buddhism · the physics
Karma in Buddhism
Karma may be the most borrowed and most bent word in the tradition. In Buddhism it isn't fate, isn't a points system, and isn't the universe punishing your ex. The word means action — specifically intentional action — and the teaching is about how actions shape the actor.
The core mechanism
Every intentional act — done, said, or rehearsed in the mind — leaves a trace on the doer: a groove, a tendency, a slightly easier repeat. Act from anger and anger's path widens; act from generosity and that gate swings looser next time. The first echo of karma isn't out in the world; it's in the character being compiled, moment by moment, from choices.
Intention is the ingredient
The Buddha's definition is explicit: karma is cetanā — intention. Stepping on an ant unseeing and crushing one with relish are different acts with different residues, whatever the ant thinks. This is why the tradition obsesses over the mind's state during action: the inner posture is what gets practiced and stored.
What karma is not
Not fatalism — the present is conditioned by the past, not chained to it; this moment's choice is precisely where the pattern bends. Not cosmic justice for spectators — reading others' misfortunes as karmic receipts is explicitly bad form and worse logic. And not a bank of luck: the teaching's interest is liberation from the wheel of reactive patterning, not a rewards card for it.
The practical takeaway
Karma, read plainly, is habit-physics with ethical stakes: you are always training something. The operative question it hands you is small and constant — what am I practicing right now? — and it applies equally to actions, words, and the sentences rehearsed in the shower.
The cat that hissed at the vacuum for years now naps beside it: 'Patterns bend. Slowly. With treats.'
We write about Buddhism as respectful outsiders sharing a living tradition's basics — for understanding and reflection, not as scripture or a substitute for teachers within the tradition.