Chan Buddhism accepts the classical Buddhist understanding of karma as intentional action of body, speech, and mind that brings corresponding results, shaping present and future experience. This law of cause and effect is regarded as the moral structure of samsaric existence, and wholesome conduct, generosity, and ethical discipline are encouraged as “good karma” that supports clarity and practice. Yet Chan consistently shifts the emphasis away from merely managing or accumulating karma toward directly realizing the nature of mind. Karma is not treated primarily as a doctrine to be analyzed, but as a process to be seen clearly in present-moment awareness.

From the Chan perspective, karmic causality is conventionally real, but not ultimately solid or self-existing. Drawing on the teachings of emptiness and no‑self, Chan stresses that there is no permanent owner of karma; rather, there is a stream of conditions in which actions and results unfold. Advanced teachings point to the ultimate emptiness of both karma and the karmic agent, while still acknowledging the functional reality of cause and effect in ordinary experience. This non‑dual view undercuts both fatalism and the egoistic pursuit of merit, since there is no fixed self that can be doomed by past deeds or enriched by spiritual accumulation.

In practice, Chan encourages practitioners to observe karmic patterns directly through meditation and mindfulness, seeing how deluded intentions generate suffering and how clear awareness loosens these patterns. Enlightenment does not magically erase the unfolding of past causes, and even awakened beings are understood to experience the maturation of earlier karma. What changes is the relationship to these processes: clinging and identification fall away, and new karma rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion is no longer produced. Pure, awakened awareness is regarded as beyond karmic conditioning, and from this realization, action arises freely and compassionately, rather than from habit or grasping.

Thus, while Chan fully acknowledges the binding force of karmic causality within ignorance, it simultaneously affirms the possibility of immediate liberation through direct insight into one’s original nature. Ethical conduct and mindful action remain indispensable, yet they are valued less as a calculative strategy for future reward and more as the spontaneous expression of an awakened mind. In this way, respect for karma is held together with the radical possibility of transcending karmic bondage through seeing one’s true nature and living from that realization.