Karma means, simply, action, and by extension the trace an action leaves, seeding future experience. The classical doctrine has three parts: every intentional act has consequences; those consequences shape character, circumstance and (in the traditions that accept rebirth) the next birth, and the process is a law, not a judge.
What it is not
It is not fate, the past constrains, the present is free. Nor is it divine punishment: no one administers karma, just as no one administers gravity. And the Gītā’s great insight, taught on this site’s karma yoga pages, is that action done without attachment leaves no binding trace.
Why it matters here
Karma makes the tradition’s practices coherent: meditation and service are not bribes to heaven but changes to the doer.
Related entries
- Dharma , The word that will not translate, that which holds things together; duty, law, order, rightness, and one's own particular place in all of it.
- Mokṣa , Liberation, the fourth and highest aim of life; not a place reached but a case of mistaken identity corrected.
- Bhagavad Gītā , The 700-verse dialogue between prince Arjuna and his charioteer Kṛṣṇa, the most beloved scripture of the Indian tradition and the seedbed of every path on this site.
Mentioned in
References
- The Bhagavad Gītā (chapters 2–4, the karma-yoga teaching)
- The Upaniṣads (the doctrine's first full statements (Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya))