The term Karma is clearly distinguished from the term fate in Buddhist textbooks. According to Buddha, neither a Creator nor external causes are responsible for what we experience. Contrary to a Hindu, who feels at the mercy of his Karma, a Buddhist sees the explanations on cause and effect as the basis of personal freedom and universal responsibility for all living beings.

Buddha stated, that all experience of the world arises from the mind. As long as a sentient being does not recognize the nature of mind, he or she is not aware, that positive words, wishes and actions lead to according experiences in the stream of consciousness. Instead, an ordinary being feels him- or herself separated from the surrounding world and thinks, all experiences were caused from the outside. Due to this ignorance, we cling to pleasant experiences and wish to avoid unpleasant ones. The basis of suffering in our world is not something completely evil, as it is given in several religions, but ignorance of the nature of mind and of the way cause and effect (Karma) work.

Buddha explained in a non-judging manner positive, negative, and neutral tendencies of mind as the cause for later ways of speaking and actions resulting from this. Logically, in our own stream of consciousness as well as in the surrounding nature positive causes can never bring about negative actions and vice versa. The plain example of seed and fruit shows, on one hand, how the fruit only grows because of the potential information stored in the seed, and on the other hand, that the seed has ceased to exist once the fruit appears.

In meditation, Buddhists learn to remove seeds of restricting and painful experiences, before they open up and bring out those experiences. Moreover, people gain the power to cut off arising disturbing emotions at their roots and to become interested in the wisdoms that lie behind them. In this way, meditation liberates from compulsive and unconscious involvement in cause and effect.

According to Buddha, four conditions must come together for a karmic impression to come to full effect. First a being has to understand clearly its own position and the corresponding conditions. Secondly, it has to have the wish, to influence them actively. Thirdly, the being must do something accordingly or have others do it. Eventually, being satisfied with the results completes a fully developed karmic impression, which is stored in our store consciousness after the action. For example, the karmic result of a murder will be the experience of a hell-like state, if it was motivated by hate. The same action motivated by greed, as for example murder in connection with robbery, leads into worlds of frustration, while murdering out of stupidity leads to rebirth as an animal.

The stream of consciousness flows from birth to birth, while in every situation we digest and dissolve old impressions and put new ones into the storage of our mind. On one hand, vicious circles of impulse and reaction form,  which are difficult to break. On the other hand, due to their nature, even the most extreme mental states arise from certain conditions. Therefore, they also can be changed (cf. The Wheel of Life).

For this reason, Buddha never taught Karma in a dogmatic way or as a moralist like "You must not …" or "You always have to …". For example, you might kill, to develop medicine or to save peoples' lives. In this case, an action still has negative results, but much weaker ones, since the mental impulse was compassion, and one already regrets the action  when doing it, while feeling it to be inevitable. Conscious understanding of the way cause and effect work is meant to help Buddha's students, to benefit beings in the cycle of existence with wisdom and spontaneous activity.