In many Asian countries where Buddhism has profoundly shaped the social and cultural landscape for over a millennium, the concept of karma is frequently invoked in everyday discourse. However, the common understanding often lacks depth, reducing karma to a simplistic notion of good fortune resulting from "good karma" and misfortune from "bad karma." This dualistic interpretation fails to capture the intricate meaning of karma within Buddhist philosophy, which extends far beyond a mere system of reward and punishment. Historically, this oversimplified view has also been misused to justify existing social inequalities. For instance, discrimination against women has sometimes been attributed to negative karma from past lives, and social injustices have been rationalized by suggesting that those who suffer deserve their fate due to karmic debts. Such interpretations risk making Buddhism complicit in perpetuating discrimination based on sex, race, class, or systemic structures by providing an unchallenged rationale for injustice, a stance that contradicts Buddhist teachings emphasizing the fundamental equality of all beings.
Evolving Understandings of Karma: From Fatalism to Engagement
Over the last century, a growing recognition has emerged, both in Asia and the West, that this fatalistic view of karma is inadequate and often antithetical to core Buddhist principles. In response, new movements have sought to reframe Buddhist practice as an active engagement with the world, challenging the notion of predetermined destiny. A pivotal figure in this shift was Thich Nhat Hanh, who popularized the term "engaged Buddhism" and famously asserted that "all Buddhism is engaged Buddhism." This philosophy calls for practitioners to actively apply Buddhist principles to address contemporary social, political, and environmental issues.
A significant development in this vein is minjung Buddhism in South Korea, which translates to "Buddhism for the masses." This movement urged Buddhist communities to confront suffering caused by political oppression, economic exploitation, and social discrimination. For minjung Buddhists, the concept of collective karma became a powerful tool for communities to unite and resist oppressive conditions. These developments collectively placed questions of agency, responsibility, and relationality at the forefront of Buddhist ethical life, shifting the focus from passive acceptance to active participation in shaping one’s reality and the world.
Agency and Non-Temporality: Reinterpreting Karmic Causality
At the heart of a more nuanced understanding of karma lie two crucial aspects: agency and non-temporality. Karma, literally translating to "action," posits that every deed has consequences that shape future experiences and actions. However, karmic causality is not a simple arithmetic equation. Instead, it is an intricate web of cause and effect, deeply intertwined with the Buddhist worldview of radical interconnectedness. The outcome of an action can vary significantly depending on the complex conditions under which it is performed. As scholar Jay Garfield notes, while Buddhist texts may appear to generalize cause and effect, karma is not a mere calculus of utility or merit points. This complexity challenges the common assumption of a straightforward, predictable link between actions and their results.
The common perception of karma as a system of reward and punishment often arises from a linear temporal framework that strictly divides time into past, present, and future. This perspective can lead to a deterministic view of moral causality, potentially confining individuals within a predetermined script. An alternative, more aligned with Buddhist thought, is to shift focus from linear temporality to non-temporality and agency. This emphasizes the capacity to act meaningfully in the present moment, with a keen awareness of how each action is shaped by and, in turn, contributes to a vast network of conditions.
Many Buddhist traditions emphasize that awakening, often envisioned as a future goal, must be realized moment by moment. This perspective suggests that each decision should be made with full attention to its causes, conditions, and potential consequences. This understanding encourages a constant engagement with the present, fostering a sense of empowerment and responsibility for one’s choices and their impact.
Korean Buddhist Nuns: Exemplars of Karmic Agency
The teachings of several Korean Buddhist nuns offer profound insights into karma as a call to exercise agency for authentic living. Kim Iryeop (1897–1961), a former feminist activist who later entered monastic life, powerfully articulated the importance of agency and transcending self-imposed and socially constructed limitations. She advocated for breaking free from the "small self"—the self constrained by societal norms and limited in its capacity for freedom.
Iryeop defined the true nature of the self as freedom: the capacity to exercise agency and transcend external constraints, thereby becoming the creator of one’s own existence. She referred to this liberated self as "the great self" and characterized its actions as expressions of "creativity." In this view, action is the foundation of existence, and liberated action, or creativity, is valuable not for accumulating moral points over time, but because each action is a full expression of one’s freedom. Such actions, unbound by linear temporality, help alleviate suffering for oneself and others by loosening the grip of various attachments.
