Ethical Conduct in Theory and Practice
The First Training in Depth
First Floor - Small Vehicle • Module 6
Estimated time to complete: 90 minutes
Why Ethics?
The previous module sketched out the complete path: three trainings—ethical conduct, meditation, and wisdom—working together to bring about the cessation of suffering. We also saw the five stages of the path, the three vehicles for traversing it, and the way to relate personally to each of the four Noble Truths. Now that the basic map has been laid out, we can add a bit more detail and begin exploring the territory for ourselves.
In the Small Vehicle approach, the path begins with ethical conduct—not with meditation or wisdom. This surprises many people. After all, this is a course about meditation theory. Why start with ethics?
The short answer is that ethical conduct supports meditation: If we act unethically with negative intentions, we will develop a heavy conscience in constant upheaval that makes it hard to sit still and meditate, like a thief in hiding, who anxiously jumps at every sound because the police might be coming to get him. Ethical conduct cleans up our conscience so that we can sit in meditation. And without meditation, we cannot investigate our experience to gain wisdom. Consider this in terms of our muddy water analogy. If the water in our glass is constantly stirred—if we are continually acting in ways that agitate the mind—then no amount of sitting still will allow it to settle. Ethical conduct keeps us out of internal and external struggles that stir the water. Meditation is about letting the water settle and investigating its nature so that wisdom can eliminate the dirt. Skip the first step, and the other two cannot do their work.
Now to understand why certain actions lead to agitation, we first need to understand the Buddhist theory of volitional action—karma—since it explains the causal mechanism by which our actions shape our experience. Since wisdom about karma informs ethical conduct and meditation improves our mindfulness of ethical conduct, this module weaves in some threads that will be dealt with in subsequent modules. First, the basic theory of karma will be laid out in prose (to make it easier to refer back to later). Second, the lecture video will discuss the practical aspects of training in ethical conduct with that theory in mind and how its practice application involves increased mindfulness.
What Is Karma?
The basic theory
In the previous module on the Second Noble Truth, we were introduced to karma as volitional action driven by the emotional infections (kleśas)—and to the idea that karma operates through natural causality, not cosmic punishment. Here we go deeper into the mechanism.
The Buddhist doctrine of karma is technically a subtopic of dependent arising, the general Buddhist explanation of causality within the First Hallmark. The particular part of causality that it explains is the way that we cause our own suffering by engaging in volitional actions under the influence of emotional infections. But it also explains how our volitional actions can either support or prevent our attainment of cessation from suffering through the wisdom born of meditation. Western Buddhist practitioners sometimes also use the term karma loosely to refer to experiences or situations whose origin is unknown. So, “That’s your karma” means “That is a situation your actions must have caused so you need to take responsibility for finding a way to change it going forward.”
The theory of karma is built around the intuitive claim that whenever we do something with a negative, positive, or neutral intention, it causes a corresponding painful, pleasant, or neutral result for ourselves. The theory provides an obvious rationale for both Buddhist ethical guidelines and spiritual practice because all beings naturally wish to avoid suffering and find happiness. Toward that end, worldly people may use fortunate circumstances for worldly pursuits of wealth, comfort, security, and so on. But spiritual practitioners direct their fortunate results toward spiritual purposes.
How does karma work?
According to the small vehicle, none of us inherently wishes to harm others, but we often do so when triggered by our attachment or aversion, and afterward, we justify our actions based on our unquestioned assumption that we must cherish and protect ourself or our identity. However, Buddhists say we should always try to avoid expressing harmful intentions in thoughts, words, or deeds because intentionally harming others actually causes harm to ourselves—much more than we are aware of. Furthermore, if we always seek to be helpful rather than harmful to others, we will find ourselves in more fortunate circumstances in this life and beyond.
The small vehicle generally explains the functioning of karma like the workings of a banking system hardwired into the universe. Each positive action deposits “merit” (puṇya) into our bank account, which then yields pleasant results—for example, acting generously is said to deposit the merit that leads to the pleasant result of wealth. But each negative action deposits “demerit” (apuṇya), which yields unpleasant results—for example, acting stingily is said to deposit the demerit that leads to unpleasant poverty. But the tradition adds four important qualifying nuances.
