What does KARMA mean?

Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionaryy; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

What's pushing along in life? Our deeds ripening.

Karma (Pali kamma) means "actions" or "deeds." More correctly, the word denotes the wholesome and unwholesome volitions or intentions (kusala- and akusala-cetanā) behind actions and their concomitant mental factors, which cause rebirth and shape the destiny of living beings.

These karmic volitions (cetanā) become manifest as wholesome or unwholesome actions by

• body (kāya-karma)
• speech (vacī-karma)
• mind (mano-karma)

The Buddhist term "karma" by no means refers to the RESULTS of actions. The result of karma are the phala ("fruit" or "ripening") and vipaka ("resultants").

Karma quite certainly does not refer to the Greek idea of fate (fatalism) or the Jewish idea of kismet or Theosophical notions of "mass-karma." There is collective karma -- as was experienced by Prince Siddhartha's family after he renounced the world to seek enlightenment and they stayed back fighting with their neighbors only to be wiped out due in part due to a past action of poisoning a river in a previous life.

But karma should first and foremost be understood as the acts or deeds of an individual, and no individual is more important than the one reading this. It is this person's conduct we are most concerned with.

"Volition (cetanā), O meditators, is what I call action (karma)," the Buddha taught. Cetanāham bhikkhave kammam vadāmi. "For it is through volition that one performs an action by body, speech, or mind.

"There is action, O meditators, that ripens in purgatory... Karma that ripens in the animal world... Karma that ripens in the human world... Karma that ripens in the deva [heavenly] world.... Threefold, however, is the fruit of karma:

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

The three roots or conditions (mūla) of unwholesome karma are:

1. greed (lobha)
2. hatred (dosa)
3. delusion (moha)

Those of wholesome karma are:

1. nongreed, letting go, unselfishness (alobha)
2. nonhate (adosa, loving-kindness, mettā, good-will)
3. nondelusion (amoha, paññā, wisdom).

"Greed [lust], O meditators, is a condition [basis] for the arising of karma; hatred (aversion) is a condition for the arising of karma; delusion [ignorance] 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 greed, or hate, or delusion.

"Killing... stealing... sexual misconduct (sexual intercourse with the ten forbidden people)... lying... slandering... rude speech... foolish babble -- if performed, carried out, and frequently cultivated -- leads to rebirth in purgatory, or among animals, or among ghosts" (A.VIII.40).

"One who kills and is cruel goes either to purgatory or, if reborn as a human, will be short-lived. One who torments others will be afflicted with disease. The angry one will look ugly. The envious one will be without influence. The stingy one will be poor. The stubborn one will be ill-born. The indolent one will be without knowledge.

"In the contrary case, a person will be reborn in a deva world [heaven] or reborn as a human, and one will be long-lived, possessed of beauty, influence, well-born, and wise" (cf. MN 135).

For the above tenfold wholesome and unwholesome courses of action, see kamma-patha. For the five  heinous deeds with immediate result, see ānantarika-kamma.

"Beings are owners of their karma [deeds] and heirs of their karma. Their karma is the womb from which they are born. Their karma is their friend, their guide. Whatever deeds they perform, good or bad, of that will they be heirs" (MN 135).

Why does it take so long?

With regard to the time or interval between an action (karma) and its result (vipāka), one distinguishes, as mentioned above, three kinds of karma:

1. ripening during the life-time (dittha-dhamma-vedanīya kamma);
2. ripening in the next rebirth (upapajja-vedanīya-kamma);
3. ripening in later rebirths (aparāpariya-vedanīya-kamma).

The first two kinds of karma may be without karmic results (vipāka) if the circumstances required for the taking place of the karma-result are missing or if, through the preponderance of counteractive karma and/or their being too weak in the first place, they are unable to produce any result. In this case they are called ahosi-karma, literally "karma that has been," in other words, ineffectual karma. 

