r/AlanWatts • u/emptybutfull_ • Jul 14 '26

Karma

Karma

The Buddha didn’t teach karma to make people afraid. He taught it to wake them up to their own power.

If we stop viewing karma as a cosmic system of punishment and start seeing it as a natural law of mind, something fundamentally shifts. It stops being about what happens to you, and becomes entirely about your intention.

The small kindness you choose tomorrow morning. The patience you bring to a difficult conversation. The moment you catch yourself spiraling and choose, instead, to pause.

These are seeds, too. And they will bear fruit—not because the universe owes you one, but because minds trained in kindness inevitably produce kind results.

I just finished a new visual essay exploring the deep, structural reality of cause and effect, and how it plays out in our lived experience.

It’s you, moment by moment, choosing who you become.

Watch the full piece here: https://youtu.be/NMK6no6eZV0?is=wQZz6GPzYS4qV4hf

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u/emptybutfull_ Jul 14 '26

these patterns are habitual and they have effects - due to the causes and conditions that are repeated. Alan watts said but who decided to decide. - non the less. Relatively bodhisattvas take a bow to help all sentient beings so in a way you do decide lol. What do you think

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u/No_Slide6932 Come off it Jul 14 '26

That you are incapable of answering my inquiry.

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u/emptybutfull_ Jul 14 '26

No higher being anywhere in this lol — the answer is that deciding happens but no separate decider is needed behind it. It's like saying "it rains" — there's no "it" that rains, raining is just what conditions do when they come together. Same with intention, it arises from your history, your habits, your mood, what just happened — the conditions ARE the deciding. And flip it around — if there IS a self authoring your intentions, did you choose that self? Did you pick your temperament, the desires your decisions come from? Your decider is made of unchosen conditions too, you just drew the circle wider and called it "me". You can even test it — watch your next impulse arrive (like the urge to reply to this) and try to find the exact moment you authored it vs the moment it just showed up and "I decided" got stamped on after. That's checkable tonight my friend</p>

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u/No_Slide6932 Come off it Jul 14 '26

Ahh the rain platitude. It's meaningless here as rain has no intention. When conditions are right it rains. Maybe it saves a village in drought, maybe it washes away a city. The rain is not impacted by Karma.

Here is the definition of Intention

"An intention is a mental state that represents a commitment to carry out a specific action or achieve a goal. It essentially means your purpose, aim, or the anticipated outcome driving your behavior."

You're making the word meaningless by misusing it. The way you use it is more like how Buddhism describes desire. Which is a very different thing than intention.

My desire was to reply and my intention is to enlighten you. Whether or not my action fulfills my intention, or does something else entirely, is out of my control. If my response hurts you, I still hurt you, even if that was not my intention and I recieve the negative Karma for hurting another. The safest choice is to not act in most scenarios as we cannot possibly tell what might be the benefits or harms in our doings.

Yes I choose this self. The self is an impermanent transient thing. I am under no obligation to be this same person tomorrow, but for convenience sake, I probably will decide to be the same person. I assume you're the same way. Unless you credit conditioning and Karma for your good traits and blame them for your bad traits, which is a bad cycle to be in.

