Is it KARMA or payback?

"Payback" is your act, not karma's results.

Not every bad thing that happens to a person right after doing a bad thing is the karmic-result of THAT bad thing. Things take time to incubate and produce their results (vipaka and phala). It would be very unusual for an act (deed) to be so weighty as to produce an immediate result such as the Beatles would have called "instant karma." In any case, the result of an action is not called "karma." Results are called vipaka (resultants) and phala (fruti). Doing something unpleasant to someone who did you first is called revenge, and it is your unskillful karma. Their karma has not yet ripened to produce its result. Therefore, there is no need to attack people. This will only be harmful to you. They'll get theirs. Trust the impersonal law of causes and effects, of deeds producing appropriate results. It's universal.

KARMA (Sanskrit, Pāli kamma) "intentional action," correctly speaking denotes the wholesome and unwholesome volitions (kusala- and akusala-cetanā) and their concomitant mental factors, causing rebirth and shaping the destiny of beings.

• Cetanā is the intention, motivation, underly motive, the volition behind an action; this is what determines if it skillful, neutral, or unskillful more than the action itself seen objectively. It is the subjective input, which is visible to those who develop spiritual sight (dibba cakkhu).

These karmical volitions (kamma cetanā) become manifest as wholesome or unwholesome actions by body (kāya-kamma), speech (vacī-kamma), mind (mano-kamma).

Thus, the Buddhist term "karma" by no means signifies the RESULTS of actions and certainly not the FATE or DESTINY of beings or whole nations (so-called wholesale or mass-karma), misconceptions which, through the influence of Theosophy, have become widely spread in the West.

"Volition (cetanā), O meditators, is what I call action (cetanāham bhikkhave kammam vadāmi), for through volition one performs the action by body, speech, or mind.

There is karma ("action"), O meditators, that ripens in hell.... Karma that ripens in the animal world.... Karma that ripens in the world of humans.... Karma that ripens in the heavenly worlds....

Threefold, however, is the fruit of karma:

1. ripening during the lifetime (dittha-dhamma-vedanīya-kamma),
2. ripening in the next birth (upapajja-vedanīya-kamma),
3. ripening in subsequent births (aparāpariya-vedanīya kamma)...." (A.VI.63).

The three conditions or roots (mūla) of unwholesome karma (actions) are greed, hatred, and delusion (lobha, dosa, moha).

Those of wholesome karma are:

1. unselfishness (alobha),
2. hatelessness (adosa = mettā, goodwill),
3. nondelusion (amoha = paññā, knowledge).

"Greed, O meditators, is a condition for the arising of [unskillful] karma; hatred is a condition for the arising of karma; delusion is a condition for the arising of karma...." (A.III.112, A.III.34, A.III.147).

"Unwholesome actions are of three kinds: conditioned by:

1. greed,
2. hate,
3. delusion.

"Killing... stealing... sexual misconduct... lying... slandering... rude speech... foolish babble, if practiced, carried on, and frequently cultivated, leads to rebirth in hells, or among animals, or among ghosts" (A.VIII.40). More