Karma as Active Resistance

In many Asian countries where Buddhism has shaped the social and cultural landscape for more than a millennium, karma is frequently invoked even in everyday conversation. Yet how people understand karma is often unclear. It is commonly said that someone has “good karma” when good things happen to them or that misfortune results from “bad karma.” This seemingly straightforward, dualistic interpretation fails to capture the complexity of karma and its meaning in life. 

Karma has also been used to justify unfavorable conditions by attributing them to negative karma from previous lives. In this view, discrimination against women is explained as the result of bad karma incurred in women’s past lives; social injustice is likewise justified when those who suffer are presumed to deserve their fate due to karmic debts. If this interpretation is accepted, Buddhism risks becoming complicit in discrimination, whether based on sex, race, class, or systemic structures, by providing a rationale for injustice and leaving it unchallenged. This interpretation does not align with Buddhist teachings that emphasize the equality of all beings based on relational identity. 

In the last century, both in Asia and the West, this view of karma has increasingly been seen as inadequate and, at times, even contradictory to foundational Buddhist teachings. In response, new movements sought to counter karmic fatalism by reframing Buddhist practice as active engagement with the world. Thich Nhat Hanh, who coined the term “engaged Buddhism,” famously stated that “all Buddhism is engaged Buddhism.” In South Korea, minjung Buddhism (Buddhism for the masses) urged Buddhist communities to confront suffering produced by political oppression, economic exploitation, and social discrimination. For minjung Buddhists, the idea of collective karma became a way for communities to resist these conditions together. These developments placed questions of agency, responsibility, and relationality at the center of Buddhist ethical life.

Years ago, in my Introduction to Asian Philosophy course, a student remarked that the movie Pay It Forward (2000) is a Buddhist film that illustrates how karma works. In the film, a seventh-grader named Trevor proposes that if each person helps three others, a ripple effect will follow as each continues the chain of good deeds. On the surface, this resembles the familiar idea that performing good deeds accumulates good karma and leads to future rewards. But at the end of the movie—spoiler alert!—Trevor dies while trying to help a friend who is being bullied. Rather than presenting karma as a system of reward and punishment, the film highlights the significance of intention and the exercise of agency in bringing about change.

Two key aspects of karma warrant closer attention in this context: agency and (non-)temporality. Karma literally means “action,” and the Buddhist theory of karma holds that every deed has consequences that shape future experiences and actions. But karmic causality does not follow a straightforward arithmetic logic, as is often assumed. It is far more intricate and largely beyond ordinary understanding, a complexity that becomes apparent when we consider the Buddhist worldview of radical interconnectedness. The same action can yield vastly different outcomes depending on the conditions in which it is performed. As Jay Garfield notes, while Buddhist texts sometimes appear to generalize causes and effects, karma is not a simple calculus of utility or merit points.

Understanding karma as a system of reward and punishment often stems from viewing it through a linear temporal framework that divides time into past, present, and future. This perspective risks confining the actor within a deterministic model of moral causality. An alternative is to shift the focus from linear temporality to non-temporality and agency, emphasizing the capacity to act meaningfully in the present, with awareness of how each action is shaped by, and contributes to, a network of conditions. People often imagine awakening as a future goal achieved at the end of long practice. Certain Buddhist traditions, however, profess that awakening must occur moment by moment—that each decision should be made with full attention to its causes, conditions, and consequences.

Some teachings of Korean Buddhist nuns can be understood as exemplifying karma as a call to exercise agency for authentic living. Kim Iryŏp (1897–1961), for example, emphasizes agency and the overcoming of self-imposed and socially constructed limitations as central to Buddhist practice. A former feminist activist before entering monastic life, Iryŏp advocates breaking free from what she calls the “small self,” the self constrained by socially imposed norms and limited in its capacity for freedom.

Karmic causality does not follow a straightforward arithmetic logic, as is often assumed. It is far more intricate and largely beyond ordinary understanding.

Iryŏp defines the true nature of the self as freedom, that is, the capacity to exercise agency and transcend constraints imposed by external conditions, thereby becoming the creator of one’s own existence. She refers to this liberated self as “the great self” and characterizes its actions as expressions of “creativity.” In this view, action is the foundation of existence, and liberated action, or creativity, is valuable not because it produces cumulative moral points over time, but because each action is a full expression of one’s freedom. Unbound by linear temporality, such actions help alleviate suffering, both for oneself and for others, by breaking the hold of various attachments.

Another Korean Buddhist nun, Daehaeng (1927–2012), expresses the activation of agency through her signature teaching of chuin’gong, meaning “the master of one’s life that is empty.” This phrase conveys a dual insight: that one must take responsibility for one’s life, but this 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 nonetheless emphasizes 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 view, does not negate agency; it enables it, echoing Iryŏp’s concept of the great self. Freed from rigid identity and conditioned constraints, the self is empowered to act with wisdom and compassion amid the ever-changing conditions of life.

In both of these cases, karma—or action—is not about accumulating karmic residue but about activating and expressing one’s 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 becomes a dynamic force for critical engagement and personal transformation.

The German American political thinker Hannah Arendt distinguishes between labor, work, and action: labor sustains life by producing necessities; work creates durable artifacts; but action, she argues, “means 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. While one might be able to avoid labor or even work in life, she insists that without action, one is not truly alive. 

In light of Arendt’s emphasis on action and our argument for the centrality of agency in the theory of karma, we must also acknowledge that not all actions represent creative or constructive agency. Buddhism offers a caution through the concept of “ignorance,” a technical term for a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of existence. Acting in ignorance generates suffering for oneself and others. Once we understand karma, or intentional action, as the exercise of one’s agency aimed at eliminating suffering, action becomes a form of resistance against whatever constrains individuals and keeps them in a state of ignorance.

Political philosopher José Medina emphasizes the epistemic dimension of resistance. What Buddhism refers to as ignorance, Medina describes as “insensitivity,” “numbness,” or “blindness”  toward the suffering and injustice experienced by oppressed groups. The effort to overcome such insensitivity is what he calls “epistemic resistance.” While Medina’s discussion primarily addresses the social and political dimensions of resistance, Buddhist practice—particularly in Chan/Sŏn/Zen traditions—is not unfamiliar 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 closely tied to attentiveness, not only to one’s 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, that impede liberation. As Medina discusses, the internal and external dimensions of resistance are closely intertwined. The socially engaged Buddhism mentioned earlier 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, then, is to cultivate awareness and agency in ways that challenge both structural and internalized forms of domination.

Despite its long history, Buddhism is often perceived as lacking a robust social and political philosophy. My students frequently comment that Buddhism seems like an individualistic religion, an assessment that typically assumes practices such as meditation and self-cultivation belong solely to the private realm. Yet 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 understanding of karma is more urgently needed today than ever, as powerful institutions increasingly fail to fulfill their responsibilities to protect and support people. If karmic action involves an individual’s exercise of agency and resistance to the ignorance that constrains them, then social movements can 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 new insight into the possibilities of both personal and collective transformation. For Arendt, the potential that arises through such action marks the beginning of hope.

♦

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.