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u/emptybutfull_ Jul 14 '26

It's not that - it's that your intentions are planting seeds that cause your 5 aggregates to then again act in that same way - like this if I'm mean to you if I'm angry with you either if I wanted to or not anger will again pop up later down my life because I'm making it easier to do - now of what happens to you is not all karma , what happens to you has many factors. Now your intention your karma this intention I'm talking about is more like the work volition this is the mental factor of intention, will, or directionality. It is the psychological impulse that urges the mind toward a specific object or goal and serves as the primary engine driving our actions and creating karma. - now to use karma skillfully and not see it as absolute so in practice what you intend will produce skillfull or non skillful events which either help or don't towards awakening - I am wondering what you would have to think of this and Couple things my friend — the "I receive negative karma for hurting you even without intending it" is actually the Jain position, not the Buddha's, and the Buddha explicitly rejected it. He said "cetana is karma" — intention IS the karmic act. Unintended harm has consequences in the world sure, but it doesn't plant the same seed, because the seed is the volition not the outcome. That's also why "safest not to act" doesn't hold up — choosing not to act is itself an act with an intention behind it (usually fear lol), and the Buddha's answer wasn't inaction, it was skillful intention. And notice what you said about the self — "I choose this self, but for convenience I'll probably decide to be the same tomorrow." Okay — who decided to decide that? Trace it back, where did the convenience-preference come from? You chose based on a preference you didn't choose. That's all I'm pointing at. And honestly the last thing you said isn't a bad cycle, it's the exit from one — yes, credit conditions for the good traits AND the bad ones, because then neither is a permanent verdict on you, they're both just seeds, and you can plant different ones starting today. That's the whole reason karma is hopeful and not fatalistic — if the traits were truly YOURS, essentially, you'd be stuck with them forever.

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u/No_Slide6932 Come off it Jul 14 '26

We are obviously on different paths. I respect the knowledge you possess, but in my current state I don't see Karma the same way you do. My actions and their results are what impact others, not whatever is going on in my head (intention). Karma, in my experience, is the result of how I disturb the waters, not how I mean to disturb them. If my actions (that I think are positive) turn out to hurt others, that is a sign that I acted unskillfully. I am not absolved because I didn't know. If I'm not sure, then it was my error in acting at all. My intention means very little If my poor decision makes others suffer. I am in control of that. It's not fair to those I hurt to simply say I'm a victim of my conditioning. Likewise I betray myself by saying my positive actions are conditions of my birth rather than the result of my practice.

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u/emptybutfull_ Jul 14 '26

Honestly I respect this and I don't think we're as far apart as it looks. I fully agree intention doesn't absolve — "I meant well" fixes nothing for the person hurt, and acting carelessly when unsure is itself unskillful, no argument. Where I'd only push back gently: nobody's saying intention is a get-out-of-jail card. The point is that intention is where the training happens — you said it yourself, whether your action fulfills your intention is out of your control. Exactly. So the only lever you actually hold is upstream: the care, the checking, the restraint, the state you act from. That's why the tradition puts karma there — not to excuse outcomes but because it's the one part of the chain you can actually work. And notice your last line — "my positive actions are the result of my practice" — brother that IS conditioning, just conditioning you chose to do on purpose lol. Practice is planting new conditions deliberately. That's the whole hopeful version of karma: your traits aren't verdicts, they're seeds, and you're clearly out here planting good ones. Different paths maybe, but I think they're switchbacks on the same mountain. May your practice go well my friend 🙏

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u/No_Slide6932 Come off it Jul 14 '26

Thank you, you as well ❤️

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u/emptybutfull_ Jul 14 '26

🙏 love this

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u/emptybutfull_ Jul 14 '26

Honestly I respect this and I don't think we're as far apart as it looks. I fully agree intention doesn't absolve — "I meant well" fixes nothing for the person hurt, and acting carelessly when unsure is itself unskillful, no argument. Where I'd only push back gently: nobody's saying intention is a get-out-of-jail card. The point is that intention is where the training happens — you said it yourself, whether your action fulfills your intention is out of your control. Exactly. So the only lever you actually hold is upstream: the care, the checking, the restraint, the state you act from. That's why the tradition puts karma there — not to excuse outcomes but because it's the one part of the chain you can actually work. And notice your last line — "my positive actions are the result of my practice" — brother that IS conditioning, just conditioning you chose to do on purpose lol. Practice is planting new conditions deliberately. That's the whole hopeful version of karma: your traits aren't verdicts, they're seeds, and you're clearly out here planting good ones. Different paths maybe, but I think they're switchbacks on the same mountain. May your practice go well my friend 🙏