The first nuance is that all results of positive or negative actions are neutral, because whether those resulting circumstances are positive or negative is contextually dependent on other factors. For instance, the wealth acquired through prior generosity could be construed contextually as a negative rather than positive result, if having that wealth leads to being robbed, to complacency, or to depression or other forms of suffering. For this reason, so long as someone is still caught in cyclic existence, we cannot say whether any karmic result they encounter is “good” or “bad”—especially since it can also change from one to the other over time—and hence, Buddhists explain that results are all neutral.
The second nuance is that the intentionality (cetanā) behind an action matters more than the action itself. The orientation of mind while acting can outweigh the external form of the action. A generous act performed with manipulative intent—giving something in order to get something bigger in return—plants a different kind of seed than the same act performed with genuine care. According to Buddhist tradition, the generous act mixed with selfish intent might yield wealth that one cannot actually enjoy.
The third nuance is that actions driven by self-centeredness “have negative influences” (sāsrava)—meaning they are tainted by the emotional infections that always lead toward cyclical existence rather than away from it. The same actions performed without self-centered motivation “have no negative influences” (anāsrava). Self-centeredness poisons even positive seeds. Like the bee trapped within a jar, we can be performing positive actions constantly—but as long as those actions are driven by confused self-clinging, they keep us cycling through the six realms rather than leading toward freedom.
The fourth nuance is that nirvāṇa—freedom from the jar—is not directly caused even by doing good deeds without self-centeredness. Rather nirvāṇa is attained through the wisdom that is born from meditation, which leads us to close our karmic bank account so that no more deposits (prāpti)—of merit or demerit—can be made.
We will return to discuss how karma works in much greater detail when we study the twelve links of dependent arising later in the Path section. There we can look directly at the mechanics of how karmic seeds are supposed to ripen and perpetuate the cycle. We will explain the idea of nirvāṇa in the Fruition section.
Why karma matters
Since this course focuses on meditation, you may wonder why the Buddhist theory of karma matters for meditators. Simply put, Buddhist meditation theory rests upon the assumption that practitioners have some understanding of karma. Without this context, we may misunderstand what many Buddhist practices, such as mindfulness, are telling us to do and how they are supposed to work for us. Even if we take the Buddhist teachings on karma and rebirth in the six realms as metaphorical or dream-like, Buddhist meditation practices must be interpreted in light of those teachings and based on some sort of ethical conduct. Otherwise, they are being repurposed toward something they were not designed for. This does not mean that we need to follow traditional guidelines for Buddhist ethics to the letter. But if we make an effort to understand even just the central Small Vehicle principle of trying not to harm others, it makes the training in meditation wisdom far more effective in alleviating the three types of suffering, especially the root existential dis-ease.
Understanding Karma Through the Example of a Dream
The banking analogy is useful for understanding the impersonal way that karmic actions operate. But it does not explain the invisible way that karma can shape our experience and cause our suffering without our knowing it. To explain this aspect of karma, it helps to consider two perspectives on what causes us to suffer in a dream.
Imagine you are on a work trip. You have dinner alone—a modest meal, nothing extravagant. When you fill out your expense report the next day, you add a bottle of wine you didn’t order, round the total up by forty dollars. It’s a small thing. No one will notice. The company can afford it. You tell yourself everyone does it, and that it barely counts as theft. You submit the report and move on with your day.
Later that night, you have a nightmare. In it, you are living under a large bridge where many other homeless people lurk. It is a cold, dark, unsafe, and lawless place where basic resources are scarce and nothing feels secure. When you look over at your food bag, you notice it is wide open with one strap torn off and the other dangling. Shocked, you suddenly realize it is empty—someone took it all! Hungry and crying, you wander amongst the makeshift shanties and overloaded shopping baskets, looking for your food. Then, suddenly, you notice a full bag of food. Seeing no one around, you reach into it to grab a loaf of bread. Just then, the bag’s owner returns to catch you in the act, beats you up for stealing, and throws you in the river. Feeling ashamed, guilty, hurt, and wet, you emerge downstream and start looking again for your food. When you happen to come upon another unattended bag, you hesitate because of what happened last time. But your hunger is too strong. You double-check to make sure no one is watching before quickly filling your pockets and running away. This time, you get away with it. But when you finally return to your spot underneath the bridge, you discover that your sleeping blanket is now gone. Seeing no sign of it nearby, you head out to a nearby encampment to see what you can find. As you approach, a group of homeless men throw rocks at you angrily shouting, “There’s the thief!” Frightened and horrified, you run away but one of the rocks hits you in the head and the jolt suddenly wakes you up from the dream.
