Karma, Janma and Apurva in the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya of Shankaracarya

If you can look into the seeds of time
And say which will grow and which will not
Speak them to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours, nor your fate.

(Banquo addressing the Weird Sisters Macbeth Act 1 Scene III)

The concept of karma/janma, of desserts and birth is well established in the religious systems of India. In Vedanta in particular the metaphysical underpinning of the doctrine is given close study. The satkaryavada theory of the non-difference between cause and effect is an important theory first introduced by the Sankhya. If interested there is no reason to repeat myself. Like the detectorist said - check it out! enter ‘satkaryavada in the search box.
satkaryavada
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Naturally the attraction of puzzle cases that appear to explode this theory are examined by Shankaracarya in his Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya. We can accept the flow of the universe and the causal process which is timely or immediate -

But it does not stand to reason that fruits can come at some future time from actions which get destroyed the next moment; because something cannot come out of nothing.

(Bhb. III.ii.38)

What is in question here is the efficacy of ritual. Nothing seems to come of it. Is it a waste of good ghee?

Vedantin:That too does not remove the difficulty; for there can be no such thing as a result till the agent of the act comes to possess it, inasmuch as any happiness or sorrow experienced by any soul at any time is recognised in the world to be such a result relatively to that very time. ..........Again if it be maintained that though the result may not issue just after the action, it can issue (in the future) out of the unseen potency emerging out of the act, that too is unjustifiable, for potency, which is inert like stocks and stones, cannot act unless stimulated by some conscious agent. Besides, such an unseen potency lacks any valid proof.

Shankara means here by potency and act material causation. Unseen potency cannot work like milk being turned into curds. No causal path can be discerned for it. Therefore its efficacy can only be accepted on the basis of faith in divine energy.

In Bhb. III.ii.40 Shankara in his account of the Mimansaka maintains that they accept the ‘unseen potency’ idea. This is referred to as apurva or the unprecedented in the special sense of an occurence that has no immediately preceding cause.

Mimamsaka: If the Vedic authority is accepted, one has to think in the way that would justify the kind of relation between action and the result of action that is mentioned in the Vedas. Unless the action, while undergoing destruction, produces some unseen potency, it cannot produce its result after an interval. Hence the inference to be drawn is that there is such a thing called unseen potency which may be either some subtle state of the action itself or some previous (seed) state of the result. In this way the position stated earlier becomes logical. But the theory that God ordains the results is illogical. For one uniform cause cannot produce variegated results; that will lead to partiality and cruelty on God’s part and the performance of action will be useless. Hence the conclusion is that results are produced by virtuous deeds alone.

Is this conflict an aporia generated by the accepted efficacy of ritual. Shankara does not admit this impasse:

And God’s bestowing of results consists precisely in His creating the creatures according to individual merits. The defects of the impossibility of the emergence of variegated results from the very same cause, and so on, do not arise since God acts by taking into account the efforts made by his creatures (Bhb. III.ii.41)




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