The extinction of karma

While much of Buddhist practice emphasizes the creation of wholesome karma — through generosity, virtue, and mindfulness — the ultimate aim is not to accumulate merit endlessly, but to bring karma itself to cessation. This is the true meaning of liberation: the extinction of karmic formation (*saṅkhāra*) and the ending of the entire cycle of becoming.

As long as intentional actions are driven by craving, aversion, or ignorance, they generate new karmic seeds, perpetuating the cycle of rebirth (*samsara*). Even wholesome karma, while vastly preferable to unwholesome action, still sustains conditioned existence. Liberation requires going beyond both wholesome and unwholesome karmic activity — beyond the need to fabricate experience at all.

This extinction is not a void, but profound freedom. When craving is extinguished, the compulsion to act reactively dissolves. Actions may still occur — but they arise spontaneously, free from self-centered volition, and leave no karmic residue. The arahant, fully liberated, lives and acts without generating new karma because all actions are free of grasping.

The Buddha likened this process to a fire that goes out when its fuel is exhausted. The fire does not go anywhere; it simply ceases. Likewise, when craving and ignorance are extinguished, the stream of karmic becoming ceases naturally.

Thus, the extinction of karma is not annihilation but release — the stilling of compulsive becoming, revealing the unconditioned peace of nibbāna.

“The ending of volitional formations is the ending of karma; the ending of craving is the ending of becoming; the ending of becoming is nibbāna — the end of suffering.”
— Samyutta Nikāya 12.51