[Buddha-l] Re: Multi-cause vs single-cause

[Shantavira]

I quote from "Exploring Karma and Rebirth", by Nagapriya

There is a very important but little known Pali scripture called the
Moliyasivaka Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 36.21) in which the Buddha is asked
whether he accepts the view that all suffering and all pleasure are caused
by previous conduct. The Buddha's reply is very clear:

"When those ascetics and brahmins hold such a doctrine and view as this,
'Whatever a person experiences, whether it be pleasant or painful or
neither-painful-nor-pleasant, all that is caused by what was done in the
past,' they overshoot what one knows by oneself and they overshoot what is
considered to be true in the world. Therefore I say that this is wrong on
the part of those ascetics and brahmins."

The text goes on to outline a number of other causes for pleasurable,
painful, and neutral feeling, of which karma is just one. (The same list of
causal factors is found in the Putta Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 4.87), the Tana
Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 4.125), and the Girimananda Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya
10.60).) These include physical illnesses and the influence of the
environment. The same issue is tackled in ... the Milindapanha or 'Questions
of King Milinda'. Among many other thorny questions, the king asks Nagasena,
a Buddhist monk, how feelings of pleasure and pain arise. In summarizing the
teaching given in the Moliyasivaka Sutta, Nagasena makes it clear that not
all feeling has its root in karma. He concludes,

"Whoever says, 'It is only kamma that oppresses beings,' ... is wrong....
The pain which is due to kamma is much less than that due to other causes.
The ignorant go too far when they say that everything that is experienced is
produced as the fruit of kamma. Without a Buddha's insight no one can
ascertain the extent of the action of kamma."