Karma

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the doctrine of Karma as developed initially among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists in India from the first millennium BCE. Common to each is an idea, broadly, that you reap what you sow: how you act in this world has consequences either for your later life or your future lives, depending on your view of rebirth and transmigration. From this flow different ideas including those about free will, engagement with the world or disengagement, the nature of ethics and whether intention matters, and these ideas continue to develop today.

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Guests

• Monima Chadha No other episodes
  Professor of Indian Philosophy and Tutorial Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
• Jessica Frazier 10 episodes
  Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
• Karen O'Brien-Kop No other episodes
  Lecturer in Asian Religions at Kings College London

Reading list

• Karma
  J. Bronkhorst (University of Hawaii Press, 2011) Google Books →
• A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics
  J. H. Davis (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2017) Google Books →
• Buddhism Without Reincarnation? Examining the Prospects of a "Naturalized" Buddhism
  J. Westerhoff (Oxford University Press, 2017)
• Ethics and Epics: Philosophy, Culture, and Religion
  J. Ganeri (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2002)
• Karma and the Moral Order
  B. K. Matilal (Oxford University Press, 2002)
• The Doctrine of Karma: Its Origin and Development in Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina Traditions
  Y. Krishan (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 1997) Google Books →
• The Questions of King Milinda: An Abridgement of Milindapanha
  N.K.G. Mendis (ed.) (Buddhist Publication Society, 1993) Google Books →
• How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics
  M. Siderits (Oxford University Press, 2022) Google Books →
• The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology
  M. Vargas and J. Dorris (eds.) (Oxford Univesrity Press, 2022) Google Books →
• Karma, Moral Responsibility and Buddhist Ethics
  B. Finnigan (Oxford Univesrity Press, 2022)
• Collective Karma Cluster Concepts in Chinese Canonical Sources: A Note
  J. Zu (Journal of Global Buddhism, Vol.24: 2, 2023)

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Programme ID: m0020966

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020966

Auto-category: 294 (Religions of Indic origin)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In India, in the first millennium BC, the doctrine of karma developed among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists.