On the karmic nature of the intermediate being/state (antarābhava) between biological death and rebirth

The question of whether an intermediate being, the most populous life-form within the Buddhist cosmos, is karmically potent, or karmically inert, is of profound importance to Abhidharma Buddhism. At stake are the doctrinal issues of whether the “pleasurable” (sukha), “painful” (duḥkha), or “indeterminate” (avyākṛta) karmic consequences of the intentional actions of the body, speech, and mind of an individual sentient being, is determined during the period of “fundamental existence” (pūrvabhava) – i.e., the stage of living in association with a gross physical body – or whether karmic recompense can be modified after biological death, while an individual sentient being, in the life-form of the antarābhava, traverses the spatio-temporal interval between death and rebirth.

Three questions are central to the debates about the karmic nature of the intermediate being. First, does the admittedly evanescent and subtly embodied intermediate being have the capacity to generate new karma? Second, does the karma generated by the intermediate being impact the subsequent stages of the lifecycle of an individual sentient being, or future lifecycles? Third, does the karma produced during the intermediate state modify the hedonic aspects — the pleasurable, painful, or neutral qualities — of the “transmigratory paths” (Skt. gatayaḥ), the life-forms and the physical domains, into which a sentient being is born, or reborn, over subsequent cycles of life?

This paper examines two strata of primary sources that contain portions of the Abhidharma Buddhist exegeses and debates regarding the karmic nature of the intermediate being. The first stratum consists of the scholastic treatises compiled by the Kaśmīri scholars from the Vaibhāṣika branch of Sarvāstivāda Buddhism during the early first and second centuries; these venerable sources include the Jñānaprasthāna and the *Mahāvibhāṣā, canonical Sarvāstivāda works translated into Chinese by Xuanzang and his disciples. The second stratum of primary materials comprises the extensive and understudied body of exegeses on the earlier Sarvāstivāda sources composed by the protean philosopher, Vasubandhu (fl. fifth century C.E.), and his slightly older contemporary, and intellectual sparring partner, Saṅghabhadra (fl. fifth century C.E.).

The Abhidharma treatises of Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra represent the culmination of their exegesis of the Vaibhāṣika works explicating the doctrine of the intermediate “state” (bhava; you有) or  “stage” (avasthā; fenwei 分位). In their meticulous studies of the earlier source materials illuminating the nature and status of the antarābhava, Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra focus on the role played by the intermediate being in transmitting karma from one stage in the lifecycle of a sentient being to the next. Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra come to designate the antarābhava as an invariable feature of the Buddhist lifecycle; instantiate the intermediate state as a stage through which the vast majority of sentient beings pass; affirm the karmic potency of the intermediate being; identify the mechanisms by which the consequences of the karma generated by the intermediate being are yielded; and assess the temporal scope of the recompense of the karma produced by the antarābhava during the intermediate stage. The detailed investigations of the inherited doctrine of the intermediate state and the intermediate being conducted by Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra address broader thematic issues including the stages of the Buddhist lifecycle, the transmissibility of karma, and the survivability of the individual sentient being throughout the continuous cycles of saṃsāra. 

According to the Buddhist doctrine of saṃsāra, sentient beings are driven from one entire lifecycle to the next by the accumulation of karma resulting from the wholesome, unwholesome, or indeterminate intentional actions taken in their current, and past, lifecycles. The Vaibhāṣika theorists conceptualize the entirety of one lifecycle of an individual sentient being as beginning in the moment immediately following conception (upapatti) and ending in the moment of conception inaugurating the following lifecycle. To the Vaibhāṣika theorists, the moment after conception delineates the beginning of the state of fundamental existence (pūrvabhava), the spatio-temporal stage during which the grossly physically embodied life-form undergoes gestation, delivery, parturition, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, senescence, and the moment immediately preceding the instantaneous event of biological death. Within the Vaibhāṣika accounts, the expiration of the gross physical body of the individual sentient being comprises the stage of becoming deceased and demarcates the end of the stage of fundamental existence. In the moment immediately after becoming deceased, the sentient being discards the gross physical body associated with the stage of fundamental existence and assumes the subtlety embodied type of sentient life-form known as the antarābhava.

Doctrinal accounts of the nature and existence of the Buddhist afterlife are of interest to the philosophy of religion due to their radical contrast with Abrahamic conceptions of the afterlife as the final culminating stage in the lifecycle. Rather, as mentioned above, according to Abhidharma Buddhist teaching, the intermediate state precedes the stage of rebirth of an individual sentient being wherein they assume a new gross physical form. These accounts of the karmic nature of the intermediate being offer rich fodder for inquiry.