Nāgārjuna's Middle Way · Chapter 17
Examination of Actions and Their Fruits
An unkind word spoken today can come back months later. A habit practised for years shapes a character. The Buddhist teaching of karma says more: intentional actions bear fruit, in this life and beyond it. But how does an action reach its fruit? The action is over in a moment; the fruit comes much later. Something seems to have to bridge the gap. This chapter is the longest discussion of that question in the work.
It is also the chapter where Nāgārjuna gives his opponents the most room. For twenty verses he lets two Buddhist schools explain how karma works. Only then does he reply. His answer is not that karma is false, but that agent, action and fruit are empty, and that this is exactly why they work, like a magician's creations. The chapter follows the search for a wanderer in Chapter 16 and uses the analysis of agent and action from Chapter 8.
The verses
The translation is new, made from the Sanskrit for this site. The Sanskrit is given above each verse; it follows the GRETIL e-text (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
maitraṃ sa dharmas tad bījaṃ phalasya pretya ceha ca ||
A mind that restrains itself, that helps others and that is kind: that is the dharma, the seed of fruit both after death and here.
tasyānekavidho bhedaḥ karmaṇaḥ parikīrtitaḥ ||
The supreme seer said that action is intention and what is done after intending. He described many kinds of action.
cetayitvā ca yat tūktaṃ tat tu kāyikavācikam ||
Of these, the action called intention is taught to be mental action. What is called 'done after intending' is action of body and speech.
avijñaptaya evānyāḥ smṛtā viratayas tathā ||
Speech and bodily movement; the unseen traces of not refraining; and likewise the other unseen traces, those of refraining;
cetanā ceti saptaite dharmāḥ karmāñjanāḥ smṛtāḥ ||
merit that follows from the use of a gift, demerit of the same kind, and intention: these seven are taught as the things that make up action.
niruddhaṃ cen niruddhaṃ sat kiṃ phalaṃ janayiṣyati ||
If an action stayed until the time it ripens, it would be permanent. If it has ceased, then, being ceased, what fruit will it produce?
tataḥ phalam ṛte bījāt sa ca nābhipravartate ||
From a seed comes a continuum, beginning with the sprout, and from that comes the fruit. Without the seed, that continuum does not come about.
bījapūrvaṃ phalaṃ tasmān nocchinnaṃ nāpi śāśvatam ||
Since the continuum comes from the seed and the fruit from the continuum, the fruit is preceded by the seed. So it is neither cut off nor permanent.
tataḥ phalam ṛte cittāt sa ca nābhipravartate ||
In the same way, from an intention comes a continuum of mind, and from that comes the fruit. Without the mind, that continuum does not come about.
karmapūrvaṃ phalaṃ tasmān nocchinnaṃ nāpi śāśvatam ||
Since the continuum comes from the mind and the fruit from the continuum, the fruit is preceded by the action. So it is neither cut off nor permanent.
phalaṃ kāmaguṇāḥ pañca dharmasya pretya ceha ca ||
The ten bright paths of action are the means of practising the dharma. The five pleasures of the senses are the dharma's fruit, after death and here.
syād eṣā tena naivaiṣā kalpanātropapadyate ||
If that were the account, there would be many great faults. So that account does not fit here.
buddhaiḥ pratyekabuddhaiś ca śrāvakaiś cānuvarṇitām ||
Instead I shall explain the account that does fit here, praised by the buddhas, the solitary buddhas and the disciples.
caturvidho dhātutaḥ sa prakṛtyāvyākṛtaś ca saḥ ||
The imperishable is like a promissory note, and the action is like the debt. By realm it is of four kinds, and by its nature it is neither good nor bad.
tasmād avipraṇāśena jāyate karmaṇāṃ phalam ||
It is not removed by the path of seeing; it is removed only by the path of cultivation. So it is through the imperishable that the fruit of actions is born.
yadi doṣāḥ prasajyeraṃs tatra karmavadhādayaḥ ||
If it were removed by the path of seeing, or by the action's passing on, faults would follow, such as the destruction of actions.
