People who work with Buddhist texts and philosophies know that the Buddha said, “It is volition (cetanā) that I call kamma; for having willed (cetayitvā), one acts by body, speech, and mind.” Volitional physical, verbal, and mental actions are karmic actions. In simplest terms, actions driven by good will generate good karma, and actions driven by ill will generate bad karma. How about inactions born out of neither benevolence nor malice, but out of inattention and/or indifference? I am thinking of the people who, through the combination of multiple mental factors, such as dullness of mind, lack of conscience, and delusion/illusion/confusion/ignorance, pay little attention to things that do not affect them personally, separate themselves from the suffering of others, and convince themselves that they can stay out of harm’s way by sitting on the sideline.

Different Buddhist philosophical schools list different numbers of mental factors. But, most of them do not directly name inattention or indifference as one. (The Sautrāntika school lists “nonintrospective awareness,” which causes “careless indifference,” among the six “afflictions derived from ignorance.”) Nevertheless, across all different Buddhist philosophical schools, the most fundamental unwholesome mental factor is delusion—the pernicious view that obscures the reality of impermanence and dependent arising, and misconceives oneself as an abiding and independently existing entity. When one chooses not to pay attention to or care about the suffering in the world as long as it does not affect oneself, one is operating out of this fundamental pernicious view: Others are others and I am I; I exist independently of them; their interests are separable and separate from my self-interest; what is happening to them does not affect me and so does not concern me, therefore I do not need to take any action.

Quite often people do not necessarily harbor ill intent, but they would choose inaction in the face of actions by those who operate out of sheer greed and hatred. They are neither the sociopathic persons who actively violate human rights, nor the persons who actively engage in resistance. Perhaps in the overwhelming majority, they do not take actions one way or another, either because they are not paying attention to the harm done or because they do not care as the matter does not affect them personally. They typically retrospectively rationalize their indifference and inaction with the thinking that “both sides” (those who inflict harms as well as those who suffer) have merits. Such bothsidesism invariably involves entertaining the idea/rhetoric of those who inflict harm that the sufferers did something to deserve their suffering, even as it also entertains the idea/rhetoric of those who suffer.

Many men and women who see the news of antiabortion laws being passed in many US states, do not really pay attention to how those laws impact women’s reproductive healthcare, and just think, “I would never need to seek an abortion, and so it doesn’t concern me.” They may rationalize their indifference with, “If women just make better decisions with their sexuality, they have nothing to worry about.”

Many people who see the news of trans people being denied healthcare, barred from gendered bathrooms, and banned from sports do not really pay attention to the implications of such binary cisgenderism, and think, “I am not trans, and I don’t know any trans person. It’s not my fight.” Their rationalization of indifference may go, “How many trans people are there in the world anyway? What harm can possibly be done if those very few people just use the bathroom corresponding to their genitalia? I can imagine how a woman might feel uncomfortable with a transwoman in the same public bathroom, or how she might feel it is unfair to compete with someone who was a man.”

Many people who see the news of judges, law firms, journalists, and universities being threatened and attacked, think, “I don’t really understand any of the ‘woke’ stuff anyway, and why do they have to be so critical?”

Many people who see the news of student-visa holders, green-card holders, or even naturalized or native-born citizens of various ethnic and racial groups being denied entry or being kidnapped in broad daylight, detained, and sent to an El Salvador concentration camp without due process, do not really pay attention to the ramifications of such policies, and think, “That will not happen to a law-abiding American citizen like me.” They may justify their indifference with the idea that non-citizens, legal or illegal, do not deserve due process, and they may even be willing to entertain the lie that those who got deported are violent gang members or “terrorists,” despite the fact that about 90 percent of those deported to El Salvador have no criminal record.

What is the karma of those who, with no apparent malice or benevolence, sit on the sideline without taking any action?

Actions and inactions born out of delusion are unwholesome and karmically charged. Bhikkhu Sujato, an Australian Theravāda monk in the Thai Forest tradition and cofounder of SuttaCentral, explains, “The criterion for judging an action to be unwholesome is its underlying motives, the ‘roots’ from which it springs. There are three unwholesome roots: greed, hatred, and delusion” (emphasis added). Likewise, in “Theravāda Texts on Ethics” in Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, Peter Harvey points out that Theravāda Buddhism sees an action as reprehensible if one would not like it inflicted on oneself and the volition is rooted in delusion. Such a delusion-rooted action or inaction brings affliction to others, oneself, or both, leads to further unwholesome states of mind, and has painful karmic consequences. In other words, not carrying out the golden rule is not just “not virtuous”; it is karmically negative.

