[Buddha-l] more tibetan self-immolations

[Richard Nance]

Richard Hayes wrote:

> In his excellent article on the history of the doctrine of karma, in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, >Wilhelm Halbfass wrote that the doctrine of collective karma, national karma, racial karma und so weiter dates
>back to the 19th century and has a Theosophical provenience.

Maybe so -- I don't feel qualified to dispute Halbfass on much of
anything -- but there are arguably antecedents in the classical
literature. Consider, for example, Abhidharmakośa IV.72cd (senādiṣv
ekakāryatvāt sarve kartṛvadanvitā) and the bhāṣya thereon. Pruden's
translation of the relevant section (from a French translation of a
Chinese translation of the Sanskrit) reads:

***
"When many persons are united with the intention to kill, either in
war, or in the hunt, or in banditry, who is guilty of murder, if only one of
them kills?

72c-d As soldiers, etc., concur in the realization of the same
effect, all are as guilty as the one who kills.

Having a common goal, all are guilty exactly as he who among them
kills, for all mutually incite one another, not through speech, but by the
very fact that they are united together in order to kill.

But is the person who has been constrained through force to join the
army also guilty?

Evidently so, unless he has formed the resolution, "Even in order to
save my life, I shall not kill a living being."

***

A quick pass over the extant Sanskrit suggests that the translation is
generally reliable (though one might, of course, quibble over points
of detail). As I recall, the position isn't explicitly thematized as a
notion of "collective karma" in the ADKbh, but it does look like a
possible antecedent to at least some of the views that Halbfass is
tracing to Theosophists.

Best wishes,

R. Nance
Indiana University