pratisaṃdhau sadhātūnām eka utpadyate tu saḥ ||
For all actions of the same realm, alike and unalike, a single imperishable arises at the moment of rebirth.
dviprakārasya sarvasya vipakve 'pi ca tiṣṭhati ||
In this present life it arises for each action of either kind, and it remains even when the action has ripened.
anāsravaṃ sāsravaṃ ca vibhāgaṃ tatra lakṣayet ||
It ceases when the fruit has been passed beyond, or at death. There one should note the division into what is free of the outflows and what is not.
karmaṇo 'vipraṇāśaś ca dharmo buddhena deśitaḥ ||
Emptiness, yet not annihilation; saṃsāra, yet not permanence; and the imperishability of action: this is the dharma the Buddha taught.
yasmāc ca tad anutpannaṃ na tasmād vipraṇaśyati ||
Why does action not arise? Because it is without own-nature. And because it has not arisen, it does not perish.
akṛtaṃ ca bhavet karma kriyate na hi śāśvatam ||
If action existed by own-nature, it would without doubt be permanent. And action would be unmade, for what is permanent is not made.
abrahmacaryavāsaś ca doṣastatra prasajyate ||
If action were unmade, one would have to fear meeting the fruit of what one never did. And the fault would follow that living the holy life is pointless.
puṇyapāpakṛtor naiva pravibhāgaś ca yujyate ||
Without doubt, all everyday conventions would be contradicted, and the distinction between one who does good and one who does harm would not hold.
karma vyavasthitaṃ yasmāt tasmāt svābhāvikaṃ yadi ||
And an action that has already ripened would ripen yet again, if, being fixed, it existed by its own nature.
na cet te tattvataḥ kleśāḥ karma syāt tattvataḥ katham ||
This action has the afflictions as its nature, and the afflictions are not real in truth. If the afflictions are not real in truth, how could action be real in truth?
karma kleśāś ca te śūnyā yadi deheṣu kā kathā ||
Action and the afflictions are taught to be the conditions of bodies. If action and the afflictions are empty, what is there to say about bodies?
sa bhoktā sa ca na kartur anyo na ca sa eva saḥ ||
A being veiled by ignorance and fettered by craving is the one who experiences the fruit. That one is neither other than the doer nor the very same.
asti yasmād idaṃ karma tasmāt kartāpi nāsty ataḥ ||
Since this action is not found arisen from conditions, nor arisen without conditions, there is no doer either.
asaty atha phale bhoktā kuta eva bhaviṣyati ||
If there is no action and no doer, where could there be a fruit born of action? And if there is no fruit, where will there be one who experiences it?
nirmito nirmimītānyaṃ sa ca nirmitakaḥ punaḥ ||
Suppose the Teacher, by the power of his attainment, made a magical person, and that magical person in turn made another.
tadyathā nirmitenānyo nirmito nirmitas tathā ||
The doer is like that magical person, and the action it does is like the second person, made by the one who was made.
gandharvanagarākārā marīcisvapnasaṃnibhāḥ ||
Afflictions, actions, bodies, doers and fruits are like a city in the clouds, like a mirage, like a dream.
Who is speaking
This chapter is easy to misread, because for most of it Nāgārjuna is not speaking in his own voice. It helps to know the order before reading the explanation.
| Verses | Speaker | What is said |
|---|---|---|
| 17.1–5 | Buddhist teaching, as the schools held it | What karma is, and its kinds |
| 17.6 | The problem | How does a past action reach a later fruit? |
| 17.7–11 | First school (often identified with the Sautrāntikas) | A continuum, like seed to fruit |
| 17.12–19 | Second school (the Sāṃmitīyas, says Candrakīrti) | An 'imperishable', like a promissory note |
| 17.20 | Disputed | Emptiness, not annihilation; saṃsāra, not permanence |
| 17.21–33 | Nāgārjuna | Action is empty, and works like a magical creation |
What karma is
The chapter opens with teaching every Buddhist school shared (17.1–5). Restraint, kindness and help to others are the dharma, the seed of good results now and later. The Buddha defined action as intention, and as what is done after intending (17.2). Intention is mental action; what follows from it in body and speech is bodily and verbal action (17.3).
