ལས་ཀྱ་རྣམ་པར་འགྱར་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བའ་ཆས་ཀྱ་གཞང intro.15

intro.15

Apart from its occurrence in the title of the sūtra, we have largely avoided the lexicalized English word karma as a rendition of the Tibetan las. Instead, we translate las as “action(s).” We feel that contemporary common usage of the loanword karma is often fuzzy or unclear in that it seemingly blends together the senses “the totality of a person’s actions and conduct during successive incarnations,” a resultant state as “fate or destiny,” which is perceived to be causally influenced by the totality of a person’s actions, the “law or principle through which such influence is believed to operate,” and the woolly but popular sense of “a distinctive aura, atmosphere, or feeling.”¹⁷ We do, however, use the lexicalized adjective karmic (as, for example, in karmic result, or karmic cause and effect) in the sense of “relating to one’s action(s)” in the translation. We have furthermore used the expression karma and rebirth in this introduction knowing full well that these terms are equally difficult to define abstractly, but with the understanding that in Indic and Buddhist contexts the terms karma and rebirth are amalgamated in the term saṃsāra.