What This Concept Is Saying
In Buddhist thought, 因果 (hetu-phala, literally "cause-fruit") is not a vague belief that "good things happen to good people." It is the structural law that governs how every volitional action — every act of body, speech, and mind — leaves a trace, and how that trace, meeting the right conditions, ripens into a corresponding experience. The classical sources put the point with stark precision: *"假使经百劫，所作业不亡，因缘会遇时，果报还自受"* — "Even after hundreds of kalpas, what one has done does not perish; when causes and conditions meet, the fruit is reaped by oneself" (《大寶積經》). The law is not threatened by delay, by distance, or by the complexity of intervening events. It is described as "不坏于因果" — "unbreakable in cause and effect" — meaning that nothing in the causal order is, in itself, arbitrary.
But to stop there would be to flatten the concept. The sources actually unfold 因果 into several distinct layers, and each layer carries its own logic, its own texture, its own classical metaphor. To grasp 因果 in its full classical depth, we need to walk through these layers one by one.
Layer One: 因果不亡 — Causality Does Not Perish
The first layer is the most famous: *the non-extinction of karma*. Once a volitional act is committed, the karmic "seed" is lodged in the stream of experience and will, at the appropriate moment, bear fruit. The 《大寶積經》 uses a planting metaphor to drive the point home: as no "bitter seed" can mature into a "sweet fruit," so no harmful action can ultimately yield happiness — *"苦報酬惡緣，為善常安樂"* (bitter recompense follows evil conditions; doing good brings constant ease).
The Buddha's own body is held up as evidence for this principle. His perfect marks, his effortless dignity, even his spontaneous smile — these are not arbitrary gifts but the ripening of *past* causes: countless kalpas of供養诸佛 (making offerings to the Buddhas), 安住等持 (abiding in meditative equipoise). The principle extends even to the Buddha himself: "因果不败亡." If even an awakened being bears the imprint of his former actions, how much more so does the ordinary being? The force of this layer is to counter the common intuition that bad actions might somehow "not count" if no one notices, if no immediate consequence follows, or if enough time has passed.
Layer Two: 是处非处 — The Moral Logic of Correspondence
The second layer addresses *which* causes produce *which* fruits. Here the 《大寶積經》 uses a logical-formula vocabulary: "是处" (thathaavat, "this is fitting") means that a given cause *must* lead to a given result; "非处" (ayathāvat, "this is unfitting") means that such a result is impossible. This is not a probabilistic regularity — it is a structural necessity in the moral order.
The classic examples form the backbone of early Buddhist ethics. The six perfections (pāramitās) map cleanly: *布施* (generosity) → great wealth; *持戒* (moral restraint) → rebirth in human or heavenly realms; *怀忍* (patient forbearance) → beauty and refinement; *正勤* (right effort) → penetrative insight; *心一缘入正定* (one-pointed concentration) → true samādhi; *圣慧* (transcendent wisdom) → the cutting off of habitual tendencies. The ten virtuous paths (十善业道) map equally cleanly: *离杀* (refraining from killing) → long life; *离不与取* (refraining from theft) → great wealth; *离妄语* (refraining from false speech) → freedom from slander; *离离间语* (refraining from divisive speech) → harmonious relationships; *离麁恶语* (refraining from harsh speech) → hearing pleasing sounds; *离绮语* (refraining from frivolous chatter) → being heeded by others; *离贪* (refraining from greed) → wealth not being lost; and so on.
The point of the 是处非处 formulation is not to predict individual outcomes — "If I give $100 to a charity, I will receive exactly $100 back next Tuesday." It is to establish that certain causal channels are *open* and others are *closed*. The moral order has a grammar, and you cannot violate its grammar with impunity. As the sources put it, these correspondences are "不可颠倒" — cannot be inverted.
Layer Three: 因异报 — The Complexity of Ripening
The third layer is where most casual understandings of 因果 go wrong, and where the Buddhist teaching shows its philosophical depth. 因果 is *not* a simple one-to-one, linear, equal-weight correspondence between action and result. The 《大寶積經》 introduces the technical term "因异报" (literally "differing-fruit-from-cause") to name the fact that cause and fruit can differ wildly in their visible features.
