Karma

Definition

Pronunciation: KAR-mah

Also spelled: Kamma (Pali), Karman

Karma means action — specifically, the principle that every intentional action generates consequences that return to the actor, shaping present circumstances and future births. It is the moral causation that ensures no act is lost and no being is without a past.

Etymology

The Sanskrit root kr means 'to do, to make, to act.' Karma is simply 'action' or 'deed.' In the Rig Veda, karma referred primarily to ritual action — the sacrificial performance that maintained cosmic order. By the time of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (c. 700 BCE), the meaning had expanded to include all intentional action and its consequences. The revolutionary claim was that action does not end with the act: every deed produces invisible results (apurva or adrshta) that persist in the subtle body and ripen into future experience, in this life or subsequent ones.

About Karma

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (4.4.5-6) contains the earliest explicit formulation of the karma doctrine in its mature form: 'As a person acts, so that person becomes. The doer of good becomes good, the doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, evil by evil action.' Yajnavalkya's teaching to King Janaka links action, character, and destiny into a single causal chain that operates across lifetimes. This passage also introduces the critical mechanism: 'As is one's desire (kama), so is one's will (kratu); as is one's will, so is one's deed (karma); as is one's deed, so is one's destiny (gati).' Desire drives intention, intention drives action, and action shapes what one becomes.

The three-fold classification of karma became standard in Vedantic thought. Sanchita karma is the total accumulated store of karmic consequences from all previous lives — a vast reservoir that includes both pleasant and painful results not yet experienced. Prarabdha karma is the portion of sanchita that has begun to bear fruit in the present life — the specific body, family, circumstances, and destiny determined at birth. Kriyamana (or agami) karma is the karma being generated by current actions, which will add to the sanchita store and ripen in future lives. This three-fold scheme explains why good people sometimes suffer (prarabdha from past lives) and why present virtue matters even when its results are not immediately visible (agami for future lives).

The Bhagavad Gita's treatment of karma is its most extensive philosophical exploration. Krishna identifies the fundamental problem: attachment to the fruits of action creates bondage, while action itself is unavoidable. His solution — nishkama karma, action without desire for results — does not mean indifference to outcomes but the surrender of personal claim on them. 'You have a right to action alone, never to its fruits. Do not be motivated by the fruits of action, nor be attached to inaction.' (2.47) This verse became the foundation of karma yoga — the spiritual discipline of selfless action.

Krishna elaborates the metaphysics of karma in Chapter 4: 'He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction, he is wise among men.' (4.18) This paradox points to the deeper teaching: the atman (true self) never acts — all action belongs to prakriti (nature) and its gunas. The sense that 'I am the doer' (ahamkara) is the root of karmic bondage. When this false identification is dissolved through knowledge, action continues but no longer generates binding consequences. The body acts, the gunas interact, but the witness remains unmoved — and where there is no doer-identification, there is no karma.

Shankara's Advaita Vedanta places karma within the vyavaharika (empirical) level of reality. At the paramarthika (absolute) level, where only Brahman exists, there is no actor, no action, and no consequence. Karma is real within maya's framework but is ultimately as illusory as the individual self that accumulates it. This position creates a tension that Shankara addresses in his Brahma Sutra Bhashya: if karma is illusory, why does spiritual practice (which is itself karma) matter? His answer: karma at the empirical level purifies the mind (chitta-shuddhi) and creates the conditions for jnana (knowledge) to arise. The ladder must be used before it is kicked away.

Ramanuja treats karma as fully real and operating under God's sovereign will. In his Sri Bhashya, he argues that karmic consequences are not automatic but administered by Ishvara (God), who ensures that each soul receives exactly the experiences needed for its spiritual evolution. God is the dispenser of karmic fruit (karma-phala-data), not a passive mechanism. This theistic framing transforms karma from a blind law into a pedagogical instrument of divine love — God uses karma to teach, not to punish.

The Jain doctrine of karma is the most materialistic in Indian philosophy. For Jainism, karma is not an abstract moral law but a subtle physical substance (karma-pudgala) that adheres to the soul through the 'stickiness' created by passion (kashaya). Every action — including thought and speech — attracts karmic particles that coat the soul and obstruct its natural qualities of infinite knowledge, perception, bliss, and energy. Liberation (kevala) requires the complete elimination of all karmic matter through ascetic practice and non-violence. The Jain classification identifies 8 main types and 148 sub-types of karmic matter, each producing specific effects on the soul's experience.

Buddhist karma theory differs from the Hindu version in two critical ways. The Buddha defined karma as intention (cetana): 'It is intention, monks, that I call karma. Having intended, one acts through body, speech, and mind.' (Anguttara Nikaya 6.63) This emphasis on mental intention rather than external action shifts the moral center from behavior to psychology. Second, Buddhism denies a permanent self that accumulates karma. The karmic continuum (santana) is a causal stream of mental and physical events, each conditioning the next, with no unchanging entity threading through the process — like a flame passed from candle to candle, where no single flame persists.

