akriyāvāda

akriyāvāda, set of beliefs held by heretic teachers in India who were contemporaries of the Buddha. The doctrine was a kind of antinomianism that, by denying the orthodox karmic theory of the efficacy of former deeds on a person’s present and future condition, also denied the possibility of a person’s influencing his own destiny through preferring righteous to bad conduct. The doctrine’s teachers were therefore severely criticized for immorality by their religious opponents, including Buddhists....