Another influential Korean Buddhist nun, Daehaeng (1927–2012), embodied the activation of agency through her signature teaching of chu-in-gong, meaning "the master of one’s life that is empty." This concept conveys a dual insight: the necessity of taking responsibility for one’s life, coupled with the understanding that this responsibility should not lead to egocentrism because the self is fundamentally empty. While affirming the traditional Buddhist notion of emptiness—that nothing possesses an independent, enduring essence—Daehaeng underscored the crucial role of the self’s agency.
Precisely because the self is empty, it is not fixed or bound by attributes imposed by external conditions such as gender or social class. Emptiness, in this interpretation, does not negate agency; it enables it, echoing Iryeop’s concept of the great self. Freed from rigid identity and conditioned constraints, the self is empowered to act with wisdom and compassion amidst the ever-changing conditions of life. In both these examples, karma—or action—is not about accumulating karmic residue but about activating and expressing one’s inherent capacity to act. Rather than framing karma within a moral dualism of good and bad, which risks fostering conformity to questionable moral codes or unjust social structures, karma emerges as a dynamic force for critical engagement and personal transformation.
Action as Resistance: Echoes of Political Philosophy
The concept of karma as active agency finds resonance in the work of thinkers like Hannah Arendt, a German American political theorist. Arendt distinguished between labor, work, and action. Labor sustains life by producing necessities, work creates durable artifacts, but action, she argued, is "to take an initiative, to begin… to set something into motion." For Arendt, the capacity to begin is synonymous with the capacity for change and freedom. She insisted that without action, one is not truly alive.
In light of Arendt’s emphasis on action and the centrality of agency in the theory of karma, it is important to acknowledge that not all actions represent creative or constructive agency. Buddhism cautions against acting out of "ignorance," a technical term for a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of existence. Acting in ignorance generates suffering for oneself and others. Conversely, understanding karma, or intentional action, as the exercise of one’s agency aimed at eliminating suffering transforms action into a form of resistance against whatever constrains individuals and perpetuates their state of ignorance.
Political philosopher José Medina further illuminates this concept through his emphasis on the epistemic dimension of resistance. Medina describes what Buddhism refers to as ignorance as "insensitivity," "numbness," or "blindness" toward the suffering and injustice experienced by oppressed groups. The effort to overcome such insensitivity is what he terms "epistemic resistance." While Medina’s work primarily addresses social and political dimensions of resistance, Buddhist practice, particularly within Chan/Sōn/Zen traditions, is deeply familiar with this idea. These traditions are often interpreted as teachings aimed at awakening individuals from habituated, unreflective patterns of thought.
Karma, when understood as active resistance, is thus closely tied to attentiveness—not only to one’s own actions but also to the conditions in which those actions unfold. Resistance is often associated with protest against visible social or political injustices, but it also involves confronting subtler habits of mind, such as fear, anger, attachment, or greed, which impede liberation. As Medina discusses, the internal and external dimensions of resistance are deeply intertwined. Socially engaged Buddhism directly addresses this interrelation by highlighting the social dimension of action and emphasizing structural violence and its role in producing suffering. To conceive of karma as active resistance is to cultivate awareness and agency in ways that challenge both structural and internalized forms of domination.
Broader Implications: Karma as a Catalyst for Social Change
Despite its long history, Buddhism is sometimes perceived as lacking a robust social and political philosophy. Students often comment that Buddhism appears to be an individualistic religion, an assessment that typically assumes practices such as meditation and self-cultivation belong solely to the private realm. However, as Buddhist scholar Leah Kalmanson argues, even solitary meditation can constitute a political act within a Buddhist worldview grounded in interconnectedness. Similarly, Medina contends that epistemic resistance at the personal level is central to protest in its social and political dimensions. He defines protest not merely as a tool for delivering a message but as a "transformative learning process." In this view, individual mental transformation is deeply interconnected with broader social change.
This reframed understanding of karma is increasingly relevant today, as powerful institutions often falter in their responsibilities to protect and support their constituents. If karmic action involves an individual’s exercise of agency and resistance to the ignorance that constrains them, then social movements can organically emerge from the actions of individuals and grassroots communities who challenge the status quo. Reframing karma as meaningful action grounded in awareness and agency offers profound insights into the possibilities of both personal and collective transformation. For Hannah Arendt, the potential that arises through such action marks the very beginning of hope. This perspective encourages a re-evaluation of how Buddhist principles can inform contemporary efforts to create a more just and equitable world, moving beyond passive acceptance to active, informed, and compassionate engagement.
Adapted from “Karma as Active Resistance” by Jin K. Park, in The Immanent Frame: Secularism, Religion, and the Public Sphere, August 20, 2025, www.tif.ssrc.org. Published under the Creative Commons license and reprinted with permission.
