The Law of Karma

by Khandro Rinpoche

Buddhism is a non theistic philosophy. We do not believe in a creator but in the causes and conditions that create certain circumstances that then come to fruition. This is called karma. It has nothing to do with judgement; there is no one keeping track of our karma and sending us up above or down below. Karma is simply the wholeness of a cause, or first action, and its effect, or fruition, which then becomes another cause. In fact, one karmic cause can have many fruitions, all of which can cause thousands more creations. Just as a handful of seed can ripen into a field full of grain, a small amount of karma can generate limitless effects.

Every conditioned phenomenon-human beings, the environment, and so on — is the effect of individual or collective karma manifesting in completely diverse ways. For example, we can talk about "first karma," the reverberation of one karma striking or coming together with another. One karmic moment can immediately split into the ten directions and three times and each of those ten directions can again explode into ten more directions. The expansion and multiplicity of karma is said to be like a billion universes colliding with another billion universes. This is the fruition aspect of karma, which we will talk about in more detail later.

So karma does not just refer to big blocks of anger, ignorance, or negative emotions; it can be subtle. A flicker of movement, a simple nod of the head to indicate a feeling, a subtle movement of the eyes can establish karmic cause and eventual fruition. The textures of our sense perceptions — sights, sounds, smells, touch, tastes, and thoughts — create hundreds of karmic causes at every moment. The moment we shift from our fundamental ground, we create a karmic cause that produces some effect-for better or worse.

Karma can be intentional or unintentional. The actions we're aware of and those we're not aware of-which are most of our actions-produce karmic effects for ourselves and others. To understand how this works, we need to watch ourselves in action and understand our potential for immensely diverse karmic production, good and bad.

We can also talk about collective karma. The karma of many sentient beings bringing a lack of awareness to their actions can lead to the collective fruition of war, famine, and diseases that are experienced by everyone. All the pain and suffering in samsara are the result of individual or collective karmic creation.

As individuals or groups — on a tribal or national level, or just within samsara as a whole  — we are all creating karma and being affected by the karma created by others. Similarly, others are creating karma and being affected by the karma we create. There is always this interchange of karma. At the same time, karma can be changed; karma is exhaustible and impermanent.