A universal practice that strains against the doctrine, and centuries of commentary keeping both.
Karma
Action and its consequences for the agent - a moral causal order, understood very differently across the traditions that share the word.
- Theme
- Cause, time and change
- Tradition
- Indian
- Term
- कर्म · karma
- Term fixed
- c. 700 BC
In plain terms
Karma means action. The doctrine is that actions have consequences for the one who performs them, across a longer span than a single life.
What the traditions disagree about is nearly everything else. For Jainism karma is a subtle material substance that adheres to the soul and weighs it down, so any action accrues it and the aim is to stop generating and to burn off what remains. For Buddhism what matters is intention - cetanā is karma, the texts say - so an act done without volition has no karmic weight. For the Vedāntic schools it operates within a framework that includes a self and, in the theistic versions, a God who administers it.
And none of them means what English usage means, which is cosmic payback arriving conveniently.
As a philosopher would put it
Karma is standardly divided into the accumulated store, the portion currently ripening, and that being generated now - a three-fold scheme that explains why liberation does not immediately end an embodied life.
The traditions differ fundamentally on mechanism. Jainism treats karma as literal subtle matter, so even unintentional injury binds, which grounds the extreme precautions of ascetic practice. Buddhism makes volition central, which decouples karma from outcome: the same physical act carries different weight depending on intention. Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika posits adṛṣṭa, an unseen force, requiring a divine administrator to allocate results, which is one of its arguments for God.
The standing philosophical problem is bookkeeping without a bearer. Buddhism denies a persisting self and retains karmic continuity, answered by causal continuity rather than identity; the Pudgalavādins split off over precisely this, and Nyāya pressed it as an objection from outside.
Where you meet it
Theravada practice includes pattidāna, the transfer of merit. After giving alms or hearing a sermon, a lay donor dedicates the merit to deceased relatives, and water is often poured as the dedication is spoken.
The practice is universal in Theravada countries, recorded in canonical and commentarial sources, and central to funerary observance.
It also sits awkwardly with strict karmic individualism. If consequences attach to the agent of an action, merit is not the sort of thing that can be handed to someone else, and the doctrinal literature has worked at the tension for centuries - explaining that the recipient's own act of rejoicing generates their merit, or that only certain classes of the departed can receive it at all.
What the case shows is a tradition holding a strict doctrine and a universal practice that strains against it, and doing the philosophical work in the commentaries rather than dropping either. That is how live traditions handle their own inconsistencies.
What is actually disputed
Whether karma is fair or explanatory.
The doctrine offers an answer to why suffering is distributed as it is, and the answer has been used to justify existing hierarchies: if a person's position reflects prior action, then their disadvantage is deserved. Ambedkar's rejection of the framework was grounded exactly there, and the objection is internal to the traditions as well as external.
Defenders reply that the doctrine concerns an agent's own trajectory and was never a licence to judge anyone else's, and that most classical sources warn against inferring backwards from someone's condition.
The philosophical problem is different and harder. In Buddhism, karmic continuity without a persisting self requires that consequences attach to a stream rather than to a person - which the tradition accepts and its opponents have argued for two millennia cannot support moral responsibility in any recognisable sense.
Commonly confused with
- Fate c. 250 BC Karma is generated by action and can be altered by action. Fate is fixed independently of what anyone does.
- cosmic justice arriving promptly The English usage expects visible payback. The doctrines operate across lifetimes and none promises timely results.
Defined against
- Chance A moral order in which actions have proportionate consequences and a world in which outcomes are undetermined are incompatible pictures
Philosophers
- Yajnavalkya The earliest philosophical statements
- Buddha Karma identified with intention
- Mahavira Karma as subtle material substance
- Shankara Karma within a non-dual framework
- Ramanujacharya Karma administered by a personal God
Works
- The Principal Upanishads Where the doctrine appears
- Abhidharmakosa The Buddhist systematisation
- Tattvarthasutra The Jain material account
- Bhagavad Gita Action without attachment to its fruits
- Brahmasutra Bhasya Karma and liberation in Advaita
- Annihilation of Caste The rejection of its social use
Schools
- Early Theravada Buddhism Where intention is decisive
- Jainism (Syetvada/Anekantavada) Where karma is material
- Advaita Vedanta Where it operates within ignorance
- Vishishtadvaita Vedanta Where it is divinely administered
- Nyaya Where an unseen force requires an allocator
- Purva Mimamsa Where ritual action and its results are analysed
Related concepts
Saṃsāra c. 700 BC · Dharma c. 700 BC · Causation c. 330 BC · Dependent origination c. 450 BC · Responsibility c. 340 BC
The word means action; the doctrine linking action to consequences across lives appears in the Upaniṣads and is developed in incompatible ways by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain thought.