bodhi tree swaying

Everything that happens is a result of karma. Well, no, actually.

One of the greatest misunderstandings of what the Buddhas taught is the idea that “everything that happens is a result of karma.” You’ll see many Buddhist teachers saying this, especially those teachers from the Tibetan traditions where this actually seems to be the accepted teaching on karma.

Karma, first of all, is just the Sanskrit word for “action” but it refers specifically to moral action. Vipaka is the word for the result of actions, which manifests as either happiness or unhappiness. The karmic status of an act depends on the underlying emotional/cognitive motivation, so that if we act on the basis of unskillful mental states such as greed, hatred, or delusion, we will experience suffering, while if we act on the basis of skillful mental states such as love, compassion, and mindfulness we’ll experience happiness. This is an example of “conditionality,” …