Karma and Rebirth in Early Buddhist Cosmology

Karma (Pali: kamma), in early Buddhist doctrine, denotes intentional action of body, speech, or mind, and the Buddha offers an explicitly psychological redefinition of a term already current in Brahmanical and Jain thought: the Anguttara Nikaya (6.63) has him declare, "It is intention (cetana) that I call karma; having willed, one acts through body, speech, or mind" — shifting the emphasis from ritual or physical action as such toward the volitional state underlying it, in contrast to the Jain position, associated with Mahavira, that emphasized the physical quantity of action itself, including unintentional harm, as generating karmic consequence. Wholesome (kusala) actions rooted in non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion are held to produce pleasant karmic results (vipaka), while unwholesome (akusala) actions rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion produce unpleasant results, a moral causality the texts present as operating with the same lawlike regularity as physical causation, though unfolding over timescales that may span the present life, the next life, or lives further in the future.