Karma

karma refers not only to an initial act, whether benevolent or malicious, but also to the reaction it produces (pleasant or unpleasant in accordance with the original act), which ripens for the actor either in this life or a future one.

Bryant defines karma etymologically and technically as the entire action-reaction continuum whose fruits ripen across lifetimes, embedding the agent in the potentially eternal cycle of saṃsāra.

Bryant, Edwin F., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009thesis

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if the fundamental truth of our being is spiritual and not mechanical, it must be ourself, our soul that fundamentally determines its own evolution, and the law of Karma can only be one of the processes it uses for that purpose: our Spirit, our Self must be greater than its Karma.

Aurobindo argues that karmic law governs only the outer dimensions of existence — body, life, and outer mind — while the soul as puruṣa retains the freedom to transcend the mechanism of karma entirely.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939thesis

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The idea of rebirth is inseparable from that of karma. The crucial question is whether a man's karma is personal or not. If it is, then the preordained destiny with which a man enters life represents an achievement of previous lives.

Jung frames karma's most philosophically intractable problem — the personal versus impersonal nature of karmic inheritance — and acknowledges that even the Buddha refused to settle it, treating it instead as a question beyond the bounds of what liberates.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis

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karma not only refers to the personal dimension of the individual but also to the collective dimension of action/reaction encompassing the entire chain of life. Thus karma is also regarded as Inter-dependent Origination in the Buddhist tradition.

Spiegelman equates karma with Buddhist Interdependent Origination, arguing that individual karmic action is inseparable from the totality of universal action-reaction, and that enlightenment constitutes transcendence of this karmic bondage.

Spiegelman, J. Marvin, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985thesis

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vice, apu​ṇya, bad karma, produces a short life span and distressful, paritāpa, type of birth and life experience; virtue, puṇya, good karma, produces pleasurable, hlāda, experiences.

Bryant explicates Patañjali's II.14, showing how karma differentiates qualitatively into virtuous and vicious streams that determine the specific character, duration, and hedonic tone of future births.

Bryant, Edwin F., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009thesis

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karma is not some mystic theory; it is a force that blows through the world like a wind. Nobody can escape it, just as nobody can live without air. Each of us therefore is expected to learn from karma the consequences of certain actions, just as we learn from gravity.

Easwaran demythologizes karma as a universal moral law as empirically unavoidable as physical gravity, thereby grounding it in lived ethical experience rather than metaphysical speculation.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis

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there is a vicious cycle: kleśas provokes karma, and karma fuels the kleśas.

Bryant identifies the reciprocal intensification between the kleśas and karma as the engine of saṃsāric bondage, demonstrating why liberation requires their simultaneous dismantling.

Bryant, Edwin F., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting

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Karma is this circular process. Every person has an accumulated store of seeds waiting to ripen when the appropriate conditions arise. This means that all mental suffering is actually the result of our own past actions.

Brazier applies the karmic model clinically, restricting its scope to mental suffering and mapping the 'seeds' awaiting ripening onto a therapeutic understanding of conditioned psychological reactivity.

Brazier, David, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind, 1995thesis

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the law of karma simply expresses the fact that every action contains its consequences. If we share in doing something, we share equally in its karma.

Easwaran extends the karmic principle beyond individual overt acts to shared complicity, arguing that participation in harmful systemic actions generates collective karmic consequence.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Upanishadssupporting

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the law of karma simply expresses the fact that every action contains its consequences. If we share in doing something, we share equally in its karma.

This parallel passage in the Essence of the Upanishads reinforces Easwaran's position that collective moral agency and individual karmic accountability are inseparable.

Easwaran, Eknath, Essence of the Upanishads: A Key to Indian Spiritualitysupporting

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although good karma can destroy bad karma, the reverse does not hold true: Bad karma cannot destroy good karma.

Bryant traces Vyāsa's asymmetric account of karmic interaction, establishing that meritorious action has a privileged capacity to neutralize demeritorious residue but not vice versa.

