Reflect on karma: cause and effect in your own actions
Trace one recent action from its intention to its effects on others and on your own habits, and decide what you want to repeat and what to stop.
Why it works
The last initial-scope topic is karma, the teaching that actions shaped by intention bring results that follow the person — in Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Qualities, “just as a shadow follows the body.” Berzin clears the ground by contrasting it with ideas it is often confused with: Buddhism, he says, does not explain what happens to us as chance, luck, fate or reward and punishment handed down by an authority, and calls karma the most complex topic in the teachings. Reflecting on ordinary actions turns that abstraction into something visible: small habits strengthen with repetition and shape what comes next, which is the motive the tradition draws on for restraint and for cultivating what is helpful.
How to do it
- Pick one action from the past day — something you said, did or held back from — not a whole life story.
- Ask what the intention behind it was: irritation, care, fear, wanting to impress?
- Trace its effects: on the other person, on the situation, and on how likely you are to do it again.
- Notice how the same intention shows up in other small actions; this is the habit the teaching is pointing at.
- Decide one thing: an action you want to repeat, and one you want to restrain, and rest for a moment on that resolve.
Evidence
Karma is the fourth stanza-topic of the Foundation of All Qualities and appears in verse 4 of the Three Principal Aspects as “the unfailing effects of karma”; Berzin’s teaching contrasts the Buddhist account with chance, fate and reward-and-punishment views. The exercise applies the teaching to everyday actions; support is textual and practitioner-based. (anecdotal)
The full traditional teaching on karma assumes rebirth, as Berzin notes; this exercise uses only the part that can be checked within one life, and no study has tested it.
Sources
- Tsongkhapa Lobzang Drakpa. The Foundation of All Qualities (a fourteen-stanza summary of the stages of the path), trans. Adam Pearcey (2018). Lotsawa House.
- Tsongkhapa Lobzang Drakpa. Three Principal Aspects of the Path, trans. Adam Pearcey (2006, revised 2012). Lotsawa House.
- Berzin, A. Clearing Away Extraneous Conceptions about Karma. Study Buddhism (Berzin Archives).
Common mistake
Using karma to explain away someone’s illness, loss or mistreatment — theirs or your own — as deserved. Berzin warns against reading karma as reward and punishment; the reflection is about the intentions you act from now, not a verdict on suffering.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Lamrim: The Stages of the Path and the Three Scopes
- Alternate analytical (checking) meditation with placement meditation
Reason your way into a lamrim topic until it is felt, then rest on that understanding without more thinking — and alternate the two.
- Begin where the lamrim begins: relying on a spiritual teacher, with care
Treat finding and learning from a qualified teacher as the root of the path — and take the time the texts themselves ask for to choose well.
- Contemplate the precious human life: the freedoms and advantages
Go through the conditions that make this life an opportunity — what you are free from and what you have — until you feel how rare and useful it is.
- Contemplate death and impermanence with the nine-point reflection
Reflect that death is certain, that its time is uncertain, and that at death only what you have cultivated helps — so that you stop postponing what matters.
- Cultivate renunciation in the tradition’s sense: the determination to be free
See clearly that the pleasures of cyclic existence never finally satisfy, and let that turn into a wish for freedom — not into contempt for life.
- Reflect on the four thoughts that turn the mind (the outer preliminaries)
Precious human birth, impermanence, karma and the suffering of saṃsāra, recited and reflected on together so the mind turns toward practice.
- Set your motivation with the three scopes
Before a session, check honestly which scope you are practising from — this life, a good future, liberation, or awakening for all — and let it widen one step.
- Keep a daily lamrim rhythm: one topic in depth, the whole path at a glance
Work through the outline one topic at a time over weeks, while briefly reviewing the whole path each day so no stage is lost.
Related concepts
- Bodhicitta: The Awakening Mind and How It Is Cultivated
The intention at the heart of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and the classical ways Tibetan teachers train it
- The Six Pāramitās: How the Bodhisattva Trains
Six trainings, each aimed at one obstacle, and each made whole by wisdom
- Shamatha: The Buddhist Practice of Calm Abiding
Training the mind to rest: the nine stages and their modern neurological parallels
- Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
The 59 slogans and their practical application to everyday adversity and compassion
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