Karma and Time

Cause and Effect Across Lifetimes

The word karma has been so diluted in popular usage that its original meaning is nearly lost. “It’s karma” has become a vague explanation for anything that happens, often with overtones of punishment or fate.

But karma is not punishment. It is not fate. It is simply the law of cause and effect operating across time - including across lifetimes.

Understanding karma properly is essential for making sense of life’s inequalities, for working skillfully with the conditions we face, and for using Jyotish as a tool for self-knowledge rather than fortune-telling.

The Nature of Karma

Karma comes from the Sanskrit root kr, meaning “to do” or “to make.” Karma is action, and it is also the result of action.

The principle is simple: every action creates a consequence. Not as punishment, but as natural law. Plant a mango seed and a mango tree grows - not because mangoes are good or seeds are rewarded, but because that is the nature of seeds.

What makes karma complex is time. Some consequences appear immediately; others take years; still others extend across lifetimes. The connection between cause and effect becomes invisible, and we experience results without remembering what created them.

This is where Jyotish becomes valuable. The birth chart is a map of karmic patterns - showing not the actions themselves, but the tendencies and likely consequences we carry into this life.

Kārya-Kāraṇa Bhāva

Classical Ayurveda describes the principle of kārya-kāraṇa bhāva - the relationship between cause (kāraṇa) and effect (kārya). What exists now must have a cause. What we do now will create a future effect.

This principle operates on multiple levels:

Physical: Eating poorly causes digestive problems. Exercise causes increased strength. These causes and effects are readily observable.

Subtle: Thought patterns create emotional tendencies. Emotional tendencies create behavioral patterns. These connections are less obvious but traceable.

Across lifetimes: Actions in previous lives create circumstances in this life. Actions in this life create circumstances in future lives. These connections are invisible to ordinary perception but are mapped in the birth chart.

The Vedic tradition does not see these as separate domains. They are one continuum of cause and effect, operating at different time scales.

Four Types of Karma

Classical texts describe four categories of karma:

Sanchita Karma

Sanchita means “accumulated” or “piled up.” This is the total store of karma from all previous actions across all previous lives - an immense repository of pending consequences.

We cannot experience all this karma at once. It would overwhelm any single lifetime. So only a portion becomes active in each incarnation.

Prarabdha Karma

Prarabdha means “commenced” or “set in motion.” This is the portion of sanchita karma that has begun to manifest in the current lifetime.

Prarabdha karma is what the birth chart reveals. It is the karmic inheritance that shapes the circumstances of this particular life - the family we are born into, the body we inhabit, the opportunities and obstacles we encounter.

This karma is sometimes called “fixed” because it is already activated. The arrow has left the bow. However, as we will see, even prarabdha has degrees of intensity.

Kriyamana Karma

Kriyamana means “being done.” This is the karma we create through our current actions - the choices we make moment by moment that generate future consequences.

This is where free will operates. We may not choose the circumstances we inherit (prarabdha), but we choose how we respond to them. These choices create new karma that will ripen in the future.

Agama Karma

Agama means “coming” or “approaching.” This is karma created by our desires and intentions - what we plan and anticipate doing in the future.

Even before we act, strong desire creates karmic momentum. This is why the Yoga tradition places such emphasis on purifying desire - not suppressing it, but aligning it with dharma.

Three Intensities of Karma

Not all karma is equally fixed. The tradition describes three levels of intensity:

Dridha Karma (Fixed)

Dridha means “firm” or “solid.” This karma is tightly bound and very difficult to change. Multiple factors in the birth chart point to the same result. The pattern is deeply established.

Examples might include:

The Buddha called this “written in stone.” It will manifest regardless of what we do.

Dridha-Adridha Karma (Mixed)

Some factors point one way, others point another. The pattern can potentially be changed through determined effort, appropriate remedial measures, and right action.

This is where most karma falls. There is challenge, but not inevitable destiny. Skillful response makes a real difference.

Adridha Karma (Unfixed)

Adridha means “not firm.” This karma is loosely bound and easily changed through proper choices. The Buddha called it “written in sand.”

Minor tendencies, passing difficulties, things that resolve with modest effort - these fall in this category.

