The Karma of Others: Stories from the Milindapañha and the Petavatthu- aṭṭhakathā

In accord with the theme of this conference, I will contrast the challenges to karma made by Dale Wright with a set of recent and equally challenging works on the nature of kamma and narrative in Theravāda Buddhism. Kamma is often portrayed as a coherent and rigid ethic of intentionality and personal responsibility: a being’s actions accrue to that being, and those actions inevitably ripen into their morally deserved consequences— pleasure or suffering, sickness or health, wealth or poverty—in this life or in lives to come. Complex versions of kamma, which draw and deviate from notions of intentionality and responsibility, are present in the Theravāda story tradition. Using episodic examples from the Milindapañha and the commentary to the Petavatthu, I will explore analogies and metaphors of a wise Buddhist king acting with intention, ordering and carrying out harsh punishments without the suggestion that the king will garner punishment for himself. As well, a story of meritorious kamma gained by an undisciplined and ignorant girl when she is forced to honor the feet of Sāriputta—a small violence that saves her from suffering in the hell realms. Within these stories, intentional acts without kamma, nonintentional acts with kamma, and ordinary intentional kamma, exist simultaneously. As such, they allow for special roles, special actions, and a concern for appropriate timing. tiracchāna-kathā: “low talk”; “beastly talk”; the opposite of right speech (sammā-vācā); “Talk about kings and robbers, minister and armies, danger and war, eating and drinking, clothes and dwellings, garlands and scents, relations, chariots, villages and markets, towns and districts, women and heroes, street talk, talks by the well, talk about those departed in days gone by, tittle-tattle, talks about world and sea, about gain and loss.” It is customary to begin with a textual definition of kamma, relying upon scriptural texts and good dictionaries. I will begin with such a definition before moving into the realm of “beastly talk” with stories of kings, thieves, and those departed (peta) from the Milindapañha and the Petavatthu-aṭṭhakathā. Both texts contain narratives that simultaneously confound and uphold a relationship of agent, intention, and acts based on intention and personal responsibility, and do so through the specialized roles of arahat, king, thief, and hungry ghost. Binary kamma: orthodoxy and its deviations Kamma means “action.” This broadly includes action in general, ritual act, grammatical object or patient, occupation, habitual action, occasion for action, and formal acts—such as the administrative acts of the saṅgha. Normally, however, it is moral and causal meanings of kamma that is stressed. Kamma, when it refers to morally relevant action, is