Life is nothing but the unending dance of karma. Karma is the engine that drives phenomenal existence; an unfathomably immense, interwoven chain of causes and effects that stretches all the way back to the origin of the universe.
Karma is an interesting topic, albeit one that’s frequently misinterpreted and misunderstood. Karma is a term that originates in the oldest of the ancient Indian Vedas, and which has gone on to greatly influence other traditions (including Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, etc) and in recent decades has even come to permeate Western popular culture.
In fact, a few years ago a popular US sitcom called My Name is Earl based its entire premise on karma; featuring a well-intentioned redneck attempting to systematically clear his karma by atoning for his past misdeeds. It was a charming and genuinely funny show and it did an interesting job of tackling the law of cause and effect. The show was at times a little confused in its approach to the topic, often depicting karma as some kind of supernatural deity or force, deliberately testing and teasing Earl as he tried to balance his karmic record. As often happens when concepts and ideas are appropriated and decontextualised by foreign cultures, things tend to get a little distorted in translation as two different world-views collide.
Karma is action
Karma is actually pretty simple, although it is a subtle, nuanced topic, open to misinterpretation.
So what actually is karma? Karma is a Sanskrit word that literally means “action”.
Everything we do is karma. Our lives are basically non-stop karma — from brushing our teeth first thing in the morning to switching our bedside light off at night. Karma refers not just to physical actions but also subtle actions, such as the thoughts we think, the desires we entertain and the intentions we hold.
Karma of course takes into account not only these actions, but the corresponding effects of those actions; on the body, mind and the world around us. Karma refers to cause and effect, action and reaction, and the inextricable relationship between the two. In common usage most people use the word karma to refer to the consequences of an action, but karma actually encapsulates both the cause and the effect, the action and the result, because the two are are inseparable.
Everything we think, say and do is a result of past karma and everything we think, say and do creates additional karma. Whatever karmas we perform, whatever actions we do, creates an impression not only on the world around us, but in our own psyche as we will learn — and these impressions can be positive or negative depending on whether they create helpful or harmful results and tendencies.
Good and bad karma
Good karma is called punya karma and bad karma is called papa karma. If I do something kind for someone with a pure motive, I will get punya: the other person will be grateful and appreciative and I will feel good about myself. This person may even be inclined to do something thoughtful for me return. If I do the same charitable act but with an impure motive (such as perhaps wanting to manipulate the person in some way), I am likely to generate papa: I’ll be unhappy if the other person doesn’t respond in the way I wanted them to and I probably won’t derive any joy from their gratitude because making them happy was not my intention. So the karma we accrue is largely based on motive.
If I was to go out and rob a bank or assault someone, I would most certainly be generating papa karma. Sooner or later I will be held accountable for my actions. The police will catch up with me and throw me in jail and I will also have to deal with the varying levels of psychological misery I’ve created for myself and others. Karma rebounds on both the gross and subtle levels; not only physically, but psychologically and spiritually.
Karma and vasanas
So what is it that drives us to perform and accumulate either good or bad karma? The simple answer is what we’ve done before. Our karma is driven by our past actions. As mentioned before, the karma we perform—the actions we do and thoughts we think—creates impressions not just in the world around us, like throwing pebbles into a lake, but also at the core of our own psyche.
Whenever we perform an action, be it gross (physical action) or subtle (on the level of thought), it creates an imprint, a groove in consciousness called a vasana. The more we do something, the stronger the vasana gets and the more likely we will be to repeat the action in the future. If I eat a delicious slice of chocolate cake for the first time and I enjoy it, it immediately creates a vasana, a little imprint in consciousness. From that point on, the more I eat chocolate cake, the more I reinforce that chocolate cake vasana and the stronger it becomes until it begins to drive my actions.
This initiates a quite unconscious cycle of vasana-kama-karma, whereby the unconscious imprint (vasana) creates desire (kama) which compels me to act on it (karma). And of course, by acting out the desire and scoffing yet another slice of cake, I only reinforce that cake vasana and the cycle continues.
The human psyche is driven by the vasanas. Most of the time we are just big vasana machines, our vasanas governing our desires and aversions, which are then acted out as karma—which then self-replicates, reinforcing itself again and again. It takes a significant level of self-awareness to get become aware of and to change these behavioural patterns; to master our karma.
The three types of karma
Vedanta outlines three different types of karma: sanchita karma, prarabdha karma and kriyamana karma.
Sanchita karma is karma in its seed state, caused by actions we have performed in the past, leaving a store of either positive (punya) or negative (papa) impressions in the causal body, or the unconscious. The causal body is the root of all the vasanas, the tendencies to act out our desires and aversions. This is karma which has accumulated over lifetimes is stored in subtle form, in a dormant seed state that has yet to fructify.
From the seed state we move to prarabdha karma, which is the portion of sanchita that will sprout and fructify in a particular lifetime. Prarabdha is accordingly responsible for determining the constitution of our character and personality and the experiences it magnetises. When the prarabdha eventually burns out, the body is shed.
The third type of karma is kriyamana or agami karma, which is the karma we happen to be creating in the present. Whether punya or papa, the seeds all get added to the store of sanchita, which will then fructify at a later time, and thus the cycle continues.
Determinism and free will
Karma is a mechanism that explains the immense variety evident in human beings from the time of infancy onward; not just in terms of psychological makeup, but even the striking diversity found in physical bodies. It weaves the fabric of our lives, forming the very structure of our psyche. This may sound deterministic and it is to a degree. We like to think we are agents of free will, but when I reach out to grab a slice of cake is it actually me that’s making that decision or is it my cake vasana, the subtle karma based on past actions that generates that almost uncontrollable urge to gorge myself on irresistible cake?
