| Welcome to From the Academy, a monthly newsletter for Premium subscribers offering a scholarly take on topics in Buddhist thought and practice. Each issue highlights a key theme and points to further readings and videos for exploration. |
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 | | Scene from the Illustrated Sutra of Past and Present Karma (Matsunaga Version), stories of the Buddha’s good deeds from his past lives. Japan, Kamakura period, late 13th century. Handscroll; ink and color on paper. | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015 / Public Domain |
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Karma is everywhere—invoked in pop songs, horoscopes, and casual talk of “good vibes” or “bad energy.” However, karma is not just an ambiguous force that shapes our lives; monastics and scholars have long debated it in detail and defined it with great precision. Scriptures hold that only an enlightened buddha can fully grasp its workings. With implications on a cosmic scale, karma is one of Buddhism’s most complex and fundamental ideas.
What Is Karma?
The word karma (Skt.; Pali: kamma) literally means “action” or “deed.” In Vedic texts predating Buddhism, it referred to ritual action, especially sacrifice. But the Buddha redefined it as the volition or intention (Skt., Pali: cetanā) behind action, shifting attention from external rites to ethical motivation. Small acts of generosity or disciplined practice became meritorious due to wholesome intentions.
Intentional acts ripple outward in infinitely intertwined and unknowable ways, creating habits and tendencies that shape future experience across multiple lives. Canonical accounts describe the Buddha’s awakening as direct insight into the connections between intentional actions, rebirth, and the persistence of suffering. Crucially, karma is not fate; responsibility lies in how one chooses to act in the present. |
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How Karma Works and Where It Doesn’t
The connection between karma and nonself became a central concern for Buddhist thinkers. Abhidharma traditions developed detailed models explaining how karmic results unfold over lifetimes. Yogācāra philosophers later described an underlying “storehouse consciousness” (Skt.: ālayavijñāna), where karmic seeds are planted and ripen as future experiences.
Still, not everything can be explained by karma. To attribute every circumstance to past actions would erase human agency. Buddhist texts emphasize that most behavior is conditioned by prior habits, yet individuals retain the ability to act differently in the present. Buddhas and arhats, moreover, are said not to generate new karmic results; their actions are free of the intentions that perpetuate rebirth. The tension between conditioned tendencies and ethical choice continues to animate Buddhist philosophy.
Karma in Society: Uses and Misuses |
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 | | Club Karma was a nightclub in Seaside Heights, NJ, famously featured on MTV’s Jersey Shore. | Matthew and Heather / flickr Creative Commons |
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Karma has shaped how Buddhist societies conceive of moral order, operating in the background of understanding that informs family structures, hierarchies, ideas of justice, and national identities. Karma has also been misused. Some invoke karma to rationalize inequality or suffering—linking caste hierarchy to past lives, telling women they have inferior karma, or implying victims are the cause of the problem. In such cases, karma becomes an instrument of blame rather than a framework for liberation.
Debates about “collective karma” illustrate the concept’s flexibility. Scriptures and classical commentaries emphasize individual intention, but modern Buddhists sometimes use the concept of collective karma to describe how groups perpetuate harm. While this interpretation is controversial, it can empower individuals to recognize their embeddedness in larger systems and take responsibility for the effects their actions have on others. |
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Karma Today
For contemporary Buddhists, karma—and its connection to rebirth—remains a vital and contested principle. Secular practitioners may treat it as a way of talking about psychological conditioning, while others insist on its role in explaining rebirth. The Thai monk Buddhadāsa (1906–1993), for instance, downplayed the cosmological aspects of karma and emphasized its ethical meaning in this life.
Karma continues to serve as a touchstone for thinking about suffering, responsibility, and justice. And while for Taylor Swift karma may be the breeze in her hair on the weekend or a cat purring in her lap, Buddhist thinkers remind us that it is far more complex: It is the moral fabric of our actions and their consequences, shaping the path toward or away from liberation. |
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Recommended Material- Bronwyn Finnigan, “Karma, Moral Responsibility, and Buddhist Ethics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (2022). An accessible overview of how Buddhist thinkers have grappled with the tension between karma, nonself, free will, and moral responsibility.
- Lynken Ghose, “Karma and the Possibility of Purification,” in Journal of Religious Ethics (2007). A study of whether karmic effects can be purified before they ripen, drawing on Buddhist texts and psychological perspectives on intention and moral responsibility.
- Thānissaro Bhikkhu, Karma Q & A (2021), free download. A practical guide that clarifies common misunderstandings of karma and rebirth, demonstrating how intentional action shapes experience and the path to liberation.
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