When people are happy and contented, they tend to take life for granted. It is when they suffer, when they find life difficult, that they begin to search for a reason and a way out of their difficulty. They may ask why some are born in poverty and suffering, while others are born in fortunate circumstances.

Some people believe that it is due to fate, chance, or an invisible power beyond their control. They feel that they are unable to live the life they desire so as to experience happiness always. Consequently, they become confused and desperate.

Karma is intentional action, that is, a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind. Karma means good and bad volition. Every volitional action is called Karma. The Buddhas and Arahants do not accumulate fresh Karma as they have destroyed all their passions.

In other words, Karma is the law of moral causation. It is action and reaction in the ethical realm. It is natural law that every action produces a certain effect. So if one performs wholesome actions such as donating money to charitable organisations, one will experience happiness. On the other hand, if one performs unwholesome actions, such ass killing a living being, one will experience suffering. This is the law of cause and effect at work. In this way, the effect of one?s past karma determine the nature of one?s present situation in life.

Karma is a law itself. But it does not follow that there should be a law-giver. The law of Karma, too, demands no law giver. It operates in its own field without the intervention of an external, independent agency.

As one sows, so shall one reap. Every effect arises from a cause. Under certain conditions, a cause will come to an effect. This is a universal principle, on which Buddhist morality is based.
If you want to know the causes in your past life,
The way you live at present is the effect of your past life.
If you want to know what your future life will be,
What you do at present is the cause of your future life.

Karma is not fate nor predestination. Literally, Karma means “action”, “to do”. Action itself is considered neither good nor bad, but only the intention and thought make it so. Thus, Karma is an intentional, conscious, deliberate and wilful action. Karma is volition.

Every action must have a reaction, an effect. The truth applies both to physical world (expressed by the great physicist Newton) and to the moral world. Law of Karma is an important application of the Principle of Cause and Effect in morality. The denial of the Law will destroy all moral responsibility.

There are two kinds of Karma:
Good Karma (Kushala)
It means intelligent, or skillful. It refers to those intentional actions, which are beneficial to oneself and others, springing out from kindness, compassion, renunciation and wisdom.
Bad Karma (Akushala)
It means not intelligent, not skillful. It refers to those intentional actions springing out from greed, hatred and illusion.
For unintentional actions, such as walking, sleeping, breathing, they have no moral consequences, thus constitute neutral Karma or ineffective Karma.

By practicing the Ten Good Deeds and Ten Meritorious Deeds, the fully ripened fruit of these wholesome actions consists of rebirth in the higher realms of happiness, i.e. Man, Asura and Deva. Conversely, the full ripened fruit of the unwholesome action consists of rebirth in the lower realms of suffering, i.e. Hell, Hungry ghosts and Animals.

The effect of Karma may be evident either in short term or in the long term. Karma can either manifest its effects in this very life or in the next life or only after several lives.

Every cause has its effect. However, there must be conditions that are ripe for the effect. Karma, be it good or bad, can be affected by the conditions under which the actions are performed.

Tag: Karma