Several specific patterns are enumerated. Sometimes a *small* cause yields a *vast* fruit; sometimes a *vast* cause yields only a small fruit. Sometimes a cause that feels painful at the time of doing produces a pleasant fruit later (think of disciplined study, surgery, or honest confrontation); sometimes a cause that feels pleasurable at the time produces a painful fruit later (think of indulgent pleasure, dishonesty, addictive comfort). The Buddha, the texts say, sees all of this with unobstructed wisdom and the Buddha-eye — the entire workings of three-life karma are transparent to an awakened mind.
This layer matters because it forbids two opposite errors: (a) the mechanistic error of assuming that every good deed must produce an exactly proportionate, immediately visible reward; and (b) the cynical error of dismissing 因果 altogether because "good people suffer and bad people thrive." Both errors fail to grasp the temporal and qualitative complexity of how karma actually ripens.
Layer Four: The Indeterminacy of Fixed Results
Closely connected is a fourth layer, articulated most sharply in the 《大般涅槃經》: 业 has "定" (fixed) and "不定" (unfixed) aspects. If every karmic action deterministically produced a fixed, unchangeable result, the very possibility of spiritual cultivation and liberation would collapse — you could do nothing to alter your fate.
The teaching therefore rejects "诸业定得报" (the view that all karma deterministically yields results) as a mechanical determinism incompatible with the Buddhist path. Instead, whether a karmic result ripens, and how heavily, depends on whether the *conditions* gather. Through the practice of the holy path (圣道), a heavy karmic debt can be made light; through the cultivation of abundant virtue, even what would have been a severe punishment can be experienced as a minor inconvenience. The 智者 (wise one) experiences heavy karma lightly because of a surplus of good action; the 愚者 (foolish one) experiences light karma heavily because of a deficit of good action. This is not an evasion of responsibility — it is the very *meaning* of spiritual practice: your present actions genuinely alter the trajectory of your past actions.
Two further mechanisms of transformation are highlighted. *覆藏* (concealment of wrongdoing) causes the offense to grow; *发露忏悔* (open confession accompanied by shame and remorse) can cause the offense to dissolve. The act of confession itself is a karmic cause — a karmic cause that can intervene in and restructure the consequences of earlier karmic causes.
Layer Five: 因果与涅槃、性与空 — Causality in the Larger Map
The fifth layer situates 因果 within the larger Buddhist worldview. The 《大般涅槃經》 draws a sharp distinction: "生死法悉有因果" — all phenomena within saṃsāra are governed by cause and effect — and precisely because they are so governed, they cannot be called nirvāṇa. Conversely, "涅槃之体无因果故" — nirvāṇa's nature is free from cause and effect, unconditioned, unborn and undying.
Yet this is not a contradiction, and the text catches it beautifully with a verse: *"从因故涅槃，是故皆有因"* — "Because it comes from causes, nirvāṇa too has causes." In other words, while the *nature* of nirvāṇa is unconditioned, the *attainment* of nirvāṇa is conditioned — it requires causes, namely the practice of the path. The same text also points out that within the twelve links of dependent origination (十二因缘), the links themselves stand in *mutual* causality: *无明* (ignorance) and *行* (volitional formations), *生* (birth) and *老死* (aging-and-death) are mutually causative, "如同尼乾立拒举瓶，互为因果不得相离" — like the Jaina ascetic's balanced jar and staff, leaning on each other and unable to be separated.
The 《大寶積經》 adds another depth: while 因果 is real and operative at the conventional level (世俗谛), the Tathagata also knows that, in their ultimate nature, these causes and fruits are "悉空" — empty of independent, inherent existence. This is the teaching's mature position: 因果 is neither naively real (substantialism) nor naively unreal (nihilism). It is conventionally real and ultimately empty — a position that requires both ethical seriousness and philosophical freedom.
The 《大般涅槃經》 also makes the boundary case explicit: 一阐提 (icchantika), the being of "cut-off" capacity, is defined precisely as one who "不信因果，无有惭愧，不信业报" — who does not believe in causality, has no conscience, and does not believe in karmic consequence. The very threshold of the Buddhist path is, then, a willingness to take 因果 seriously. "言有因果" is defined as 信正 (right faith); "言无因果" is defined as 信邪 (wrong faith). To deny causality is not a sophisticated philosophical stance in Buddhism — it is a marker of spiritual disaster.
