Mahāyāna presents karma as fully operative yet ultimately insubstantial, functioning within the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā). On the conventional level, intentional actions of body, speech, and mind give rise to corresponding results, shaping the stream of experience across lives. At the ultimate level, however, the agent, the act, and the fruit of the act are all understood to lack inherent existence and to arise dependently. This view does not deny karmic causality; rather, it reveals karma as fluid and transformable rather than fixed or deterministic. Because phenomena are empty and dependently arisen, karmic patterns are seen as open to profound transformation through insight and practice.

Within this framework, intention and motivation assume a central role, especially in relation to bodhicitta, the resolve to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. Actions performed with this vast altruistic intention are regarded as generating powerful wholesome karma and great stores of merit. The bodhisattva path thus becomes a deliberate cultivation of beneficial karma through the six perfections—generosity, ethics, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom—so that one’s entire karmic stream is oriented toward universal liberation. Bodhisattvas may even accept hardship or unfavorable circumstances as opportunities to assist others, turning what might otherwise be mere personal consequence into a vehicle of compassionate service.

Mahāyāna also stresses the possibility of purification and redirection of karma. Negative karma can be purified through confession, remorse, virtuous deeds, recitation, visualization, and especially through deep realization of emptiness, which loosens the grip of karmic conditioning. Because karma is not an unyielding fate, practices rooted in wisdom and compassion can rapidly alter its course. This perspective lends a dynamic quality to spiritual life, in which even deeply ingrained tendencies are not beyond transformation.

Another distinctive emphasis is the interconnected and, in some respects, collective dimension of karma. Individual actions are understood to reverberate through a web of interdependence, affecting countless others. On this basis, Mahāyāna upholds the practice of dedicating or transferring merit, whereby the wholesome results of one’s actions are consciously offered for the benefit of all sentient beings. In the state of Buddhahood, karmic compulsion is said to be exhausted, yet a Buddha continues to manifest in the world through skillful means, appearing in forms shaped by the karmic needs of beings while no longer creating binding karma.