Hinduism Hinduism () is an Indian religion or ''dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global po ...

and

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

, the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

term Bīja () ( Jp. 種子 shuji) (

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...

种子 zhǒng zǐ), literally

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosper ...

, is used as a metaphor for the origin or cause of things and cognate with

bindu Bindu ( sa, बिंदु) is a term meaning "point" or "dot". Bindu may also refer to: * Bindu (symbol) * Bindu, India, village in Darjeeling district of West Bengal India * Anusvara, a diacritical mark represented as a ''bindu'' or dot * ''B ...

Buddhist theory of karmic seeds

Various schools of Buddhist thought held that karmic effects arose out of seeds that were latent in an individual's

mindstream Mindstream (''citta-santāna'') in Buddhist philosophy is the moment-to-moment continuum (Sanskrit: ''saṃtāna'') of sense impressions and mental phenomena, which is also described as continuing from one life to another. Definition ' (Sanskri ...

or psycho-physical continuum.Fukuda, Takumi. BHADANTA RAMA: A SAUTRANTIKA BEFORE VASUBANDHU, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Volume 26 Number 2 2003. Rupert Gethin describes the theory thus:

When I perform an action motivated by greed, it plants a 'seed' in the series of
dharmas The Abhidharma are ancient (third century BCE and later) Buddhist texts which contain detai