The Five Classical Metaphors for Karma, Body, and Consciousness
The 《大寶積經》 offers five metaphors that must be preserved in their one-to-one mapping because each captures a distinct aspect of how karma, body (身), and consciousness (识) interrelate.
1. The Wilderness-Thirst Metaphor (旷野渴水喻) — A traveler lost in a wilderness, dying of thirst, may see a mirage of water; whether they find real water or merely an illusion depends on their past actions. This captures the general truth: "众生各以业因受苦乐报" — each being receives suffering or pleasure according to their karmic causes. The metaphor teaches that our experience of the world is *constituted* by our karmic conditioning; we do not simply receive a neutral world and react to it.
2. The Seed-Flower-Fruit Metaphor (种子花果喻) — Karma depends on the body but cannot be seen within it. The relationship is articulated with the paradoxical formula: "因身有业、因业有身，身中无业、业中无身" — because of the body there is karma, because of karma there is the body; yet within the body there is no karma, within karma there is no body. The fruit only emerges when the body "matures and falls" (身熟谢殒). This captures the deep mutual dependence of body and action — neither is prior, neither is independently findable.
3. The Shadow-and-Body Metaphor (身影喻) — Karma has no material form, yet it does not separate from the body, just as a shadow does not separate from the person casting it. This captures the *immanence* of karma: you cannot point to it as an object, yet it accompanies every step.
4. The Good-Medicine Metaphor (良药喻) — Just as the active principle of a healing herb has no visible form yet improves health and complexion, so karma has no form yet "feeds" and benefits (or harms) the body. This captures karma's *functional efficacy* — it works without being visible.
5. The Mirror-Reflection Metaphor (明镜鉴面喻) — This metaphor, articulated with the striking term "识资善不善业" (consciousness "feeds on" or "takes nourishment from" good and bad karma), explains rebirth into the five realms. When a mind-stream "feeds on" good karma, the reflection in the mirror of embodiment is beautiful, wealthy, refined; when it "feeds on" bad karma, the reflection is impoverished, deformed, lowly. This is the most sophisticated of the five metaphors because it makes consciousness itself the active "feeder" that draws karmic material into a new embodied form — karma is not merely external punishment, but the *nourishment* the soul takes in.
These five metaphors together form a single integrated picture: karma is invisible, immanent, mutually arising with body, functionally effective, and the very substance that consciousness draws into its next embodied shape.
A classic expression that captures the ethical heart of the teaching is the verse attributed to the Seven Buddhas: *"诸恶莫作，众善奉行，自净其意，是诸佛教"* — "Refrain from all evil, cultivate all good, purify one's own mind — this is the teaching of the Buddhas." This is not a vague moralism; it is a direct corollary of 因果 understood at its full classical depth.
A Walkthrough in Everyday Life
To bring 因果 from the library into lived experience, let us walk through several contemporary scenes, mapping each carefully to the classical layers above. I'll point out, along the way, the places where modern intuitions most often slip into error.
Scene 1: The Evening Scroll and the Late Reply
You open your phone after dinner and see a message from a friend in some distress. You glance at it, feel a small twinge of obligation, and decide you'll reply "later." Later becomes tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes never. Two weeks pass; the friendship has cooled; the friend posts something that hints at feeling abandoned.
Mapped to the classical framework: the *intention* to postpone without follow-through — the small, almost invisible act of *not replying* — is a karmic cause. Layer One (因果不亡): it does not vanish because you forgot it. Layer Two (是处非处): 离离间语 (refraining from divisive speech) → 和谐关系 (harmonious relationships); its opposite — the silent withdrawal that quietly severs connection — is not a karmically neutral act, even though it has no dramatic content. Layer Five (the shadow metaphor): the rupture has no visible substance, but it accompanies you — the next time you reach out, there is a slight chill, and you cannot point to why. The *flashback resentment* the friend feels weeks later, the small social circle that gradually excludes you from a gathering you never knew about — these are the fruit, slowly ripening.
Where modern people map it wrong: they tend to think the "cause" must be a major betrayal. The classical teaching is sharper: small acts of ignoring, postponing, withholding attention *are* causes, and they accumulate. This is why 离离间语 includes subtler forms than outright gossip.
Scene 2: The Promotion and the Meeting
You get a promotion at work, but the way it happened involved a small lie — you took credit for a colleague's idea in a key meeting, and the boss rewarded you. Six months later, you are assigned to lead a project where the only people with the actual expertise are colleagues who quietly resent you. The project stalls, and you take the blame.
