I have written about what rebirth can look like from a secular perspective, but one of the most important parts of the traditional belief in rebirth, and a core Buddhist teaching, is karma.
In the West, we often treat karma as “what goes around comes around,” but nothing could be further from the truth. We all know people who have done harmful things and still seem to have good things happen to them. We also know kind, generous people whose lives seem full of hardship. We look for justice in those outcomes, but often cannot find it. Or we see something bad happen to someone and say, “Oh, that’s their karma.”
But that does not align with Buddhist teachings on karma, and it does not align with a secular understanding of karma either.
Noah Rasheta, in his book Secular Buddhism, offers a useful way to think about it. Rather than saying, “If I do something good, I will get something good,” we can say, “If I do something, something will happen.” It is as simple as baking a cake. If you mix the right ingredients in the right order and bake them at the right temperature, you get a cake. Mix them differently, and you get something else. Both are karma. Neither outcome is inherently good or bad. They are simply results.
Traditional Buddhist teachings give karma a broader role. Karma is the moral causality of intentional action. Choices made through body, speech, and mind leave consequences, shaped by the greed, hatred, compassion, or wisdom behind them. In traditions that hold to rebirth, those consequences may appear in this life or ripen across future lives, not as punishment, but as natural causality.
Karma is also part of what keeps beings in samsara, the ongoing cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Buddhism does not generally teach that an unchanging soul moves from one life to the next. Instead, it describes a causal continuity in which karmic tendencies condition a new existence. Buddhist practice aims to end the ignorance and craving that create this cycle and, ultimately, bring liberation from samsara.
That does not fit neatly into a secular perspective, especially if we do not hold a belief in rebirth. But outside of that question, I think karma remains understandable and deeply relevant.
Our actions, speech, and thoughts shape the reality we experience. If I cultivate harmful thoughts, speak them, and act on them, over time I will likely see the effects of those choices. This does not mean every negative action brings an immediate negative result, or that every harmful person will be punished in a way we can see.
Life does not work that cleanly.
But if I lie constantly, I will eventually pay a price. People will not trust me. I may find myself surrounded by people who accept or mirror that behavior, while honest people distance themselves. My choices will shape my relationships, my reputation, and the kind of life I am able to build. In that sense, this is karma.
This principle is rooted in what Buddhism calls dependent origination, or interdependence. Nothing exists independently of causes and conditions. Nothing we do happens in isolation. Our actions affect us, but they also affect other people, and those effects continue outward in ways we cannot always see or control.
This is why karma remains critical from a secular Buddhist perspective. Secular Buddhism is not about ignoring karma because we may not believe in rebirth. Even if our karma does not continue after death, it has real effects on our lives now and on the lives of others.
We must be aware of our actions. Karma literally means action. Our thoughts, speech, and actions have consequences. If we lose sight of that, we risk losing sight of what the Buddha was trying to teach us.
This does not mean every painful thing that happens to us is the result of our choices. It does not mean people who suffer deserve it, or that the world reliably rewards good people and punishes bad ones. Life is more complicated, more unfair, and more interconnected than that.
This also does not mean that actions are inherently 'good' or 'bad' in some cosmic sense. Yet our choices absolutely have real effects. Every time we choose cruelty over compassion, dishonesty over truth, or indifference over care, we help create the conditions in which those things continue. Every time we choose differently, we create the possibility for something else.
From a secular perspective, that may be enough. We may not know whether karma follows us beyond this life, but we can see that it follows us through this one. It lives in our habits, our relationships, our communities, and the world we help shape together. That is not cosmic justice. It is responsibility. And it is reason enough to practice.