Once you realize it was just a dream, you can analyze your suffering from two different causal perspectives: inside or outside the dream. From the inside perspective, you were simply experiencing the suffering of anxiety, hunger, loss, and so on because you were simply trying to survive in a world where others were stealing from you. This is the normal way that people contemplate what caused their suffering. But from the outside perspective, we also can easily see how stealing from your boss during the day—motivated by self-centeredness—planted a seed in your subconscious that blossomed into your subsequent nightmare. This means that the real cause of your dream suffering was your own ignorant action, not the unreal actions of the dream thieves. To understand how this one negative karmic action manifested a negative dream with four different dimensions, we can analyze the dream further in terms of what Buddhists call the four karmic effects. We will study these in greater detail when we reach the twelve links of dependent arising, but for now, seeing how they operate within a single dream gives us an intuitive sense of their logic.
What Buddhists call the fully ripened effect—determined by the primary motivation behind the action, which in the case of stealing is attachment or desire—manifested in you living under a bridge with other homeless people, a hungry ghost realm where food was scarce and everyone was struggling to get a hold of it.
What Buddhists call the effect similar to the cause manifested in you not only experiencing your unattended things being stolen—the same way you stole from your boss during the day—but also in the inclination to steal again, a propensity that felt natural even inside the dream.
The conditioning effect shaped the cold, dark, and insecure atmosphere of your life-world—a place with no shelter, no safety, no institutions to appeal to, where the very environment was structured around scarcity and nothing you did could make the ground beneath you feel stable.
The proliferating effect created a vicious cycle. Each act of taking led to more scarcity, which in turn led to more craving, grasping, and taking. In each step of the cycle, things intensified and got worse.
Life is Like a Dream
For Buddhists, our minds dream whether we are asleep or awake. When we are sleeping, we weave together momentary flashes of memories, images, thoughts, and feelings into a world with us at the center of some storyline that makes sense only within the context of the dream. Pulling too much on the threads of our dream logic wakes us up. When we are awake, we also weave together momentary flashes of memories, images, thoughts, and feelings into a world with us at the center of some storyline that makes sense only within the context of ego fantasy. So whatever we do in our waking experience, it is like functioning within a daydream. The teachings on karma—somewhat like neuroscience or psychology—aim to wake us up from this daydream so we can see the real cause of our suffering from the outside perspective.
Rebirth and Dreaming
The Buddhist tradition treats rebirth from one life to the next like moving from one dream to the next. If we look closely at our waking and sleeping dreams, we can see that every storyline revolves around an imaginary character that we call “me” whose qualities change from dream to dream. In one dream, we may be a soldier chased by a tiger. In another, we are a beautiful princess marrying prince charming. But despite each new identity we take on, we do not move from dream to dream in a random manner. Each dream is shaped by the emotional baggage of the dreams that arose before it. Buddhist tradition classifies the six broad types of experience that beings cycle through in these dreams as the six realms—and as we saw in the module on the Second Noble Truth, there are different ways of understanding them: as literal places of rebirth, as psychological states in this life, or as dreamlike experiences within the larger dream of saṃsāra.
The dream we just described—a world of insatiable craving where you keep grasping but can never hold on—has the quality of a hungry ghost realm. A dream dominated by aggression, where the entire environment is hostile, has the quality of a hell realm. A blissful dream that feels like it will last forever—until it ends—has the quality of a god realm. Each of the six realms corresponds to a different emotional quality of dreamscape, and we cycle through them depending on the seeds we have planted.
The recurring dream is the key image. You keep falling into the same kind of dreamscape because the pattern driving it has not been addressed. The dream ends, but the seeds remain. You fall asleep again, and the same imprints ripen into the same kind of experience. This is what rebirth looks like from the dreamlike perspective—not a single punishment, but a recurring pattern that persists because we keep planting the same seeds through the same kinds of actions.
