Sankhara are intentional actions—mental, verbal, and bodily—that shape karma and bind beings to suffering.
Sankhara (Sanskrit: samskara) literally means "formation" or "conditioning." In Buddhist philosophy, it refers to volitional acts—intentional actions driven by will and consciousness. The Buddha taught that sankhara are one of the five aggregates (skandhas) that constitute a person, and they function as a primary mechanism through which karma operates.
The term is sometimes translated as "karmic formations" or "conditioned factors," but these can obscure the essential meaning: sankhara are the conscious choices and deliberate actions that shape both individual character and the contents of consciousness itself. They are not passive occurrences but active expressions of intention (cetana). When you choose to speak harshly, cultivate generosity, or sustain anger, you are creating sankhara. These formations then condition future experience through the operation of karma.
The Buddha categorized sankhara into three types based on their origin: bodily sankhara, verbal sankhara, and mental sankhara. This division appears explicitly in the Majjhima Nikaya 44 (Culavedalla Sutta), where the Buddha's disciple Visakha explains that breath is the bodily sankhara, thought-and-planning (vitarka-vicara) is the verbal sankhara, and perception and feeling are the mental sankhara.
Bodily sankhara include all intentional physical actions—the gestures, movements, and body postures driven by conscious choice. Verbal sankhara encompass speech shaped by intention, including not only the words themselves but the deliberative thinking that precedes speech. Mental sankhara are the deepest formations: the habitual patterns of thought, emotional reactions, and the basic movements of attention that arise from volition. All three types generate karmic consequences and contribute to the conditioning of experience.
Sankhara occupy a crucial position in the Buddha's teaching on dependent origination (pratityasamutpada), the chain of causation that explains how suffering arises and perpetuates. In this twelve-fold chain, ignorance conditions sankhara, and sankhara condition consciousness. This sequence shows that volitional actions are the direct result of fundamental delusion about reality and the direct cause of rebirth and the continuation of the conditioned cycle.
In the forward sequence, sankhara are conditioned by ignorance—not knowing the three marks of existence (impermanence, non-self, and suffering). This ignorance drives the formation of intentions and actions rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion. These volitional formations then shape the content and quality of consciousness that arises. In the reverse sequence of cessation, when ignorance ceases through direct insight, sankhara cease to form, consciousness becomes unconditioned, and the entire chain unravels. This is why the Buddha's path focuses so heavily on the transformation and eventual transcendence of sankhara.
When the Buddha taught the five aggregates (skandhas) in the Samyutta Nikaya 22, he identified sankhara as one of the five constituents of what beings mistakenly identify as a permanent self. As an aggregate, sankhara includes all volitional formations—past intentions that shape present consciousness, ongoing choices, and the habitual patterns that drive behavior. This aggregate is distinct from the other four: form (rupa), sensation (vedana), perception (sanna), and consciousness (vinna).
Understanding sankhara as an aggregate helps clarify why the Buddha said all five aggregates are impermanent and non-self. Your volitions are constantly changing, moment to moment. The intentions that arose yesterday differ from those arising today. This instability contradicts any claim to a permanent, independent self. Moreover, you cannot fully control sankhara—they arise conditioned by past actions, mental habits, and present circumstances. Recognizing this lack of ultimate control is central to Buddhist practice.
The relationship between sankhara and karma is direct and inseparable. The Buddha defined karma (kamma in Pali) as intention itself: "Intention, I declare, is karma." This statement, found in the Anguttara Nikaya 6.63, identifies sankhara—volitional action—as the precise mechanism through which karma operates. Actions done without intention produce no karmic result; only the deliberate choices, the volitions, generate consequences.
When you perform a sankhara, you set in motion a causal process. Wholesome sankhara—rooted in generosity, compassion, and wisdom—produce ripening effects that bring wellbeing and favorable circumstances. Unwholesome sankhara—rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion—produce suffering and limitation. Importantly, the results are not imposed externally by a judge or cosmic force. Rather, the sankhara themselves condition the nature of future experience. A mind repeatedly shaped by anger creates a habitually reactive, dissatisfied consciousness. A mind shaped by generosity creates an open, responsive one. This is the automatic operation of karma.
The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice is not to perfect sankhara but to transcend them altogether. In the Nirvana state (Pali: nibbana), sankhara cease. This cessation is described in the Udana as "the stopping of sankhara, the letting go of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nirvana." To reach this state, practitioners do not annihilate volition but redirect it toward liberation.
In early practice, sankhara are skillfully shaped: the practitioner deliberately cultivates wholesome intentions and restrains unwholesome ones. Meditation itself involves volitional formation—the intention to sit, to observe the breath, to return attention. However, as practice deepens, particularly in insight meditation, the focus shifts to directly observing how sankhara arise and pass away without self. This direct seeing of the impermanent, constructed nature of all formations loosens their grip on the mind. Eventually, when the mind reaches the unconditioned state of Nirvana, all sankhara fall away, and consciousness rests in the deathless, the unformed.
A frequent confusion treats sankhara as purely negative or as something to be suppressed entirely. This misreads the Buddha's teaching. Sankhara are not inherently evil; they are the vehicle through which both suffering and liberation operate. Unwholesome sankhara (those rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion) must be abandoned, but wholesome sankhara (those rooted in generosity, compassion, and wisdom) must be actively cultivated.
Another misunderstanding equates sankhara with habit or conditioning in a purely mechanical sense, overlooking the element of intention and choice. While sankhara certainly condition future experience, they are not deterministic. Each moment offers the possibility of a new choice, a new formation, because consciousness is not automatically enslaved to past patterns. The Buddha taught that change is possible precisely because volition is real and consequential. Understanding sankhara correctly is therefore both sobering—your choices matter and shape your life—and liberating, because it means that transformation through intentional practice is genuinely possible.