Do thoughts create karma?

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There is karma that is intention (an omnipresent mental factor) and karma that is intended actions.

Intended actions are defined by Je Tsongkhapa as:

The actions of body and speech that are motivated by that intention.


Afflictions such as anger, jealousy, covetousness, and so forth are not the intention mental factor - but have their own entity as mental factors - therefore they are not karma. Anger manifests from a seed of anger and that seed is not a karmic seed, because it was "deposited" by a previous instance of anger (not by a previous karma - that is intention or intended action).

However, some qualify the afflictions as 'karmic path' or 'paths of actions' because they are likely to lead one to engage in negative actions (karma).

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Karma is caused by will or intention, expressed in thoughts, words, and deeds (body, speech, and mind) but thoughts in themselves are epiphenomenal.

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Bhikkhu P. A. Payutto writes:

But according to the teachings of Buddhism, all actions and speech, all thoughts, no matter how fleeting, and the responses of the mind to sensations received through eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, without exception, contain elements of intention. Intention is thus the mind’s volitional choosing of objects of awareness; it is the factor which leads the mind to turn towards, or be repelled from, various objects of awareness, or to proceed in any particular direction; it is the guide or the governor of how the mind responds to stimuli; it is the force which plans and organizes the movements of the mind, and ultimately it is that which determines the states experienced by the mind.

One instance of intention is one instance of kamma. When there is kamma there is immediate result. Even just one little thought, although not particularly important, is nevertheless not void of consequence. It will be at the least a β€œtiny speck” of kamma, added to the stream of conditions which shape mental activity. With repeated practice, through repeated proliferation by the mind, or through expression as external activity, the result becomes stronger in the form of character traits, physical features or repercussions from external sources.

-- Good, Evil and Beyond: Kamma in the Buddha's teachings

As there are physical movements that are devoid of intention (e.g. convulsions), some mental images might be understood to surface unintentionally. While the quote above asserts all thoughts to have intention, it can be argued if these are understood to be karma or not. Dreams would be in this gray area, I think.

But, while awake, any sophisticated thought, anything more than a flash of an image or a sound or taste or smell, any and all imagination containing full sentences, dialogues and motions, etc, have an active element in them which nurtures and develops them: underneath, there's the intention to imagine these things, and these imaginations are actions -- which is the meaning of karma in Buddhism.

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