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 oldest full statement of it is in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, in Yājñavalkya's account of what happens at death, and it is given in a grammatical form that leaves no room for a judge.
यथाकारी यथाचारी तथा भवति। साधुकारी साधुर्भवति। पापकारी पापो भवति। पुण्यः पुण्येन कर्मणा भवति पापः पापेन॥
yathākārī yathācārī tathā bhavati. sādhukārī sādhur bhavati. pāpakārī pāpo bhavati. puṇyaḥ puṇyena karmaṇā bhavati pāpaḥ pāpena
As one acts, as one conducts oneself, so one becomes. The doer of good becomes good; the doer of harm becomes harmful. One becomes meritorious by meritorious action, harmful by harmful action.
Bhavati — 'becomes'. Not 'is rewarded', not 'is punished', not 'is judged'. The verb makes the consequence internal to the act: what an action produces is a change in the actor. This is a claim about character formation before it is a claim about future lives, and it is testable within a single afternoon. The passage then takes one further step, and the step is the mechanism.
स यथाकामो भवति तत्क्रतुर्भवति। यत्क्रतुर्भवति तत्कर्म कुरुते। यत्कर्म कुरुते तदभिसम्पद्यते॥
sa yathākāmo bhavati tat-kratur bhavati. yat-kratur bhavati tat karma kurute. yat karma kurute tad abhisampadyate
As is one's desire, so is one's resolve; as is the resolve, so is the act one performs; as is the act performed, so is what one attains.
The Chāndogya draws the practical conclusion in one imperative of three syllables.
अथ खलु क्रतुमयः पुरुषो यथाक्रतुरस्मिँल्लोके पुरुषो भवति तथेतः प्रेत्य भवति। स क्रतुं कुर्वीत॥
atha khalu kratumayaḥ puruṣo yathā-kratur asmiṁl loke puruṣo bhavati tatheteḥ pretya bhavati. sa kratuṁ kurvīta
A person is made of resolve. As is the resolve of a person in this world, so does he become on departing from it. Therefore let him form his resolve.
Sa kratuṁ kurvīta — 'let him make his resolve'. Everything the doctrine has to say about freedom is in that optative. If a person is constituted by what he intends, then intention is the one place where the whole apparatus can be entered, and the text says so at the end of a passage that begins by identifying everything with Brahman.
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.
Nine verses earlier the same argument is made without any appeal to what happens after death — which is the version that can be checked.
देहिनोऽस्मिन्यथा देहे कौमारं यौवनं जरा। तथा देहान्तरप्राप्तिर्धीरस्तत्र न मुह्यति॥
dehino'smin yathā dehe kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā tathā dehāntara-prāptir dhīras tatra na muhyati
Just as the embodied one passes, in this very body, through childhood, youth and age, so it passes to another body. The steady are not deluded by this.
What determines the next birth
Given the desire-resolve-act chain, the answer is not a tally of deeds but the direction the mind has been trained to face — and the Gītā puts the test at the moment when training is all that is left.
यं यं वापि स्मरन्भावं त्यजत्यन्ते कलेवरम्। तं तमेवैति कौन्तेय सदा तद्भावभावितः॥
yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ
Whatever state one remembers when at the end one leaves the body, to that very state one goes, having been always absorbed in it.
The safeguard against a superstitious reading is in the last four words: sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ, 'having been always shaped by that state'. The final thought is not a lottery and cannot be arranged at the last minute; it is named as the product of a lifetime's habit. The verse is therefore an argument for daily practice, not for deathbed formulas — a mind arrives at its last moment holding whatever it has spent decades holding.
And for anyone who fears that an unfinished practice is wasted, the Gītā answers the question directly — Arjuna asks it in as many words, and the reply is unusually specific.
तत्र तं बुद्धिसंयोगं लभते पौर्वदेहिकम्। यतते च ततो भूयः संसिद्धौ कुरुनन्दन॥
tatra taṁ buddhi-saṁyogaṁ labhate paurva-dehikam yatate ca tato bhūyaḥ saṁsiddhau kuru-nandana
There he regains the union with the understanding acquired in his former body, and from that point strives again toward perfection, O joy of the Kurus.
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.
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Last revised 2026-08-16. Corrections are welcome — see how this site is written.