Date: 06/08/2024 06/09/2024
Location: Star Ocean Meditation Center
Teacher: Sara
Dharma Knowledge
What Is Karma
Karma is often misunderstood as fate, retribution, or a mysterious force that assigns rewards and punishments. Such interpretations do not originate from the Dharma itself, but from vague and imprecise use of the term. In the context of the Dharma, karma is not a supernatural judgment system. It is a strictly causal concept explaining how actions generate consequences over time.
At its most basic level, karma means intentional action. Action here includes not only physical behavior, but also speech and thought. The Dharma is explicit that intention is the decisive factor. Involuntary movements, unconscious reactions, or purely physiological processes do not constitute karma in the proper sense. What matters is not the outward form of an action, but the motivational structure behind it.
Karma is not a single event, but an ongoing causal process. An intentional action leaves a tendency within the body–mind system, making similar actions more likely when similar conditions arise. This continuity does not rely on a cosmic ledger. It operates through the reinforcement of habits, perceptions, and reactions. Karma persists structurally, not juridically.
The results of karma are not external rewards or punishments imposed from outside. They are the natural outcomes of actions when supporting conditions mature. Actions driven by craving reinforce dissatisfaction and dependency; actions driven by aversion reinforce conflict and tension; actions driven by ignorance reinforce distorted understanding and confusion. Conversely, actions grounded in clarity, restraint, and insight weaken these patterns. Karmic results are functional feedback, not moral verdicts.
A common misunderstanding is to treat karma as rigid determinism—where the past fully dictates the present and change is impossible. The Dharma explicitly rejects this view. If karma were fixed destiny, practice would be meaningless. While past actions shape present conditions, present actions simultaneously shape future conditions. Karma is dynamic, not static. Liberation is possible precisely because karma can be transformed.
The Dharma also distinguishes different layers of karma. Observable bodily and verbal actions are relatively coarse, while deeper karmic structures operate at the level of habitual reactions, cognitive biases, and self-identification. This is why Buddhist practice is not merely about “doing good deeds,” but about examining intention, seeing attachment, and correcting misperception. Without addressing motivation, surface-level behavioral change cannot reach the root of karma.
At the deepest level, the Dharma does not encourage obsessive calculation of karma. Fixation on “what karma I have created” or “what result I will receive” remains a self-centered cognitive activity. The focus of the Dharma is not predicting outcomes, but ending the mechanisms that generate suffering. When ignorance is eliminated, the compulsive momentum of karma naturally comes to rest.
Karma, therefore, is not a force that controls beings, but a process to be understood. It is not a tool for fear, consolation, or total explanation of events. It is a framework for understanding how intention, action, and cognition shape experience over time. To understand karma is not to submit to fate, but to stop reproducing the same results.
