What is cause and effect according to the Buddha?

The so-called cause and effect, cause is the reason that can create and produce certain consequences, the fruit is the result produced by certain causes. From the Buddhist theory of karma came the theory of cause and effect, the theory of cause and effect is the basis of the Buddhist theory of reincarnation and liberation, with the development of Buddhism and the theory of cause and effect produced different views.

The law of cause and effect states that you reap what you sow. Buddhism believes that anything can be a cause or an effect, and that there is no absolute cause or absolute effect. The term cause, as used in Buddhism, is sometimes used in conjunction with karma, and some distinctions are made. Cause in the narrower sense refers to the direct or intrinsic cause that produces the result, while karma refers primarily to the secondary or extrinsic indirect conditions that produce the result.

Characteristics of causality:

1, the objectivity of causality. Causality as the objective phenomena between cause and be caused by the relationship, it is the objective existence, and not to people's subjective for transfer.

2, the specificity of causality. Things are universally connected, in order to understand the individual phenomena, we must take them out of the universal connection, examining them in isolation, one for the cause, the other for the result. The specificity of criminal law causality is shown in that it can only be a causal link between the harmful acts of man and the harmful results.

3, the time sequence of causality. The cause must be in the first, the result can only be in the latter, the two can not be reversed in the order of time. In criminal cases, only from the harmful results occur before the harmful behavior to find the cause.

Reference:

Baidu Encyclopedia - Causality