Bryant, Edwin F., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting

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The real source of karma is the mind, which means that all our unfavorable karma can be undone by changing the way we think.

Easwaran locates the generative root of karma in mental activity rather than outward acts alone, arguing that genuine karmic transformation requires inner psychological reorientation.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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Working like this draws on every human faculty – body, senses, mind, intellect – to take us beyond the law of karma into a state of undivided love.

Easwaran argues that consistent selfless kindness, mobilizing all human faculties, constitutes the practical path beyond karmic bondage toward a state of unified love.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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the same samskara that led her to pass out cigarettes on the street later made her choose to live in a smog-ridden area and work under considerable stress – all to make a little money.

Easwaran illustrates how saṃskāras function as the psychological mechanism of karma, tracing a single formative conditioning through decades of apparently unrelated decisions with cumulative karmic consequence.

Easwaran, Eknath, Essence of the Upanishads: A Key to Indian Spiritualitysupporting

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Karma arises from our selfish desires; the more selfish desires we have and the more active they are, the more negative karma we produce by thinking and acting in response to those desires.

Easwaran establishes the causal chain from selfish desire through saṃskāra to negative karma, and inversely describes the progressive quieting of karmic production as desires are dismantled.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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The law of karma says that no matter what context I find myself in, it is neither my parents, nor my science teacher, nor the mailman, but I alone who have brought myself into this state because of my past actions.

Easwaran argues that karmic law, rather than inducing fatalism, establishes radical personal responsibility and therefore the very possibility of individual liberation.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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karma is rarely so simple; this is only for illustration. But what is clear is that John's anger will have repercussions throughout his relationships. Those repercussions will have repercussions.

Easwaran models the cascading social complexity of karmic chains, showing how a single negative act propagates through networks of relationship in ways invisible to the actors involved.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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The karma that causes delusion and confusion (mohanīya-karma). Like liquor, this karma dulls and dazzles the faculties of discrimination between good and evil.

Zimmer presents the Jain taxonomic system of karma-species, including karmas governing life-span, individuality, and moral discernment, as a rigorously differentiated cosmological-psychological typology.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting

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there is no spiritual reward in it either: that is, no reduction of unfavorable karma. All that can be said is that no more harm is being done on the physical level.

Easwaran distinguishes between rajasic renunciation — which merely suspends harmful action without inner transformation — and genuine renunciation, arguing only the latter effects actual karmic reduction.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting

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after explaining the manner in which karma governs all states of existence, the Buddha describes how the evil-doer is brought before the King of Death and questioned about the Five Messengers of Death.

Evans-Wentz frames the Tibetan Buddhist teaching that karma governs all states of existence — embodied, disembodied, and post-mortem — as the foundational premise of the bardic process of judgment and rebirth.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting

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like a cloud, this state rains dharma, which totally uproots the kleśas and all karma.

Bryant records the commentarial gloss that dharma-megha samādhi — the highest state of yogic absorption — constitutes the complete eradication of all accumulated karma and its kleśic roots.

Bryant, Edwin F., The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting

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It is also possible, of course, that this karmic loop goes much further back in time. We all carry bodily tensions which reflect our particular history of experience.

Brazier introduces the concept of the 'karmic loop' to describe how unresolved experiential trauma is somatically encoded, drawing an explicit parallel with Reichian character armour in Western body-psychotherapy.

Brazier, David, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind, 1995supporting

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karma yoga, perfectly exemplified in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. In Sanskrit, the chapter is titled 'Freedom through Renunciation.'

Easwaran identifies karma yoga — action performed without ego-attachment — as the Gītā's culminating practical teaching, embodied paradigmatically in Gandhi's life of selfless service.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside

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there is no such thing as a free lunch anywhere in life, particularly for those who are interested only in personal pleasure or profit. The price is karma.

Easwaran uses the Gītā's analysis of rajasic gift-giving to illustrate how self-interested action invariably produces karmic consequence, regardless of its apparent generosity.

Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975aside

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