Karma and rebirth
कर्म पुनर्जन्म
Also written: karma · rebirth · reincarnation hinduism · sanchita prarabdha kriyamana · punarjanma · कर्म
Karma means action, and by extension the residue action leaves. The doctrine is not that someone is keeping accounts; it is that ṛta — the order of things — extends to the moral domain as it does to the physical, and that consequence follows action there as reliably as elsewhere.
The three kinds
| Kind | Sanskrit | What it is | Can it be changed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accumulated | Sañcita | The whole store from all past lives, not yet ripened | Yes — knowledge is said to burn it |
| Begun | Prārabdha | The portion that has ripened and shaped this birth | No. It runs its course; even a liberated being's body lives it out |
| Being made | Kriyamāṇa / āgāmi | What you are creating right now | Entirely. This is where freedom lives |
What carries it
The sūkṣma-śarīra, the subtle body: the five prāṇas, the ten indriyas in their subtle form, and the inner instrument of mind, intellect and ego, together with the saṃskāras — the impressions left by past action and the vāsanās, the tendencies they generate. This is what departs at death and what takes up the next body. The Gītā's image is of the person changing worn clothes.
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि।
vāsāṁsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya navāni gṛhṇāti naro'parāṇi
As a person casts off worn-out garments and puts on new ones, so the embodied one casts off worn-out bodies and enters others.
What the doctrine is not
- Not a licence for indifference. The tradition makes relief of suffering a duty; 'it is their karma' as an excuse for inaction generates karma of its own.
- Not a claim that every misfortune is deserved. The Mahābhārata lists five causes of an event, of which karma is one — alongside time, nature, effort and the unforeseen.
- Not fatalism. Two-thirds of the classification exists precisely to identify what remains open.
- Not a system of reward and punishment by an outside judge. It is a description of how consequence propagates, with no one administering it.
The tattvas — how existence is layered
Sāṅkhya's twenty-five and Kashmir Śaivism's thirty-six: the levels between pure consciousness and solid earth,…
Time — the yugas, kalpas and cycles
Cyclical time on an enormous scale: the four yugas and their lengths, the manvantaras, a day of Brahmā, and wh…
The lokas — the planes of existence
The fourteen worlds, the three-world formula of daily invocation, and how the lokas are read as states rather …
Pañcāṅga — the reckoning of time
The five limbs of the Indian calendar, the lunisolar year, the two ayanas and six ṛtus, and how a muhūrta is c…
Last revised 2026-08-16. Corrections are welcome — see how this site is written.