Bill: > What happens to those effects? > Karma is a Buddhist concept, along with samsara and moksha, from the shramana tradition, "of which Buddhism and Jainism are continuations."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma According to Buddhist teaching, 'karma' has nothing to do with a persons future rebirths. Karma is just the law of cause and effect and everything is subject to this law, from a highly evolved person down to a single blade of grass - there are no exceptions. If there were any kinds of left-over karmic actions in future births these would have to be controlled by the Ishvara, the inner controller. But Buddhism has no such controller - so karma is just Causation, the central philosophy of Buddhism. In order for a person to reap the result of his or her actions in the past, there would have to be a reincarnating soul-monad. But the historical Buddha did not ascribe to this idea. > Thus the question "who" gets the consequences > of actions performed by an individual when that > person no longer exists and will not be reborn > at all not even in some heavenly world? > According to Shakya the Muni, a person gets the karma of their actions in this life - there is rebirth, but not a rebirth of a soul-monad. So, there would be no individual to reap the effects of past karma.
