What Is The True Meaning Of Karma?

The Meaning of Karma

Each of us creates our own karma.  Our past thoughts, speech and behaviour have shaped our present reality, and our actions, thoughts and speech now will in turn affect our future. The influence of karma carries over from one lifetime to the next, remaining through the latent state between death and rebirth.  The law of karma accounts for the circumstances of one’s birth, one’s individual nature and the differences among all living beings and their environments.

The idea of karma predates Buddhism. The pre-Buddhist view of karma, however, contained an element of determinism.  Shakyamuni maintained that what makes a person noble or humble is not birth but actions taken. 

Good karma, then, means actions born from good intentions, kindness and compassion. Conversely, bad karma refers to actions induced by greed, anger and foolishness (or the holding of mistaken views).  Some Buddhist treatises divide the causes of bad karma into ten acts: the three physical acts of killing, stealing and sexual misconduct; the four verbal acts of lying, flattery (or idle and irresponsible speech), defamation and duplicity; and the three mental acts of greed, anger and foolishness.

Buddhism teaches that the chain of cause and effect exists eternally; this accounts for the influence of karma amassed in prior lifetimes.  The influence of such karma resides within the depths of our lives and, when activated by the moment-to-moment realities of this lifetime, shapes our lives according to its dictates.  Some karmic effects may appear in this lifetime while others may remain dormant.  “Fixed karma” produces a fixed result at a specific time, whereas the result of “unfixed karma”, of course, is neither fixed nor set to appear at a predetermined time. 

Some karma is so heavy, so profoundly imprinted in the depths of people’s lives, that it cannot easily be altered.  For instance, suppose someone deliberately makes another person extremely unhappy or even causes that person’s death, that person has created heavy negative karma.  According to the strict law of causality, this negative karma will surely lead to karmic suffering far beyond one’s ordinary powers to eradicate it.  Such grave karma usually exerts its influence at death, and the most influential karma at the time of death will determine one’s basic life condition in the next lifetime.

The influence of particular karma will be extinguished after its energy is unleashed in one’s life.  This is similar to a plant seed that sprouts and grows to blossom as a flower or bear fruit.  After fulfilling its function, the same seed will never repeat the process.

Bad karma can be erased only after it “blossoms” in the form of our suffering.  According to pre-Lotus Sutra teachings, the influence of severely bad karma, created through numerous actions, could only be erased through several lifetimes.  But the Lotus Sutra teaches that the principal cause for attaining Buddhahood is the Buddha nature inherent in each individual life, and that faith in the Lotus Sutra opens the way to that attainment.  It is not required that we undergo lifetime after lifetime of austerities.  Through our diligent practice of faith in the Lotus Sutra, we can instantly tap our innate Buddhahood and extricate ourselves from the effects of our bad karma in this lifetime.  Moreover, the transformation of an individual’s life condition can evoke a similar transformation in others.  As this process ripples outward, similar transformations become possible throughout entire societies, all humankind and even into the natural world. From the author’s ‘Unlocking the mysteries of birth and death’, Soka Gakkai International.

By: Daisaku Ikeda