Always been thinking about this. Since the conditions are different already, could their actions generate karma?
Fully liberated beings, e.g. arhants, can no longer create karma that leads to samsara.
However, they still experience the ripening of old karmas. Mogallana gets killed by bandits throwing rocks, Buddha gets headache (due to being a fisherman hitting a fish with stone in past lives) and eventually dies from eating poisonous food (knowingly), etc.
However, even though they experience the effects of past karmas, the effects are lessened very very much. As Buddha states in the discourse on angulimala, the effects Angulimala would have to endure for killing 999 people (he had to go to hell) had been replaced with being ill-treated by people hurling things and hurting him and not giving alms, etc. But he will not fall into hell because he will no longer be reborn in samsara - he is an arahant.
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation. So that's what would happen to Angulimala.
Enlightenment is not series of memory stored in brain, it is the realization at 7th conscious and 8th conscious.
So even if there is brain damage or even the whole physical body is destroyed, enlightened being is always an enlightened being.
Originally posted by Jui:Always been thinking about this. Since the conditions are different already, could their actions generate karma?
Are you referring to the possibility of a change of behavior and personality from one who is gentle and full of kindness to one that has a violent behaviors and capable of committing unspeakable evil acts due to a brain damage?
Yeah, actually I really should have asked instead if a being suffering from brain damage generates karma, although I guess since the volition is already missing/severely compromised there's no karma generated already.
You mean normal people that have brain damage?
If a person still have thoughts, speech, and action that arises from the three poisons of passion, aggression and delusion, then he is still creating samsaric karma.
Enlightened (as in fully liberated) people lack the three poisons so it is not possible for them to create samsaric karma anymore.