mind of Gotama, however difficult it may be for us to discover the foundation of Rationalism on which it rests. An apparently irrational theory should not be rejected as irrational as long as it is within the bounds of possibility that the apparent irrationality is due to the limitations of our reason, or the absence of data, that have not come under our experience and knowledge of Cosmic laws. Everything may be contrary to what we think it to be; and everything may be opinion only.
As some beautiful poems cannot be thought out in connection with one's immediate environment without a loss of poetic value, but require mental transposition to a distant and different scene for their beauty to be fully and poetically realized, so, unless we remove our imagination from its every-day associations to an entirely different "scenery" of thought, we cannot expect to intelligently appreciate the complete significance of Buddhistic conceptions. As Professor Oldenberg puts it, we must, when approaching the study of Buddhism, divest ourselves wholly of all customary modes of thinking.
Buddhism lays stress everywhere upon the connectiveness of everything with everything; and everything is, at all times, something other than itself. Consciousness (Vinnâna), for instance, is described as "that which enters into the womb, and from which arise name and corporeal form"; yet consciousness and name and corporeal form have no individual existence.
"Body, perceptions, and sensations vanish, but not conscience; but consciousness only exists as long as it is connected with name and corporeal form. Consciousness, however, is not essentially different from perceptions and sensations; it is also a Samskâra, and, like all other Samskâras, it is changeable, and without substance."[AJ]
Consciousness has been described as the director of the organs, and, in this sense, vaguely assumes the place of an ego. Consciousness, as a "highly-developed and insubstantial product of the brain," possesses the faculty of acting in the manner of choice; it is derived from conformations, and conformations from ignorance.
There is a continuance of soul-forms after the death of an individual—that is, of the impressions caused by the character of an individual. This is the preservation of form by means of Karma (deeds). Obviously these soul-forms cannot continue unless there is an individual to receive the impression. Therefore, when it is said that, immediately upon the death of a sentient being, another sentient being is produced to receive the effects of the deceased's Karma, the statement may have been only intended to imply that for the continuance of soul-forms there must always be sentient beings to receive their impressions.
It does not seem necessary to suppose that on A's death B takes up the whole of A's Karma. The effects of A's Karma have been impressed, more or less, on all those who have come in his lifetime, and will come after his death, within range of his influence. In the latter case the influence is continued in the effects of his writings, speech, or other actions.
An individual during his lifetime will be impressed with the effects of the Karma of many individuals, and has to take the consequences, whether good or bad, with power of adding to or modifying the received effects. "The same character of deeds reappears wherever his deeds have impressed themselves on other minds."
The subject of Karma becomes hopelessly complicated if such a statement as the following is taken literally: "Buddhism is convinced that, if a man reaps sorrow, disappointment, pain, he himself, and no other, must at some time have sown folly, error, sin; if not in this life, then in some former birth." The language here employed is liable, unless the reader is on his guard, to take him back to the heresy of Metempsychosis, which Buddhism arose to destroy.
It perhaps needs reiteration that the "He Himself" in a former birth is not even the deeds of a different set of Skandhas—of a body of different constituent parts. The "He Himself" is only the effects of deeds done by a constantly becoming and constantly vanishing set of Skandhas, the particles of the human tornado which assume temporary form. The effects received become the "He Himself"; herein is the retributive phase of the doctrine of Karma.