---
type: Concept
title: "Karma"
description: "The precise law of action and consequence operating across multiple lifetimes — not fate, not punishment, not cosmic reward."
reception_note: "Present karma as an impersonal law of action and consequence with preserved agency, not as fate or cosmic retribution; the retribution framing is a documented Theosophical recasting (Blavatsky 1889) addressed in the not: field and Error Genealogy."
tags:
  - metaphysics
  - ethics
  - transmigration
  - Vedanta
  - non-translatable
darshana:
  - Pan-dharmic
not:
  - term: "Fate"
    why: "Implies predetermination with no agency; karma preserves free will, since current action (kriyamāna) shapes the future."
    instead: "Keep Karma untranslated; gloss as the impersonal law of action and consequence across lives."
  - term: "Destiny"
    why: "Suggests a fixed appointed end; karma is an open, ongoing ledger, not a sealed outcome."
  - term: "Cosmic justice"
    why: "Implies an external judge dispensing reward and punishment; karma is an impersonal law, like gravity, with no judge."
  - term: "What goes around comes around"
    why: "Trivializes a precise multi-life mechanism into a slogan and wrongly implies same-life return."
  - term: "Punishment/reward"
    why: "Frames consequence morally; a burnt hand is not punished by fire, it meets a natural consequence; karma works the same way."
  - term: "Karma as physical motion (the Vaiśeṣika padārtha)"
    why: "In Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika ontology (nyaya-vaisheshika v0.9), karma is one of the seven categories of being and means bare physical motion of five kinds, not moral causation at all; that school files ethical desert under adṛṣṭa. The same word names an unrelated technical object."
    instead: "For the moral law across lives keep this dharma-foundation sense; for the motion-category, see karma in nyaya-vaisheshika v0.9."
related:
  - /concepts/dharma.md
  - /concepts/samsara.md
  - /concepts/moksha.md
  - /concepts/jiva.md
  - /concepts/chitta.md
  - /concepts/loka.md
  - /concepts/maya.md
timestamp: "2026-06-18"
okf_version: "0.2"
---

# Karma

**Not:** Fate, Destiny, Cosmic justice, "What goes around comes around", Punishment/reward, physical motion (Vaiśeṣika)

## What It Actually Means

Karma is the precise mechanism by which every action — physical, verbal, and mental — creates *saṃskāras* (impressions) stored in [Chitta](/concepts/chitta.md) that shape future experience across lifetimes. It is not a system of reward and punishment administered by an external judge. It is an impersonal law — as mechanical as gravity, as precise as chemistry.

Three types operate simultaneously: *Sañchita* (the total accumulated storehouse from all past lives), *Prārabdha* (the portion allocated to this current life — already "ripening"), and *Kriyamāna* / *Āgāmi* (karma being created right now by current actions).

Karma is NOT sin. Sin in Abrahamic theology is a moral offense against God requiring divine forgiveness. Karma is cause-and-effect — no offense, no judge, no forgiveness needed. A burnt hand is not "punished" by the fire; it encountered a natural consequence. Karma operates the same way at the moral-experiential level.

## Why the Substitutes Fail

**"Fate"** implies predetermination with no agency. Karma explicitly preserves free will — *Prārabdha* shapes the field, but *Kriyamāna* (your current actions) shapes the future. You are never "fated."

**"What goes around comes around"** trivializes a precise multi-life mechanism into a bumper sticker. It also implies same-life return, which karma does not require — consequences may ripen across many lifetimes.

## Audience Metaphor

Karma is like compound interest on a cosmic bank account — every action is a deposit or withdrawal. The balance carries over when you "close" one account (death) and "open" another (rebirth). *Prārabdha* is this life's opening balance. *Kriyamāna* is what you're depositing right now. [Mokṣa](/concepts/moksha.md) is closing the account permanently.

## Citations

1. [Bhagavad Gītā](/references/bhagavad-gita.md) 4.17 — "The way of karma is unfathomable"
2. [Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad](/references/brihadaranyaka-upanishad.md) 4.4.5
3. [Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali](/references/yoga-sutras.md) (2.12–14)
4. Rajiv Malhotra, *Sanskrit Non-Translatables* (2020)

## Error Genealogy

- Karma-as-fate / "cosmic justice" / "what goes around comes around" descends from H.P. Blavatsky's *The Key to Theosophy* (1889), which recast karma in English as a quasi-mechanical law of retribution; New Thought absorbed it and 20th-century usage completed the drift, inverting a doctrine of agency into one of resignation. See [G4 — Karma = fate / cosmic retribution](../../../GENEALOGIES.md) in the repository root for the full chain and sources.