And the way out? Buddhist tradition is clear: the Buddha is depicted outside the wheel of cyclic existence, having awakened from the dream entirely. The path is the process of waking up. For now, the practical question is: what can we do right now to stop making the dreams worse? The answer, as the introduction suggested, is ethical conduct—the first training—which interrupts the cycle at the point of action. We stop planting seeds that will ripen into more turbulent dreams. We do not eliminate the seeds already planted—those will still ripen. But we stop adding to the pile.
What the Tradition Says About Karmic Results
A note on reading traditional descriptions
The dream example above illustrates the four effects through a single action. What follows is a condensed presentation of how Buddhist tradition applies this same framework across all ten negative actions. The language is concrete and detailed—intentionally so. The point is not to take each description literally, as though karma operated like a cosmic courtroom handing down sentences. Rather, these traditional illustrations are meant to help us develop an intuitive feel for the underlying principle: the quality of what we put out shapes the quality of what we undergo. Reading them psychologically—as descriptions of how patterns of action generate patterns of experience—captures the essential logic, whether or not one accepts the cosmological framework in which they are traditionally presented.
It is also worth addressing some common misunderstandings. Some people interpret the theory of karma as deterministic—as though Buddhists somehow believe our present circumstances are fixed by past actions and nothing can be done about them. Worse, they claim karma theory is victim-blaming: if you are suffering, it must be your own fault. However, according to Buddhist tradition, we should not interpret karma this way. The teaching is not oriented backward, toward assigning blame for anyone’s present circumstances or trauma. It is oriented forward, toward taking responsibility for going where we need to go and empowering us to act with wisdom and compassion. Because our reactions to present circumstances shape our future experience, we must recognize that we have the capacity—right now—to change our trajectory. By acting in ethically positive ways, we can take the reins of our own lives and get ourselves out of the addictive patterns and the circumstances that create and perpetuate suffering. Also, because everyone does harmful things habitually out of ignorance—because all beings are, in this sense, fellow addicts—Buddhists also recommend that we aspire to help confused beings escape from suffering, not to shun them for being stuck in those patterns.
The paired results for all ten actions
The ten negative actions—traditionally called “taking life,” “taking what is not offered,” and so on (throughout this curriculum we use the more concise terms “killing,” “stealing,” “lying,” etc.)—each produce the same four types of effect we saw operating in the dream. The fully ripened effect follows a general pattern: actions driven by hatred tend toward hell-realm experience, those driven by attachment toward hungry-ghost experience, and those driven by ignorance toward animal-realm experience. The proliferating effect is also consistent: whatever you did, you tend to keep doing, and the pattern compounds.
But the experience similar to the cause and the conditioning effect are specific to each action—and seeing them laid out reveals the logic. Notice how each result mirrors its cause, not as punishment, but as natural consequence: the quality of what you put out shapes the quality of what you undergo.
| Action | What You Experience | What You Tend to Repeat | The Kind of Environment You Inhabit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Killing | Health problems, shortened lifespan | Attraction to violence, carelessness about harm | Dangerous, threatening surroundings |
| Stealing | Financial loss, being taken advantage of | Inclination to cut corners, take what isn't yours | Environments of scarcity where effort yields little |
| Sexual misconduct | Relationships marked by mistrust and conflict | Difficulty maintaining boundaries or commitments | Degraded, unhealthy social environments |
| Lying | Not being believed even when truthful; being misrepresented | Habitual dishonesty, even when unnecessary | Atmospheres of paranoia and instability |
| Sowing discord | Surrounded by conflict and dysfunction | Tendency to gossip, triangulate, stir things up | Fractured communities where cooperation breaks down |
| Harsh speech | Being spoken to harshly; conversations turning hostile | Quick temper, sharp tongue | Harsh, unwelcoming environments |
| Worthless chatter | Not being taken seriously; people tune you out | Compulsive talking, inability to stay focused | Chaotic, unproductive settings |
| Covetousness | The things you most want remaining just out of reach | Chronic envy, comparing yourself to others | Environments of diminishing returns |
| Wishing harm | Chronic anxiety, feeling unsafe | Habitual resentment, suspicion of others' motives | Environments pervaded by threat |
| Wrong views | Persistent confusion, poor judgment | Resistance to trustworthy guidance | Isolation, lacking reliable community or mentors |
The positive actions are simply the mirror image. Generosity leads to abundance. Protecting life leads to health and longevity. Truthfulness leads to being trusted and respected. And so on—each positive action generates results that mirror its quality, just as each negative action does.