In my previous work, I employed Judith Butler’s concept of sedimentation to explain what I call “karmic network.” The working of karma is not quite as simple as “what goes around comes around” in the sense that, if I do something, that exact something will be done to me in the future. Rather, as social animals, we are implicated in the sociocultural environment that our actions and inactions have cobuilt. Every action or inaction deposits something into the environment and makes another action/inaction of a similar kind more acceptable.

For example, antiabortion laws make it acceptable to deny women reproductive care and, worse, to disregard and bulldoze over their will. Laws barring trans people from gendered bathrooms and sports in effect justify policing people into a very narrowly defined gender binary, and harassing and attacking, in particular, women who do not appear “feminine enough”—there have been incidents in which cisgender women with shorter hair or deeper voices have been harassed and attacked in bathrooms and in sports. The lawmakers who introduced a bill banning transwomen in women’s sports (but allowing transmen in men’s sports) said that it could be enforced through “sports physicals,” which could subject any girl or woman who is not conventionally feminine to genital inspection. The attacks on trans people, specifically transwomen, reinforce the gender binary, which affects everyone. Similarly, the attacks on women’s reproductive care reinforce the idea that women’s will does not have to be respected, which affects all people society judges to be “feminine” and their families.

One may think that one is not linked to what happens to higher education or legal processes or journalism, but their muzzling means no one is allowed to think or say or do anything the authority does not like. One may think that one is a law-abiding citizen, and so denying due process to “illegal immigrants” would not affect them. However, without due process, it would not matter if one were legal or illegal, or citizen or not, because one needs due process to be able to prove one’s status. Further, with the authority telling the Salvadoran dictator to build five more gulags, talking about sending “homegrown” “criminals” there, defying court orders to stop the rapid deportations and retrieve the erroneously deported legal migrant with no criminal record, and openly calling anyone criticizing him “illegal,” really anyone can be sent to the torture prison in El Salvador.

One cannot separate oneself from the karmic network. As Jessica Zu puts it, we human beings are, at all times, “karmic embedded.” It is delusional to think that one can live a social life without being complicit in the social structure. In “Buddhism and Nonviolence in the Contemporary World,” Jay Garfield points out,

Nearly everything we do from purchasing our food to seeking a job implicates us in some way in the oppressive political structures, exploitative economic structures, or destructive structures of social domination. The fact that whether we support them or not we are constantly implicated in them is the predicament referred to canonically as the suffering of pervasive conditioning—the fact that most of what constitutes our lives is determined by forces outside of our control.

Thinking that one can isolate oneself away from deliberate harm enacted through policies is delusional on the part of the currently privileged (which can quickly evaporate on a whim of the authority, as the tariffs-induced stocks market crashes have shown).

An action or inaction with the underlying motive of delusion is still unwholesome karma, just like actions or inactions motivated by greed and hatred are. Further, in the face of malicious actions, be it from an individual bully, an institution, or a government, taking no action is itself an action. Inactions in the face of a bully are in fact actions making bullying acceptable. Inactions in the face of a government blatantly taking steps toward fascism are in fact subjecting everyone, the indifferent bystanders themselves included, to the fascist regime. The inactions of close to 90 million citizens who did not vote are in effect actions supporting the side that has greater turnouts. At the wake of the 2024 US elections, in “It’s No Time to Be Neutral” on Lion’s Roar, Bhikkhu Bodhi, an American Theravāda scholar-monk, translator, activist, and founder of Buddhist Global Relief, points out that because “political leaders failed to act quickly enough to apply the antidotes needed” that is what empowered the would-be dictator to be in charge and be completely lawless. We are living in a time when Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem about Nazi Germany, “First They Came,” is poignantly relevant all over again. The karma of such inactions is grave.

It needs to be clarified that what qualifies an action or inaction as unwholesome is not the presence of self-interest in and of itself, but the delusion that considers the self independent of others. Understanding the reality of dependent arising and one’s karmic embeddedness, one understands that one’s self-interest and the interests of others are intertwined, and so one acts in the interests of all, oneself included. Thus it was recorded in the Sedakasutta (Saṁyutta Nikāya 47.19) that the Buddha taught, “Looking after yourself, you look after others; and looking after others, you look after yourself. And how do you look after others by looking after yourself? By development, cultivation, and practice of meditation. And how do you look after yourself by looking after others? By acceptance, harmlessness, love, and sympathy.” One takes actions to protect others in part to protect oneself; one cares about others partially out of self-interest.

Considering that each and every one of us is trapped in the karmic network, one should speak out and take actions resisting the slide into fascism even if just out of self-concern and self-protection. This is not about party politics; as Bhikkhu Bodhi said, “It is, rather, to bring the moral weight of the dharma to bear on matters that affect the lives of people everywhere—now, and long into the future.”