BUDDHIST VIEW OF KARMA

Buddhists and Vedantists agree that a person reaps what he sows, as set forth in the Law of Karma.  This is to say, a person of good character when life ends is reborn of good character, and a person of evil character at the moment of death is reborn of evil character.

The Law of Karma operates like a law of nature in that it is impersonal, predictable.

Gradually, however, the law took on a more terrible interpretation.  The implication now was that every individual act that a person did throughout his life had karmic consequences, as opposed to the cumulative effect of the acts by the end of a person’s life.
   
The Buddha gave the law more flexibility, however.  In his view, a person could experience so complete a change of heart or disposition (by following Buddhist teachings presumably) as to escape any negative karmic consequences from his current and previous life. 

Those who underwent so profound a change, who were no longer burdened by “the will-to-live-and-have,” by the longing for life, could be assured, the Buddha said, that their old karma was now exhausted and that no new karma was being produced, and that they, at death, would be extinguished like a lamp, never again to be reborn in this world of woe.