What to watch for: Why vows and precepts are optional guidelines—not commandments—adopted voluntarily because they help, like joining a gym. How taking each precept opens up an entire new area of mindfulness you didn’t know you were missing—the video walks through all ten with contemporary examples. The four components of a complete karmic action (intention, action, object, completion), and why the same action performed with a different intention plants a completely different seed. And the closing insight about “the gap”—a brief pause between stimulus and reaction that mindfulness can learn to recognize, and that changes everything about how ethical conduct actually works in practice.
Video 4: Ethical Conduct in Theory and Practice
Duration: 47 minutes
From Ethics to Meditation
The video closes with a crucial observation: ethical conduct requires mindfulness. The problem is that we intend to act ethically, but toxic mental states arise and we react before we notice. We act, and then regret follows. But as the video explains, there is a brief gap—a pause between stimulus and reaction—that mindfulness can learn to recognize. When we begin to notice that gap, it grows wider, and we gain the space to choose rather than simply react. Without the capacity to observe our own mental states as they arise—before they translate into action—ethical conduct remains an aspiration rather than a practice.
This is one of the most practical connections in the entire curriculum. Ethical conduct creates the conditions for meditation. And meditation develops the mindfulness that makes ethical conduct possible. The two trainings are not sequential steps you complete one at a time. They are mutually supporting—each one makes the other possible.
The next module begins the second training: the theory of śamatha meditation. Having understood why we need to stop stirring the water, we turn to how to let it settle.
A few Insights:
Many Westerners misunderstand the theory of karma and don’t see how Buddhists can use it in a healthy way to reduce painful mental attitudes. To understand correctly the Buddhist framework, we need to practice thinking through painful situations that we presently experience in our own lives—with the goal of seeing how our own ego and reactivity might be making our circumstances more negative than they need to be. Without focusing on our own present concrete circumstances, we cannot even begin to know how acting in ethically positive ways might help us end our addictive patterns that perpetuate suffering. To be clear, life situations are complex. Seeing our own part in a painful dynamic does not mean being blind to other people’s role or negative actions. Rather, it means starting from the understanding that everyone acts out of habitual ignorance in harmful ways because all beings are, in this sense, fellow addicts to one degree or another. Being an addict does not excuse their negative actions. It just means that, whatever we might decide to do to protect ourselves and others from harm, we would do well to take this fact into account. Certainly, if we find ourselves in an abusive relationship or someone else is harming us, then we need to get out of that situation or away from those circumstances to safety. We also need to put violent criminals in prison. And we should exercise our power to change harmful governmental policies and social structures. But what is more important than what we do is seeing clearly what is motivating us to act and causing us real suffering. Many people feel like permanent victims who cannot help but feel painful reactions—such as lingering grudges, rage, hurt, trauma, low self-esteem, or paralyzing insecurity—due to past negative experiences. Like some contemporary forms of therapy, Buddhists recommend very specific tools to help us get over our victimhood and find more confidence to live our best lives. To use these tools, we do not need to accept all Buddhist teachings on karma at face value. But if we get the sense of how to use the karma framework as a starting point for self-reflection, we will understand the different Buddhist meditation methods much better and use them more effectively.
Questions for Reflection
These are not comprehension questions. They are observation prompts—invitations to investigate your own experience over the coming days and weeks. No judgment, no grading. Just looking.
1. Observe One Verbal Action
Pick one verbal action to watch—harsh speech is a good place to start, though any of the four verbal actions from the video will work. Don’t try to change it yet. Just notice when it arises. What triggered it? What was the underlying feeling? Was there a moment between the impulse and the words, or did they seem to happen simultaneously?
2. Observe One Mental Action
Pick one mental action to watch—covetousness, for example: wanting what others have. Notice when it arises. What is the feeling tone? Is it pleasant, unpleasant, or something harder to name? What story accompanies it? Again, don’t try to change anything. Just observe.
3. Brief Daily Review
At the end of the day, take two or three minutes to reflect: Where today did I act upon toxic mental states? Where did I act from care? No judgment—just observation. This simple practice is itself a form of mindfulness, and it begins to reveal the patterns that the theory of karma describes.
This module is part of Tarpa's Palace of Learning curriculum, a secular educational program exploring Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and contemplative practice. All content © 2025