In the Buddha’s teaching, karma is understood as intentional action—volition expressed through body, speech, and mind—that gives rise to corresponding results. It is not mere physical movement or accidental behavior, but action shaped by intention, which plants “seeds” that later ripen as experiences of happiness or suffering. Wholesome actions, grounded in generosity, kindness, and wisdom, tend to bear pleasant fruits, while unwholesome actions, rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion, tend to bear painful ones. These consequences may unfold in the present life or in future lives, forming a continuity of cause and effect that extends beyond a single lifetime. Karma thus functions as a natural, impersonal law of moral causality, not as a system of divine reward or punishment.

This karmic process is what propels the cycle of rebirth, or saṃsāra. As long as beings act under the sway of ignorance and craving, they generate new karmic formations that condition future consciousness and existence. In this way, karma explains both the diversity of circumstances beings experience and the ongoing round of birth and death. Yet the teaching does not endorse fatalism: life is not wholly predetermined by past deeds. Present choices, rooted in fresh intentions, can redirect the course of experience, allowing for moral responsibility and genuine transformation.

Within the path taught by the Buddha, karma becomes both an explanation of suffering and a tool for liberation. Right speech, right action, and right livelihood cultivate wholesome karma that steadies and purifies the mind, supporting deeper concentration and insight. As the roots of greed, hatred, and delusion are gradually weakened through ethical conduct and wisdom, the compulsive generation of new karma is brought to an end. When ignorance and craving are fully uprooted, the cycle of karmically driven rebirth ceases; this is nirvāṇa, a state that transcends all conditioned becoming. Even then, residual effects of past karma may continue to play out in the present life, but no new karma is produced that could lead to further rebirth.