Mapped to the framework: Layer One (the act does not vanish); Layer Two (妄语 — false speech — is associated in the 是处非处 analysis with *诽谤*, slander and loss of trust, not with simple fact-checking failures; the correspondence is structural, not dramatic). Layer Three (因异报): the *pleasantness* of the moment of taking credit (you felt clever, relieved) is contrasted with the *pain* of the later downfall. The small cause of one lie has ripened into a large professional consequence.
Where modern people map it wrong: they say "I got away with it" or "no one found out." The classical teaching says that the cause is registered regardless of whether anyone "finds out." Visibility is not the criterion of karmic reality. The lie left a trace in *your own* mind-stream long before it produced external consequences.
Scene 3: The Marathon of Resentment
Your mother said something hurtful fifteen years ago. You have told the story many times — to friends, to a therapist, to your partner. Each retelling is accurate. Each retelling also sharpens the edge. You find yourself reacting to minor present slights with a force that surprises you, and your close relationships suffer from your constant state of guarded vigilance.
Mapped to the framework: the original action by your mother was a cause. But — and this is the critical classical point — the *continuous interior rehearsal* of the grievance is *itself* an ongoing cause. 《大般涅槃經》 speaks of 业因 rooted in "无明触" (contact born of ignorance) and "爱" (craving); the rumination is fueled by both. Layer Three (因异报) is operative here: a long-past small comment has been *magnified* by your own repeated interior actions into something that now colors your entire relational life. The fruit is ripened not only by the original cause but by your daily cultivation of the seedbed.
Where modern people map it wrong: they imagine 因果 as a one-time event from the past. The classical picture is that *we are constantly making new causes* through our inner responses to past events. The resentment itself is a karmic cause with its own consequences — usually the gradual erosion of intimacy. Confession and reorientation (发露忏悔, cultivating remorse and releasing) are not optional extras; they are part of the mechanism by which the trajectory is altered.
Scene 4: The Diet That Begins Monday
You resolve to eat well, exercise, sleep on time. You do this for three days, then fall off, then feel shame, then vow again, then fall off again. The cycle continues for years.
Mapped to the framework: every small act of self-discipline is a *布施* (generosity) toward the body-mind, an act that contributes to future well-being — though not always in a one-to-one, immediately visible way. Layer Three is crucial here: the *painful* effort (the early morning workout, the meal refused) is precisely the kind of "painful cause yielding pleasant fruit" that 因异报 describes. The cycle of failure and renewed resolution itself is not evidence against 因果; it is evidence of how karma works in real human life — unevenly, with setbacks, with the steady accumulation of small causes that eventually outweigh earlier failures.
Where modern people map it wrong: they confuse *results* with *karmic fruit*. The fact that you do not look like a fitness influencer in three weeks does not mean the discipline is producing nothing. 因异报 warns us that small disciplined actions over time can yield a vast ripening — but the ripening is rarely immediate.
Scene 5: The Generosity That Sees No Return
You quietly help a young person in your field — sharing contacts, offering feedback, opening doors. For years, nothing visible comes back. Some of those you help seem to forget your existence once they are established. You wonder, occasionally, whether kindness is naive.
Mapped to the framework: this is exactly the situation Layer Three addresses. *布施感大富* (generosity tends toward great wealth) is a 是处 — a structural channel — not a transactional guarantee. The 《大寶積經》 explicitly notes that causes can be small and fruits vast, or vast and small; this is built into the structure. The intuition that "kindness should pay back" misunderstands the timing and scale of ripening. The *goodness of the act* is not contingent on its visible return; the act itself is the karmic completion, and its fruit will ripen when conditions gather — which the 因异报 analysis specifically tells us we cannot predict.
Where modern people map it wrong: they collapse 因果 into a cosmic ledger system ("I did X, so Y must happen"). The classical picture is far more patient and far less transactional.
Why Contemporary People Need It
In a contemporary world saturated with both algorithmic recommendation systems and metaphysical randomness — where a single tweet can crash a career or where, equally, a lifetime of careful effort can be wiped out by a diagnosis — people hunger for some account of why *effort matters*, why *character counts*, why *the world is not merely chaotic*. 因果 offers such an account, but with a sophistication that resists both the cheap and the despairing interpretations.
