We are what we do

Karma simply means “action” and is derived from the verbal root kr which mean “to do” or “to make.”

The self is plastic, a malleable clay being molded each moment by intention. Just as our scientists are discovering not only how the mind is shaped by the brain but now, too, how the brain is shaped by the mind, so the Buddha described long ago the interdependent process by which intentions are conditioned by dispositions and dispositions in turn are conditioned by intentions.

–Andrew Olendzki
Karma in Action
Tricycle
.

human good turns out to be activity

–Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
I.1098a13