Answer: Right Action involves positively impacting the lives of others.
Karma is created when we affect other people’s lives. If we improve someone’s life and bring them happiness, it is considered good karma; if we make their lives worse and cause them suffering, it is considered bad karma.
Right Speech transforms the mind, while Right Action transforms life itself, which essentially means helping others. We can help others at various levels, from basic to advanced, such as:
- Providing food, clothing, housing, clean water.
- Supplying medicine, elder care, transportation.
- Offering education, career, employment, and safety.
- Promoting morality, culture, and positive lifestyles.
- Creating opportunities for volunteer work.
- Encouraging spiritual practice towards enlightenment and offering the chance for spiritual practices.
- Helping propagate the true Dharma.
Looking at this ladder of Good Karma, we can see that it is not enough to improve others’ lives; we must also encourage others to do good deeds and create their own positive karma.
Of course, we cannot fully help everyone from basic to advanced levels. We can only choose ways to help that align with our abilities, current circumstances, the person’s needs, and their level of understanding.
Regardless of how we help, our ultimate goal should be to help people in their spiritual practice toward enlightenment. Every other level of help is merely the means to reach that goal.
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