The philosophical problem of karma's beginning — if present circumstances result from past actions, and past actions result from still earlier circumstances, where does the chain start? — received different answers across traditions. Advaita calls karma beginningless (anadi): the cycle of action and consequence has no first moment, and asking for one presupposes a linear time-frame that karma itself generates. Buddhism agrees that samsara is beginningless but adds that its cessation is attainable. Jainism also treats karma as beginningless but fully eliminable. The question of an ultimate beginning is regarded as an improper question — like asking what is north of the North Pole.

Contemporary engagement with karma theory faces the challenge of theodicy: if karma explains suffering as the result of past actions, does it blame victims for their misfortune? Indian ethicists from Ambedkar to contemporary Dalit thinkers have criticized karmic explanations of caste inequality as ideological justification for oppression. The philosophical response distinguishes between karma as an explanatory framework (describing causal connections) and karma as a moral judgment (blaming sufferers for their suffering). The Bhagavad Gita's emphasis on present action over past results — 'You have a right to action alone' — redirects attention from karmic speculation about causes to karmic responsibility for what one does now.

Significance

Karma is arguably the most influential concept to emerge from Indian philosophy, now embedded in global popular culture (though often in simplified form). Its philosophical contribution is the assertion that the moral universe is lawful — that actions have consequences that extend beyond the immediate and visible, and that no being's situation is arbitrary or accidental.

Within Hindu civilization, karma provides the framework for ethical motivation without divine command. Unlike Abrahamic ethics, where moral law rests on God's will, karma operates as a natural law — as impersonal as gravity. This makes the moral argument self-contained: one should act rightly not because God demands it but because right action produces good results by the nature of reality itself. Even theistic schools like Ramanuja's treat karma as God's chosen mechanism, not his arbitrary decree.

The karma doctrine also addresses the problem of evil and suffering without requiring an external explanation. Why do the innocent suffer? Because the category of 'innocent' applies only within a single lifetime; viewed across the full span of a being's karmic history, every experience has a cause. This explanation has been both praised for its logical completeness and criticized for its potential to rationalize injustice. The philosophical question — whether a morally lawful universe is more coherent than a morally arbitrary one — remains one of the deepest in religious thought.

Connections

Karma operates through samskaras (subconscious impressions) — every action deposits traces that shape future tendencies and drive the cycle of rebirth. The accumulation of karma sustains the bondage that moksha dissolves. Dharma provides the ethical framework that distinguishes right action (punya-karma) from wrong action (papa-karma).

Karma's effects are mediated through prakriti and its gunas — the same action performed with sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic motivation produces different karmic consequences (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 18). Maya sustains the illusion that there is a doer who accumulates karma, when in truth the atman never acts. In Buddhist philosophy, kamma emphasizes intention over external action. The Vedanta section explores karma's role in the liberation framework.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is karma fatalistic — are we just living out predetermined consequences?

Hindu karma theory is explicitly not fatalistic, though it is frequently misread as such. The three-fold classification makes the distinction clear: prarabdha karma (already ripening) determines the broad circumstances of this life — body, family, baseline capacities. This portion cannot be changed; it must be experienced. But kriyamana karma (being created now) is entirely within one's power. Every present moment is a junction where past conditioning meets free choice. The Bhagavad Gita's entire teaching rests on this: Arjuna has the freedom to choose, and that choice matters. The past constrains the present but does not determine it. As the Yoga Vashishtha states: 'There are two powerful forces — fate (past karma) and self-effort (purushartha). Self-effort is the more powerful of the two.'

How does karma work without a permanent self in Buddhism?

This is one of the most philosophically challenging questions in Buddhist thought. The Buddha denied a permanent, unchanging self (atman) while affirming that karma and its consequences continue across lifetimes. The Buddhist solution relies on the concept of the causal continuum (santana): a continuous stream of mental and physical events in which each moment conditions the next, like a flame passing from one candle to another. No unchanging entity migrates, but the causal pattern does. The analogy of a billiard ball transmitting motion to another ball is sometimes used: the first ball's motion ends, but its energy continues in the second. Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosa provides the most detailed technical account, introducing the concept of 'seeds' (bija) in the consciousness-stream that carry karmic potentials forward.

Does karma mean everything that happens to you is deserved?

This is the most ethically fraught interpretation of karma, and serious Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain thinkers have consistently rejected it in its crude form. The Bhagavad Gita redirects attention from speculating about why something happened (which requires omniscient knowledge of a being's infinite karmic past) to responding rightly to what is happening now. The Buddha explicitly warned against trying to trace the full extent of karmic causation, calling it one of the 'unconjecturable' topics that leads to madness, not wisdom (Acintita Sutta, AN 4.77). Socially, the use of karma to justify caste oppression, poverty, or abuse represents a misapplication that conflates a metaphysical principle with a moral judgment. Describing causal connections is not the same as assigning blame — the medical recognition that smoking causes cancer does not mean the cancer patient 'deserved' their illness.