Understanding which intensity applies is crucial. For dridha karma, the work is acceptance and meaning-making. For adridha karma, the work is simply making better choices. For mixed karma, appropriate remedies and sustained effort can shift outcomes.

Karma and Jyotish

Jyotish is sometimes called “the eye that sees karma.” The birth chart is a snapshot of our karmic inheritance at the moment of incarnation.

The planets represent cosmic forces that reflect karmic patterns. Saturn, for example, is associated with consequences of past actions - delays, obstacles, and lessons that come through difficulty.

The houses represent areas of life where karma manifests - family, wealth, relationships, career, health, spirituality.

The dashas (planetary periods) reveal when different karmas ripen. A Saturn dasha may bring the full weight of Saturnian karma; a Jupiter dasha may bring the grace of earned wisdom.

A skilled jyotishi can assess:

This is not fortune-telling. It is karmic diagnostics - understanding patterns so we can work with them skillfully.

Remedial Measures

If karma is simply cause and effect, can it be changed? This is one of the great debates of Indian philosophy.

The practical answer is nuanced:

Dridha karma cannot be avoided but its effects can be modified. A person destined for disease may still work on acceptance, meaning, spiritual growth. The external event occurs; the internal experience can be transformed.

Mixed and adridha karma can be significantly shifted through:

Mantra: Sacred sounds that purify karmic patterns and align with beneficial cosmic forces

Dana (charity): Giving away what the problematic planet signifies, thereby reducing its grip

Seva (service): Selfless action that generates positive karma and reduces ego-attachment

Upaya (specific remedies): Gems, colors, fasting, specific practices recommended by a qualified jyotishi

Yoga and meditation: Practices that develop the witness consciousness that transcends karma

Right living: Dharmic action in daily life that creates beneficial karma and neutralizes the negative

The key insight is that remedies work not by magically erasing karma, but by creating new karma that counterbalances the old, or by developing the consciousness that no longer identifies with karmic results.

Karma and Free Will

Is everything predetermined? Do we have free will? This question has occupied philosophers for millennia.

The Vedic perspective offers a both/and answer:

The past is determined. Prarabdha karma - the portion active in this life - is already set. Certain circumstances are inevitable because the causes were created long ago.

The present is free. How we respond to circumstances, what we choose moment by moment, creates new karma. Within the field of given conditions, we have real choice.

The future is probability. Strong karmic tendencies point toward likely outcomes, but free action in the present can shift these probabilities, sometimes dramatically.

This is why the wise neither deny karma (pretending we create our reality from scratch) nor collapse into fatalism (assuming nothing we do matters).

The practical stance is: accept what is, as it is, while acting skillfully to create the best possible future.

Time as Teacher

Underlying the theory of karma is a specific understanding of time. Time is not merely linear progression. It is the field in which karma operates, the medium through which causes become effects.

Kala (time) is one of the nine fundamental substances in Vedic philosophy. It is not empty - it is a force that carries karma forward, that ripens seeds, that brings consequences to fruition.

Understanding time means recognizing:

Jyotish is, in part, the science of timing - knowing when different karmas will ripen, when to act and when to wait, when a period of difficulty is ending and when it is just beginning.

Practical Implications

Understanding karma and time changes how we engage with life:

We stop blaming. External circumstances are effects, not causes. Even the actions of others toward us reflect our own karmic patterns.

We take responsibility. What we do now matters. Every choice creates consequences. This is not burdensome but empowering - we are not victims of fate.

We develop patience. Deep patterns take time to shift. Expecting instant transformation ignores the nature of karma.

We cultivate discrimination. Understanding which karma is fixed and which can be changed prevents both futile struggle and premature surrender.

We embrace appropriate effort. For changeable karma, remedies and right action make a real difference. For fixed karma, acceptance and inner freedom are the path.

We seek understanding. Jyotish becomes not prediction but self-knowledge - a map of patterns we can work with consciously.

This is the mature relationship with karma: neither denying its reality nor being crushed by it. Recognizing that we inherit the results of past actions, while we simultaneously create the seeds of future experience.

The ultimate liberation, in Yoga philosophy, is freedom from karma altogether - not escaping its effects, but transcending identification with the one who acts and experiences. This is a long path. In the meantime, understanding karma allows us to walk it with greater clarity and skill.

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