ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses the teachings of karma and rebirth. In Vedic times, karma was originally caste-specific and referred primarily to the ritual actions of the Brahmin class who performed the Vedic sacrifices. Hindu and Jain notions of karma and rebirth typically maintain that there is a permanent self or soul which accrues karma and transmigrates, so that the same self is reborn but in a different body. Charles Goodman observes that rebirth can exist in a world without enduring, unchanging selves so long as causal processes exist that transmit 'large amounts of information from a dying sentient being into a sentient being that is coming into existence'. The limitations of the individualised interpretation of the karma teaching may be one reason why Buddhist sources, such as the Abhidharmakosabhasya, claim that awakened people have eradicated craving and ignorance and therefore their actions no longer produce karmic results.
