Editing Karma (section)

===Free will and destiny===

One of the significant controversies with the karma doctrine is whether it always implies [[destiny]], and its implications on free will. This controversy is also referred to as the [[moral agency]] problem;<ref name=wrkaufman>Kaufman, W. R. (2005), Karma, rebirth, and the problem of evil, Philosophy East and West, pp 15–32</ref> the controversy is not unique to karma doctrine, but also found in some form in [[Monotheism|monotheistic religions]].<ref>[Moral responsibility] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University (2009); Quote – "Can a person be morally responsible for her behavior if that behavior can be explained solely by reference to physical states of the universe and the laws governing changes in those physical states, or solely by reference to the existence of a sovereign God who guides the world along a divinely ordained path?"</ref>

The free will controversy can be outlined in three parts:<ref name=wrkaufman/>

# A person who kills, rapes or commits any other unjust act, can claim all his bad actions were a product of his karma:  he is devoid of free will, he can not make a choice, he is an agent of karma, and he merely delivers necessary punishments his "wicked" victims deserved for their own karma in past lives. Are crimes and unjust actions due to free will, or because of forces of karma?
# Does a person who suffers from the unnatural death of a loved one, or rape or any other unjust act, assume a moral agent is responsible, that the harm is gratuitous, and therefore seek justice? Or, should one blame oneself for bad karma over past lives, and assume that the unjust suffering is fate?
# Does the karma doctrine undermine the incentive for moral education—because all suffering is deserved and consequence of past lives, why learn anything when the balance sheet of karma from past lives will determine one's action and sufferings?<ref>Herman, Arthur (1976), The Problem of Evil in Indian Thought, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas</ref>

The explanations and replies to the above free will problem vary by the specific school of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The schools of Hinduism, such as [[Yoga (philosophy)|Yoga]] and [[Advaita Vedanta]], that have emphasized current life over the dynamics of karma residue moving across past lives, allow free will.<ref name=Coward-Karma/> Their argument, as well of other schools, are threefold:

# The theory of karma includes both the action and the intent behind that action. Not only is one affected by past karma, one creates new karma whenever one acts with intent – good or bad. If intent and act can be proven beyond reasonable doubt, new karma can be proven, and the process of justice can proceed against this new karma. The actor who kills, rapes or commits any other unjust act, must be considered as the moral agent for this new karma, and tried.
# Life forms not only receive and reap the consequence of their past karma, together they are the means to initiate, evaluate, judge, give and deliver consequence of karma to others.
# Karma is a theory that explains some evils, not all (cf. [[moral evil]] versus [[natural evil]]).<ref>Reichenbach, Bruce (1990), The Law of Karma, University of Hawaiʻi Press, Honolulu, {{ISBN|978-0-333-53559-2}}</ref><ref name="mdeb" />

Other schools of Hinduism, as well as Buddhism and Jainism that do consider cycle of rebirths central to their beliefs and that karma from past lives affects one's present, believe that both free will (''[[cetanā]]'') and karma can co-exist; however, their answers have not persuaded all scholars.<ref name="wrkaufman" /><ref name="mdeb">Matthew Dasti and Edwin Bryant (2013), Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy, Oxford University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-19-992275-8}}</ref>