All that is, all processes whatsoever, whether they be re-actual or
whether they be actual, all is Sankhāra. This is the epistemological
key-word of Buddhism. Its meaning is, All is of a compounded, of a
conditioned nature. The Buddha concurs with modern science in so far
as it rejects an uncompounded, an unconditioned, a unity in itself, a
soul-substance, or whatever else one chooses to style it. As already
shown, for science one event is entirely conditioned by other events;
she makes the adequate cause of one phenomenon of life simply other
phenomena of life, and thereby frankly remains always in the realm of
the sensible, the demonstrable--thereby limits herself, however, to
the re-actual side of the world. Among the actual, self-sustaining
processes, this position has no foothold whatever; for in these actual
forces _must_ be present, and as such never by any means can be
perceptible to sense, thus also can never be the subject of science.
One can only speak of an actual view of the world where the _actual_
world is concerned. I comprehend it when I discern the adequate causes
of the actual processes, that is, the forces actively at work in them.
Now the word _Sankhāra_ signifies not only “the compounded,” “the
conditioned,” but also “the compounding,” “the conditioning,” somewhat
the same as the German word _Wirkung_ may equally well be held to
signify the result effected by the cause as the actual effecting of
that result itself. In the former case it signifies that forces have
been present; it has reference to the re-actual world. In the latter
case it means that forces _are_ present; it refers to the actual world.
Like the word _Wirkung_, the word _Sankhāra_ embraces both these
aspects.
With reference to the self-sustaining, actual processes, the teaching
of the Buddha proceeds:--
All living beings exist by reason of forces. Accordingly the Buddha
here agrees with faith, inasmuch as he recognizes the presence in
living beings of what is imperceptible to sense; for a force can never
be perceptible to sense.
But whilst faith makes every living being exist in virtue of a
universal force, and thereby assumes an “adequate cause in itself”--as
a transcendent, an absolute, a god--which means “believing,” thus
landing itself in the predicament of having to interpret the re-actual
side of the world also by this “force”; the Buddha on his part
teaches:--
_Every living being is here in virtue of individual force peculiar
to him alone._ This force hereby in quite a literal sense becomes an
_in-force_, an _en-ergy_. The Buddha teaches the existence of _actual
energies_, in contradistinction to faith’s universal force.
This _in-force_ peculiar to every living being, and thereby _unique_,
is called by the Buddha _the Kamma_ (Sanskrit, Karma) of such a living
being.
Kamma means nothing but “_the working_.” Kamma is that in virtue
of which a living being manifests activity after its own unique
fashion--in its own unique way reacts upon the external world; it is
that which makes a living being to be an individuality, a personality.
Every living being is a thing unique, and as such incapable of being
compared, incapable of being repeated, as re-actual processes are not,
since in them no actual forces are active. Though I see, hear, smell,
taste, touch, and think the same thing, it is yet my own, a something
unique that I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think.
I am a thing unique, a personality in virtue of my _in-force_, of my
Kamma.