Intention Is Kamma
Lecture Notes
A method, applied to six different things
This sutta announces its own method up front — "penetrative" — and then applies the identical lens to six topics in turn: sensual pleasures, feelings, perceptions, defilements, deeds, and suffering. For each, it traces the topic back to its source, maps its variety, names its result, identifies its cessation, and specifies the practice leading to that cessation. This course is interested in exactly one of those six sections.
The single most quoted line on kamma in the whole canon
In the section on deeds, the discourse states plainly: "It is intention that I call deeds. For after making a choice, one acts by way of body, speech, and mind." This single sentence locates the entire moral weight of an action in the intention (cetanā) behind it — not in the bare physical or verbal act considered on its own. The same intentional act might be expressed through the body, through speech, or purely in the mind; in every case, it is the intention, not the channel, that constitutes the deed.
Where deeds lead, and when they ripen
Having defined kamma as intention, the sutta describes its "diversity" as leading to five different destinations — hell, the animal realm, the ghost realm, the human world, or the world of the gods — and its "result" as unfolding on three possible timescales: in this very life, upon rebirth in the next life, or at some later time still. This threefold timing will matter directly in Session 3, when two people who did the same thing end up in very different places.
Why start with the definition, not the drama
It would be easy to open a course on kamma and rebirth with the vivid cases — the murderer reborn well, the saint reborn badly. This course starts here instead, because those vivid cases only make sense once the underlying claim is precise: kamma is not fate, and it is not a ledger kept by an outside judge. It is what a specific kind of mental event — an intention, followed through in body, speech, or mind — sets in motion.
- Kamma is defined as intention, not as the physical or verbal act on its own. The same intentional choice might be carried out through body, speech, or purely in the mind — the channel doesn't change what makes it kamma.
- Deeds ripen on three different timescales. In this very life, in the next life, or at some later time still — a detail this course will need directly in Session 3.
- Starting with the definition, not the drama, is deliberate. The vivid, puzzling cases in Sessions 2 and 3 only make sense once "kamma is intention" is precisely in place first.
Primary TextThe full sutta, with its own reading guide and quiz
Read the sutta now, with Part 1's frame in hand. Its own reading guide goes section by section through the full discourse, and ends with a ten-question self-check.
AN 6.63 — Penetrative
A single method — tracing any phenomenon back to its source, mapping its variety, naming its result, identifying its cessation, and specifying the practice that leads there — is applied to sensual pleasures, feelings, perceptions, defilements, deeds, and suffering, showing the same eightfold path uproots all six.
Read the sutta →Discussion Questions
- "It is intention that I call deeds." Test this against a real case: think of an action where the outward result was harmful but the intention behind it wasn't — or the reverse. Does locating kamma in the intention change how you'd evaluate that case?
- The sutta applies an identical five-step method (source, variety, result, cessation, path to cessation) to six very different topics. What does it suggest about the tradition's own view of kamma that it's treated with the same analytical method as feelings or perceptions, rather than a wholly separate category?
- Deeds are said to ripen in this life, the next life, or some later time still. How does knowing this in advance change how you'd interpret a good or bad thing happening to someone soon after a specific choice they made?
- Why might this course choose to open with a precise technical definition rather than with one of the dramatic stories (a killer's fate, a saint's fate) that make kamma feel urgent? What would be lost by skipping this session and starting with the drama instead?
AssignmentChoose one · half to one page · bring it next session
Recall one of your own actions this week where the outward act and your actual intention behind it might be judged differently by an outside observer. Write half a page analyzing it using this sutta's own definition — what was the intention, specifically, and what does that make the deed?
Explain to someone with no background in Buddhism why "it's the intention that counts" is a more precise and useful ethical claim than "it's the result that counts" or "it's the act itself that counts" — using an example from ordinary life, not a Buddhist one.
Self-Check
The sutta's own page has a ten-question quiz covering the full text. Take it there before moving on.
Session 2: Why People Differ
A student asks the Buddha directly why people are born short-lived or long-lived, sick or healthy, poor or rich — and receives seven precise, paired answers, with an important caveat about how far the pattern actually extends.