What is Karma?

The question of destiny or karma has greatly preoccupied philosophers in both the west and the east. One theory is that when we are born our lives are like a sheet of white paper on which nothing is written.

Buddhism, however, teaches that we have lived countless lives already. This means that we are not born as blank pages, but pages on which countless impressions have already been made. But how is this so, when we can remember nothing of our former lives, and when we so clearly die and even our bodies eventually fade away to nothing?

Buddhism explains the mystery through the concept of the eternity of life. According to Buddhism, life forever exists in the cosmos; sometimes it is manifest and sometimes latent. To understand this concept of ‘manifest and latent life’ consider the following. When we sleep and then awaken; our conscious mind awakens and our body feels refreshed. But between the sleeping and awakening, our consciousness carries on. Not that the body dies and life is condensed into the soul, but that the same life continues eternally, either in a manifest, seen form or a latent, unseen form (death). In terms of eternity of life, death is as much a part of living as sleep is part of the process of living.

Karma is thus the accumulation of effects from the good and bad causes we bring with us from our former lives, as well as from the good and bad cause we have made in this lifetime, which shapes our future.

Karma is a Sanskrit word that means ‘action’. Karma is created by actions, our thoughts, words and deeds – and manifests itself in our appearance, how we look, behavior, attitudes, good and bad fortune. We are born in a particular family, in a particular situation, with all the people around us, is all based on the causes we have created in our previous lifetime. Buddhism teaches that even the struggles and sufferings we encounter are all based on the causes, the theory of ‘cause and effect’.

Unlike some other philosophies, though, Buddhism does not consider one’s karma or destiny to be fixed; since our minds change from moment to moment, even the habitual and destructive tendencies we all possess to varying degrees can be altered. In other words, Buddhism teaches that individuals have within themselves the potential to change their own karma.

All that we do in one lifetime affects the negative and positive balance of our karma. For example, if we are born poor in this lifetime and spend our life giving to others whatever we can give, we are making causes to change the negative karma of being poor. On the other hand, if we spend our life envying or hating rich people or even stealing from others, we are adding to our own negative balance of karma.

To understand in more depth how this works, I will give you another example, bases on the negative causes in the past I am meant to suffer from a bad stomachache in this life. I will suffer from stomachache only when I will eat unhealthy things. So, I will be born with the tendency or fondness for raw apples. Every time I will eat a raw apple I will suffer from stomachache. This is what I was destined to go through. But if I work harder and curb this negative tendency I can stop this suffering and thus change my destiny where I was destined to go through this pain.