Neurologists have now shown that our decisions are made before we even think we’ve consciously made them. That is the power of our vasanas, the pull of past karma. Yet human beings are unique in that they do apparently have a degree of free will. Understanding the mechanics of karma can be liberating when we realise that by following right action and generating punya, we have the ability to shape our future within the limits of whatever prarabdha is outworking. We do this by following dharma, which is an innate, universal and in-built code of right action (an important topic which ties in with karma, and which I will cover in a separate article).
Some people view karma as a kind of cosmic force of reward and punishment, but the truth is subtler than that. Karma is simply the law of causation and consequence. Even the smallest stone thrown into a pond creates ripples. The law of karma is completely impersonal, a system of innumerable factors endlessly operating in this, the field of phenomenal existence. Karma is no different to gravity in that sense; it works impersonally and for everyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you throw something in the air, gravity will bring it back down to earth.
Sometimes it can be perplexing when we see people who are clearly not the most virtuous of characters but who seem to get away with lying, cheating and stealing while enjoying success, power and prestige. Ultimately everyone is accountable for their actions, for their karma, whether punya or papa, will definitely fructify and at some point catch up with that person. But it may not happen immediately; the karma may be worked out at a later time. It could be that such an individual is running off some positive punya karma, which will of course eventually run out.
There have been a number of cases in the news lately of well-known celebrities and entertainers who were pedophiles and yet through the punya generated by significant charity work and the like, managed to get away with their actions for decades. But once the good karma has run out, the bad karma catches up with them and they are forced to atone for their actions.
Karma and Reincarnation
For many, karma is synonymous with reincarnation. Reincarnation is a subtle topic, far subtler than most people generally understand it, and depends really on how you look at it. Creation exists by constantly cycling and recycling itself, for matter cannot be created or destroyed, only altered into different forms. Clearly this happens to the physical body at the time of death. The matter of our bodies will disperse and change form to become all manner of new forms. But what of our consciousness? Will the person I am now reincarnate into another life? According to Vedanta, the answer is yes but no.
The person I am now is unique to this life. This person has a name, a certain physical body, was born and lives in a certain place, has certain parents and friends and circumstances that are unique to him and that have shaped his experience of life. He can’t reincarnate because, if I were to go through careful analysis, I can’t even prove that he’s ‘real’ to begin with. If I was to try to find and point out this person called Rory, I’d be in for a real challenge. I’d be able to find assorted components…a body is sitting here, and there are certain thoughts and memories and desires and aversions arise in awareness, but where is ‘Rory’ in any of this? It’s impossible to pin him down. All I can find is a baseline awareness and certain components appearing in awareness that I lump together and label ‘Rory’.
In a future incarnation, what will I be? I won’t be the person I am now. I won’t have the same memories, I’ll have a different body, a different name, different parents and circumstances, a different environment, different circumstances and different prarabdha karma to work out. So, the person I think I am won’t reincarnate. All that’s actually here to begin with is awareness appearing to be a person through a certain body and mind, which functions as what is called an upadhi — a limiting adjunct, something that makes one thing appear to take on the appearance and qualities of something else (in this case making limitless awareness appear to be a person).
So what does reincarnate? Karma — in the form of the vasanas; the content of the causal body/unconscious. Awareness will have a different form, a different name and wholly different circumstances, assuming the guise of a whole new person, and from the store of sanchita, different karmic seeds will sprout. Heck, perhaps if I don’t resolve it in this lifetime, the cake vasana will be back…
Liberation
It’s important to note that we can break the cycle at any time as we can transcend karma with jnanam — knowledge. That’s what Vedanta is for; a sophisticated, time-tested means of Self knowledge which, when assimilated by a prepared mind, leads to moksha, or liberation. The cycle of personal karma is brought about by an ultimately erroneous sense of doership, caused by taking ourselves (awareness) to be something that we’re not (the person/mind-body complex). (The issue of doership is a crucial understanding in Vedanta and is beyond the purvey of a single article, as it requires careful and deliberate unfolding, utilising the unexamined logic of one’s own experience).
To be Self-realised is simply to shift one’s sense of identity from the doer/mind-body complex back to the Self, which is pure awareness; that which ever-witnesses and transcends the phenomenal. In doing so, the jnani, the Self-realised being, is no longer bound by the wheel of karma; karma is now impersonal. In some ways the jnani is like an animal, living in complete accord with his or her own nature, free from karma because with no sense of autonomous doership, there is nothing to bind him/her. Prarabdha karma still plays itself out for the duration of the incarnation, but the store of sanchita is void, because there’s no one to take ownership of it; like a parcel sent to a house in which no one lives anymore.
As James Swartz says in his commentary of Shankara’s Tattva Bodha (available here):
“Just as the dreamer becomes free of all actions he or she performed in the dream on waking up, the realised soul is freed from sanchita and agami karma when he or she wakes up to the knowledge “I am whole and complete, actionless awareness”. Even the prarabdha karmas that fructify in his life will not affect him. Just as a man who views himself in a distorted or concave mirror knows that he is free from the limitations of the distorted image, a Self-realised soul also knows that he is not bound by the limitations of the body and the mind.”
In conclusion, karma is a key understanding in helping us make sense of action and reaction, cause and effect and how every single action generates both seen and unseen consequences. At its most basic level, it seems absurdly simple: do good things and we’ll accrue good results. But a more thorough and nuanced understanding helps explain why we tend to behave the way we do and how the momentum of our past actions, in thought, word and deed, influence us in the present moment and indeed how they affect our future.