Verses 17.4–5 give the Abhidharma's finer list of seven: speech, bodily movement, two kinds of 'unseen' trace (avijñapti) left by taking or breaking a vow, merit and demerit that keep growing as a gift is used, and intention itself. The details matter less than the point. The schools had worked out, carefully, what an action is. The question is how it reaches its result.
The gap between action and fruit
Verse 17.6 states the problem sharply. A harsh word is spoken today, and its fruit comes years later. Does the action stay in existence until it ripens? Then it is permanent, a thing that lasts unchanged, which no Buddhist school could accept. Has it ceased? Then what is left to produce the fruit? A cause that no longer exists cannot do anything.
The first answer: a continuum, like a seed
The first school answers with a familiar picture (17.7–11). A seed does not last until the fruit, and it does not simply vanish either. It gives rise to a sprout, the sprout to a stem, the stem to a flower, and the flower to the fruit. Without the seed, none of this happens. So the fruit is preceded by the seed, and the process is 'neither cut off nor permanent' (17.8).
Karma, they say, works the same way. An intention gives rise to a continuum (saṃtāna) of mind, a stream of mental moments, each conditioning the next. In time the stream yields the fruit (17.9–10). Good actions, the ten bright paths of action, bear pleasant fruit (17.11).
This is a good answer as far as it goes, and much of it survives in Nāgārjuna's own view. But the second school finds a flaw (17.12). Candrakīrti spells it out: a stream of mind changes constantly, and good and bad intentions keep arising in it. A seed only ever produces its own kind of fruit, but a mental stream that produced a kind act this morning may produce an angry one this afternoon. What keeps the fruit of this morning's action tied to its own stream, through all that change, and even across a lifetime? The seed image does not say.
The second answer: the imperishable, like a promissory note
The second school offers its own account (17.13–19). When an action is done, it creates something else that does not perish: the imperishable (avipraṇāśa). It is like a promissory note (17.14). A loan is spent at once, but the note stays in the drawer, and when the time comes it is what makes the debt payable. In the same way the action is gone, but the imperishable remains until the fruit is paid out.
The school adds details. The imperishable belongs to one of four realms and is itself neutral, neither good nor bad (17.14). Insight on the path of seeing does not remove it, or the fruits of all past actions would be wiped out at a stroke; nor is it removed when the action passes on. Only long cultivation removes it (17.15–16). In this life one arises for each action, and it stays even after the action has ripened; at rebirth a single one arises for all the actions of that realm. It ceases when the fruit is passed beyond, or at death (17.17–19).
Verse 17.20 then sums up: emptiness, yet not annihilation; saṃsāra, yet not permanence; and the imperishability of action. Who says this is disputed. Candrakīrti treats it as the second school's closing claim that its theory fits the Buddha's teaching. Some modern readers hear Nāgārjuna's own voice in it. On either reading, the verse sets the terms of what follows: whatever account is right must avoid both annihilation and permanence.
Nāgārjuna's reply: action never arose
Nāgārjuna does not choose between the two models. He goes underneath both (17.21). Both assume that an action arises as a real thing, and then ask how that thing bridges the gap to its fruit. But action has no own-nature, so it does not arise as such a thing. And what never arose as a thing has nothing to perish. The second school wanted an 'imperishable'; Nāgārjuna gives them one, in a sense they did not expect. Action is imperishable because it never arose with a nature of its own, not because a lasting record of it is kept somewhere.
Then he shows what would happen if action did have own-nature (17.22–25). It would be permanent, since own-nature does not change. Being permanent, it could not be made, for what is made is not permanent. Then it would be unmade, and one would meet fruits of actions one never did. The whole point of ethical effort and the holy life would vanish. Every ordinary convention of praise and blame, of good and harmful deeds, would collapse. And an action that had already ripened would go on ripening forever.