• [EDITOR'S NOTE: There is a backlog of deeds coming to fruition opportunistically. When we meditate, that is to say let go as we cultivate mental purity, the results start coming more closely behind the deeds we perform.]

The third type of karma, however, which bears fruit in later rebirths, will -- whenever and wherever there is an opportunity -- be productive of karmic results. Before its result has ripened, it will never become ineffective as long as the life-process (bhavanga) is kept going by craving and ignorance.

According to the Commentary (e.g., in the Path of Purification, Vis.M. XIX), the first of the seven karmic impulsive-moments (karma javana) is considered as "karma ripening during this lifetime," the seventh moment as "karma ripening in the next rebirth," and the remaining five moments as "karma ripening in later rebirths."

With regard to their functions one distinguishes:

• 1. regenerative (or productive) karma (janaka-kamma),
• 2. supportive (or consolidating) karma (upatthambhaka-kamma),
• 3. counteractive (suppressive or frustrating) karma (upapīlaka-kamma),
• 4. destructive (or supplanting) karma (upaghātaka- or upacchedaka-kamma).

Of these the first (1) produces the Five Aggregates Clung to as Self (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness) at rebirth as well as during the continuity of life.

The second (2) does not produce karmic-results but is only able to maintain already produced karmic-results.

The third (3) counteracts or suppresses karmic-results.

The fourth (4) destroys the influence of weaker karma and effects only its own results.

With regard to the priority of their results one distinguishes:

• 1. weighty karma (garuka-kamma),
• 2. habitual karma (ācinnaka- or bahula-kamma),
• 3. death-proximate karma (maranāsanna-kamma),
• 4. stored-up karma (katattā-kamma).

The first and second (1, 2), the weighty and habitual wholesome and unwholesome karma, ripen earlier than light and rarely performed karma.

The third (3), or death-proximate karma (wholesome or unwholesome volitions present immediately before dying, which may often be the reflex of some previously performed good or bad action, or of a sign of it (kamma-nimitta), or of a sign of the next existence (gati-nimitta) -- produces rebirth.

The fourth (4), stored-up karma, in the absence of any of these three at the moment just before death, will produce rebirth.

A real and true, in an ultimate sense, understanding of Buddhism's karma doctrine is possible only through deep insight into the impersonality (anattā, not-self) and conditionality (dependently originated or paticca samuppāda, conditioned or paccaya) of all phenomenal existence.

"Everywhere, in all forms of existence... such a one is beholding merely mental and physical phenomena kept going by their being bound up through causes and effects.

"No [actual] doer does one see behind deeds, no recipient apart from the karmic-fruit [itself]. And with full insight one clearly understands that wise ones are merely using conventional terms when, with regard to the taking place of any action [karma], they speak of a doer, or when they speak of a receiver of the karmic-results at their arising. Therefore the ancient masters have said:

"No doer of the deeds is found,

No one who ever reaps their fruits;

Empty phenomena roll on:

This view alone is right and true.

"And while the deeds and their results

Roll on, based on conditions all,

There no beginning can be seen

Just as it is with seed and tree" (Vis.M. XIX).

Karma (kamma-paccaya) is one of the 24 conditions (paccaya) (See Appendix: Kamma). For more details see:

• Karma and Rebirth by Ven. Nyanatiloka (Wheel #9, BPS.lk)
• Survival and Karma in Buddhist Perspective by K.N. Jayatilleke (Wheel #141/143)
• Kamma and its Fruit (Wheel #221/224)
• *Javana: The only reference in the sutras is Pts.M. II, 73: "In the impulsion-moment (javana) of a wholesome karma." In the Abhidhamma Pitaka it is briefly mentioned in the Patthāna [Conditions], but without explanation, as if already known. The teaching of the flashing forth of four impulsions immediately before entering the meditative absorption (jhāna) or lokuttara-magga, that is, parikamma, upacāra, anuloma, gotrabhū is, as such, without doubt a later development in the commentarial literature.