[Buddha-l] Confession, karma and Veda

[tccahill]

OK, I'll have to 'fess up that I haven't been following this
thread too closely.
So we read:

===============
I prefer however not to use the word karma for this kind of
ethics, 
because it would twist it's meaning very much. In Sanskrit
it still has 
the memory of the Vedic meaning attached to it and I see no
reason to 
ignore that.
===============

I really don't think classical Sanskrit retains much of the
Vedic "karman". It has moved from a countable noun to an
uncountable one. The Buddhist 'upgrade' of intention has
stamped karma indelibly (except for guys like Kumarila), and
the Jains seem to have led the charge towards abstraction
(ironically) by insisting that a harmful karma invariably
leads to demerit for the agent.  So I'm pretty comfortable
ignoring the Vedic usage when dealing w/ karma (no -s
intended), in general. And I'll ignore the issue of whether
it ought to be used "for this kind of ethics."

best,
Tim