First, 因果 provides *moral agency* in a deterministic world. The contemporary scientific picture often leans toward determinism: brain states, genetic inheritance, socioeconomic position all conspire to make "you" a predictable output of prior inputs. The Buddhist 因果 picture agrees that there are deep conditions — including past-life conditions — but insists that *present intention* is itself a real causal force. You are not merely the sum of what happened to you. This is not a sentimental claim; it is the structural claim that volitional acts (身口意三业, the three karmas of body, speech, and mind) have causal efficacy. For someone who has been told their whole life that their circumstances determine their choices, the 因果 teaching offers a rigorous ground for the experience that *one's own effort actually matters*.
Second, 因果 provides *ethical seriousness* in a therapeutic culture. Contemporary culture often substitutes therapeutic language for ethical language — "I had boundaries" replaces "I lied"; "I was triggered" replaces "I acted cruelly." 因果 resists this softening by restoring the causal link between *intent*, *action*, and *consequence*. Without being punitive, it refuses to dissolve responsibility into story. The act of taking credit, of letting down a friend, of speaking harshly — these are not merely "patterns" or "trauma responses"; they are karmic causes with karmic fruits. This is, for many people, a profound relief: the world is not indifferent to their choices.
Third, 因果 provides *patience* in a culture of immediacy. The Layer Three teaching on 因异报 — that causes and fruits differ in scale and timing — counteracts the contemporary demand for instant feedback. The career will not respond in a quarter. The friendship will not repair in a week. But the causes are being laid down, and the fruits will ripen. This is psychologically realistic in a way that the "what-goes-around-comes-around" pop version is not.
Fourth, and most subtly, 因果 provides a *structural account* of how ethics and metaphysics interlock. Contemporary secular ethics often struggles with the question: *why should I be moral if there is no cosmic judge?* Buddhist 因果 gives one kind of answer — not that there is a judge, but that the moral order is itself a causal structure. You suffer the consequences of your own actions because the consequences are structurally tied to the actions, not because someone is punishing you. This is closer in spirit to certain contemporary systems-level ways of thinking (in ecology, in network theory, in certain readings of "systemic harm") — though of course the Buddhist version is far older, far more comprehensive, and operates across lifetimes in ways those systems do not.
It would, however, be a serious distortion to claim that contemporary science has "confirmed" 因果. Neuroscience, for instance, has illuminated the mechanisms by which habits, attention, and emotional regulation shape neural pathways — a process that is *analogous* to but not identical with karmic conditioning. The brain changes with repeated action; whether a "karmic trace" persists beyond death is a different kind of question, and one the contemporary scientific consensus does not address. The point is that the *general principle* — that repeated intentional actions leave functional traces that shape future experience — is one that contemporary psychology and contemplative science increasingly recognize. The specifically Buddhist metaphysical extension to rebirth and multi-life continuity is a separate doctrinal commitment.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Because 因果 is so culturally widespread in the popular Buddhist-influenced world — and because it is so easy to distort — let me catalogue the most common misreadings, with the classical clarifications.
Misreading 1: "Karma is fate." This is perhaps the most common distortion. 因果 is taken to mean that everything is predetermined, that the future is fixed, that one's efforts are illusory. The classical sources directly reject this: the 《大般涅槃經》 explicitly rejects "诸业定得报" (the view that all karma deterministically yields fixed results) and insists that karma has "定" (fixed) and "不定" (unfixed) aspects. *Karma is conditional, not deterministic.* The conditions for ripening must be present; one of those conditions is your own present action. The metaphor of the seed is helpful: the seed is there, but it needs soil, water, and sunlight. Your present conduct provides the sunlight.
Misreading 2: "Karma justifies blaming the victim." When a child is born into poverty, when someone suffers an illness, when a community is devastated — the naive 因果 reading says, "They must have done something in a past life to deserve this." The classical teaching, particularly Layer Three (因异报), directly forbids this conclusion. The complexity of ripening is such that we cannot infer, from any given suffering, the specific cause. The 《大寶積經》 says that only the Buddha, with his unobstructed wisdom and Buddha-eye, sees the full picture. For the rest of us, the morally and intellectually honest stance is to act with compassion, not to speculate about a victim's imagined past-life deeds. To use 因果 as a tool of blame is, in fact, to violate the very compassion that 因果, rightly understood, demands.
