Welcome to this deck on Buddhist ethics. You are going to master four of the most important ethical concepts in Buddhism: kamma, rebirth, compassion, and loving kindness. These are not just abstract ideas. They shape how Buddhists live every single day, and they come up repeatedly in AQA exam questions. By the end of this deck, you will be able to define each concept precisely, explain how they connect to each other, and use them as evidence in four-mark, five-mark and twelve-mark exam answers. You will also have memorised key lines from the Metta Sutta, which examiners love to see quoted. Let us begin.

Let us start with kamma. The Pali word kamma, which you may also see written in Sanskrit as karma, literally means action. But in Buddhist teaching, it refers specifically to intentional action. This is a crucial distinction. Not every movement of your body creates kamma. What matters is the intention behind the action. When you act with a deliberate intention, whether that intention is kind or cruel, generous or greedy, that action plants a seed. That seed will eventually bear fruit, either in this life or in a future one. This is the law of kamma: intentional actions have consequences that shape your experience and your future rebirths. The Buddha taught that kamma is not punishment from a god or fate handed down from outside. It is a natural law, like gravity. You create your own kamma through your choices.

Now, what kinds of actions create good kamma and what kinds create bad kamma? The answer lies in the Three Poisons. Actions rooted in greed, hatred, or ignorance create negative kamma. Actions rooted in their opposites, generosity, compassion, and wisdom, create positive kamma. So if you give to someone in need because you genuinely want to help them, that is positive kamma. If you take something that belongs to someone else out of greed, that is negative kamma. The effects of kamma are not always immediate. They can ripen across many lifetimes. This is why kamma is so closely tied to the Buddhist understanding of rebirth.