Afflictions, bodies and the one who experiences
Verses 17.26–27 follow the chain of conditions. Action springs from the afflictions: craving, anger, confusion. The afflictions are not real in truth; earlier chapters showed that they too arise in dependence. How could actions born of them be more real than their source? And bodies, said to be produced by action and afflictions, cannot be more real than what conditions them.
Who, then, experiences the fruit (17.28)? A being veiled by ignorance and bound by craving. Is that one the same as the doer, or another? Neither. If the very same, nothing would have changed between the act and its fruit. If another, one person would pay for another's deed. This is the 'neither the same nor different' of Chapter 18, applied to moral responsibility. The person who spoke harshly last year and the person who now lives with its result are linked as a continuity designated across changing moments, not as one unchanging self, and not as strangers.
Verses 17.29–30 close the search. Action is not found arisen from conditions as a self-standing thing (Chapter 1), nor arisen without conditions. So no self-standing doer is found either, since a doer is designated by the doing (Chapter 8). And with no such action and doer, there is no self-standing fruit, and no self-standing one who experiences it.
The magician's creations
If that were the end, the chapter would sound like a denial of karma. It is not the end. Verses 17.31–32 give the image that carries Nāgārjuna's own view. Suppose the Buddha, by his power, creates a magical person, and that magical person in turn creates another. The second figure is really created, by the first; it appears, acts and has effects. Yet neither figure has any nature of its own. So it is with a doer and the action it does.
The final verse (17.33) lists everything the chapter has examined: afflictions, actions, bodies, doers and fruits. All are like a city in the clouds, a mirage, a dream. These images are chosen with care. A mirage is not nothing: it is seen, and travellers turn toward it. A dream can make the dreamer weep. What they lack is a nature of their own, found when looked for. That is the status of karma: fully working, and nowhere found standing by itself.
What is left standing
Everything that matters about karma is kept. Kind acts tend toward happiness and cruel acts toward suffering. Practice changes a person. One is responsible for what one has done. Nāgārjuna keeps all of this, and argues that only an empty karma can deliver it: a karma with its own nature could never be made, never change and never end. What goes is the need for a bridge, a lasting thing that carries the deed to its fruit. The link between action and result is real and reliable, as the link between rice seed and rice is. It is designated across the moments, not carried by something that travels through them. The books compare it to a melody known by heart: no tune is stored between playings, yet it is recognised, practised and changed.
In the books
The two books take up this chapter's themes in several places.
- Chapter 9, The Reconceptualization of Continuity (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World), the section 'Objection: If No One Persists, Who Is Responsible?': agent, action and result are empty and yet, like a magician's creations, they function (verses 17.31–33); the mere I acts and experiences results.
- The Logic of Dependency (bonus article), the section 'Continuity Without a Carrier': habit, character, skill and karma as a link designated across moments, like a melody, with no carrier.
- Chapter 3, Unfindability and Freedom from the Eight Extremes, the section 'Neither Permanent Nor Annihilated': the rice seed and sprout of the Śālistamba Sūtra, the image the first school uses in verses 17.7–8.
- Chapter 14, The Role of Function in Conventional Reality, the section 'Why Convention Seems Too Weak to Work': one magically created man can stop another; empty things act on empty things.
- Chapter 8, States of Awareness, Deep Sleep, and Death, the section 'Objection: Doesn't This Evade the Question of Rebirth?': Nāgasena's lamp, neither the same nor another.
Read also: Neither Carried Nor Cut, on continuity with nothing carried over and nothing cut off.
Talks on YouTube:
Words to know
- Action (karman): intention, and what is done after intending, by body, speech and mind.
- Intention (cetanā): the mental act that the Buddha identified with action itself.
- Continuum (saṃtāna): a stream of moments, each conditioning the next; the first school's bridge from action to fruit.
- The imperishable (avipraṇāśa): the second school's lasting record of an action, like a promissory note.
- Fruit, ripening (phala, vipāka): the result an action brings, now or later.
- Afflictions (kleśa): craving, anger, confusion and the like, from which actions spring.
- Magical creation (nirmita): a figure made by magic: it appears and acts, yet has no nature of its own.