Misreading 3: "Karma is about reward and punishment by some cosmic judge." This misreading comes from importing a theistic framework onto a non-theistic teaching. In the Buddhist picture, no one *administers* karma; karma is the structural logic of experience. The metaphor of the seed-flower-fruit is precise: there is no gardener who decides which seeds to water. The system simply works by its own conditions. This is why the 《大般涅槃經》 can say "因果将熟" (cause and effect will ripen) without implying any external agent — ripening is just what happens when conditions align.
Misreading 4: "Karma is only psychological." A contemporary, secularized reading might say that 因果 is really about how your habits of mind shape your experience — and that's it. There is some truth here (the ripening of volition into experience *does* include psychological dimensions), but the classical sources consistently point *beyond* this life. The 《地藏菩薩本願經》 describes ongoing rebirth in 天 (heavens), 恶趣 (lower realms), and the transformation of those rebirth trajectories through present conduct. The 识资善不善业 metaphor explicitly describes consciousness "feeding on" karma to manifest in a *new embodied form*. To reduce karma to psychology is to lose the temporal scope — three lifetimes (三世), countless kalpas (百劫) — that gives the teaching its characteristic depth.
Misreading 5: "If you are good, good things will happen to you." This is the pop-version that breaks against the rocks of life's actual complexity. Layer Three (因异报) directly addresses this: small causes can yield vast fruits, and vice versa; painful causes can yield pleasant fruits, and vice versa. There is no clean one-to-one correspondence between *being a good person* and *having a good life*. What 因果 *does* promise is that the moral choices we make are real, that they leave traces, and that the broader arc of our experience is shaped by them — but it makes no claim about any given Tuesday.
Misreading 6: "Karma means you should not defend yourself or seek help." Some people, especially in cultures with strong Buddhist influence, interpret 因果 as a counsel of passive acceptance. The classical picture does not support this. The 《大般涅槃經》 explicitly describes how confession, remorse, and active practice can *transform* and *lighten* karmic consequences. Confession, refuge, skillful action, the support of the spiritual community, the practice of the path — these are *precisely* the means by which karmic trajectories are actively reshaped. Passivity is the opposite of the Buddhist stance. Even in the cases where deep change is slow, the practice itself is a karmic cause of the most potent kind.
Misreading 7: "Karma punishes bad intentions and rewards good intentions equally." A subtler error. The classical sources distinguish between *正业* (mind-intention, 业 of 意) and *期业* (the karmas of body and speech, 期业) — and assign different weights to them. Intent is foundational, but the enactment of intent in action carries its own additional karmic weight. The fourfold fruit classification in the 《大般涅槃經》 — 黑黑果报 (dark-dark fruit, where both action and result are tainted), 白白果报 (white-white fruit, where both are pure), 杂杂果报 (mixed-mixed fruit), and 不黑不白不黑不白果报 (the non-dark non-white fruit of uncontaminated, "leak-free" practice) — shows that the moral coloring of karmic results is itself multi-layered and cannot be reduced to a simple ledger.
Misreading 8: "Karma contradicts emptiness." A philosophical misreading. The contemporary Buddhist philosophical literature is unambiguous: 因果 operates at the level of conventional truth (世俗谛) and is fully real *as conventional*. It is also, in its ultimate nature, empty of independent, inherent existence — which means it does not have to be *defended* against the teaching of emptiness. They are two sides of the same teaching: 因果 without emptiness collapses into substantialism; emptiness without 因果 collapses into nihilism. The mature teaching holds both.
To live with 因果, then, is not to live in fear of cosmic retribution, nor to reduce ethics to a karma-points account. It is to live with a deepened sense of the *reality of one's own choices* — that what one does with one's body, one's speech, and especially one's mind, leaves traces that will, in ways that no one can fully predict, shape the texture of one's experience. It is to combine patient realism about timing with resolute clarity about direction. It is to refuse the two cheap consolations — "it doesn't matter what I do" and "the universe will reward me proportionally" — and to take one's place in the long, complex, beautiful, exacting moral order that the classical sources describe. The teaching is, in the end, both humbling and empowering: humbling because the system is older and larger than any individual life; empowering because every present moment is a place where new causes can be made.