Action and Its Fruit, Not Divine Judgement

Karma means, literally, "action," and in its doctrinal sense it is the principle that actions carry consequences that return to the actor. It is emphatically not reward and punishment handed down by a god: it is closer to an impersonal law of the moral universe, in which deeds ripen into results across this life and future ones, without a judge deciding each case.

The idea appears in developed form in the older Upanishads, which forge the link between action, rebirth and the moral quality of a life, the Brihadaranyaka teaches that a person becomes good by good action and bad by bad. The Bhagavad Gita then reframes the problem: since all embodied life involves action, the way out cannot be inaction but karma yoga, acting without attachment to the fruits, so that deeds no longer bind. From these roots karma became the shared grammar of the Indian religions, and, precisely because it is shared, a term the traditions fill with substantially different content.