KARMA: What Exactly Is It?


The definition of karma? For every action there will always be a reaction. Your thoughts and actions are powerful. They carry energy. They are like an echo. We have all taken a different path in life but somehow we are all linked. Whatever you do will always come back to you.

Your thoughts and feelings shape the world within you. Your words and actions shape the world around you. You are constantly changing your world, little by little.

It is the law of cause and effect, an unbreakable law of the cosmos. You deserve everything that happens to you, good or bad. You created your happiness and your misery. One day you will be in the same circumstances that you put someone else in.

Your actions create your future. What you are experiencing right now is what karma wants you to experience. Every feeling, every thought, has been prepared especially for you, so you can learn from your past.

The reason your fate is never truly set is because you have free will. Therefore your future cannot already be written. That would not be fair. Life gives you chances. This is one of them.

You can’t escape from your past, but learning from it will change your future.

Karma is the law of moral causation. The theory of Karma is a fundamental doctrine in Buddhism. This belief was prevalent in India before the advent of the Buddha. Nevertheless, it was the Buddha who explained and formulated this doctrine in the complete form in which we have it today.
  • What is the cause of the inequality that exists among mankind Why should one person be brought up in the lap of luxury, endowed with fine mental, moral and physical qualities, and another in absolute poverty, steeped in misery? 
  • Why should one person be a mental prodigy, and another an idiot? 
  • Why should one person be born with saintly characteristics and another with criminal tendencies? 
  • Why should some be linguistic, artistic, mathematically inclined, or musical from the very cradle? 
  • Why should others be congenitally blind, deaf, or deformed? 
  • Why should some be blessed, and others cursed from their births?
Either this inequality of mankind has a cause, or it is purely accidental. No sensible person would think of attributing this unevenness, this inequality, and this diversity to blind chance or pure accident.
In this world nothing happens to a person that he does not for some reason or other deserve. Usually, men of ordinary intellect cannot comprehend the actual reason or reasons. The definite invisible cause or causes of the visible effect is not necessarily confined to the present life, they may be traced to a proximate or remote past birth.

According to Buddhism, this inequality is due not only to heredity, environment, “nature and nurture”, but also to Karma. In other words, it is the result of our own past actions and our own present doings.

We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness and misery. We create our own Heaven. We create our own Hell. We are the architects of our own fate.

Perplexed by the seemingly inexplicable, apparent disparity that existed among humanity, a young truth-seeker approached the Buddha and questioned him regarding this intricate problem of inequality:

“What is the cause, what is the reason, O Lord,” questioned he, “that we find amongst mankind the short-lived and long-lived, the healthy and the diseased, the ugly and beautiful, those lacking influence and the powerful, the poor and the rich, the low-born and the high-born, and the ignorant and the wise?”

The Buddha’s reply was:

“All living beings have actions (Karma) as their own, their inheritance, their congenital cause, their kinsman, their refuge. It is Karma that differentiates beings into low and high states.”

He then explained the cause of such differences in accordance with the law of cause and effect.

Certainly we are born with hereditary characteristics. At the same time we possess certain innate abilities that science cannot adequately account for.

To our parents we are indebted for the gross sperm and ovum that form the nucleus of this so-called being. They remain dormant within each parent until this potential germinal compound is vitalized by the karmic energy needed for the production of the foetus. Karma is therefore the indispensable conceptive cause of this being.

The accumulated karmic tendencies, inherited in the course of previous lives, at times play a far greater role than the hereditary parental cells and genes in the formation of both physical and mental characteristics.
Karma symbols such as endless knot (above) are common cultural motifs in Asia.
Endless knots symbolize interlinking of cause and effect,
a Karmic cycle that continues eternally.
With origins in ancient India, Karma is a key concept in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Taoism. Although Buddhism attributes this variation to Karma, as being the chief cause among a variety, it does not, however, assert that everything is due to Karma.

The law of Karma, important as it is, is only one of the twenty-four conditions described in Buddhist Philosophy.

We will be discussing Karma in the realm of Buddhism as it is one of the largest eastern religions and extrapolate its interpretations.

Refuting the erroneous view that “whatsoever fortune or misfortune experienced is all due to some previous action”, the Buddha said:

“So, then, according to this view, owing to previous action men will become murderers, thieves, unchaste, liars, slanderers, covetous, malicious and perverts. Thus, for those who fall back on the former deeds as the essential reason, there is neither the desire to do, nor effort to do, nor necessity to do this deed, or abstain from this deed.”

It was this important text, which states the belief that all physical circumstances and mental attitudes spring solely from past Karma that Buddha contradicted.

If the present life is totally conditioned or wholly controlled by our past actions, then certainly Karma is tantamount to fatalism or determinism or predestination. If this were true, free will would be an absurdity. Life would be purely mechanistic, not much different from a machine.

Being created by an Almighty God who controls our destinies and predetermines our future, or being produced by an irresistible Karma that completely determines our fate and controls our life’s course, independent of any free action on our part, is essentially the same. 

The only difference lies in the two words God and Karma. One could easily be substituted for the other, because the ultimate operation of both forces would be identical.

“Every little thing you do, winds up coming back to you, so do the very best you can, try to lend a helping hand, and then you’ll see that what you do, will wind up coming back to you.” – Steven Peters