The Psychology and Philosophy of Karma (2024)

Karma, often misunderstood as fate or destiny, is conceptualized as a causal law by which our modes of engagement come to determine our station and situation. According to several Indian religions, karma is the law of cause and effect extended to human affairs; every instance of thought, speech, and action is a cause, and all our experiences are their effects.

Karma, good and bad, is often referred to as punya (“merit”) and paap (“demerit”). Even if punya does not immediately pay off, or seem to pay off, it does in the longer term, which is why karma is tied to samsara, the transmigration of life, with future births conditioned by the accumulated balance of paap and punya.

Greek Parallels

At the outset of Plato’s Republic, the sophist Thrasymachus argues that it is not the just but the unjust who flourish, and that the tyrant, being the most wicked of people, is also the happiest. At the end of the Republic, in the Myth of Er, Plato resorts to reincarnation to guarantee that the genuinely just always come out on top, with each soul choosing its next life according to its wisdom. In this and other things, Plato was influenced by Pythagoras (d. 495 BCE), who, like the Indians, came to believe in the transmigration of the soul.

The Transfer of Karma

Although karma is individual, it is believed that in certain circ*mstances it can be transferred—for example, from a dying father to his son, with the son being, essentially, the continuation of the father. This rite, in which the father places himself above his son, and touches his organs with his own, is laid out in the Kaush*taki Upanishad.

More ordinarily, the paap of a person, living or deceased, may be mitigated by the prayers and pilgrimages of others.

The Function of Karma and Christian Parallels

Karma serves the same purpose as Eden in providing the major motivation to lead a moral life. In the Christian tradition, it is believed that the soul of the newly deceased is judged and sent to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Then, there is also a Last Judgement that takes place after the Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.

In the Letter to the Galatians, St Paul warns: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” According to the Old Testament, punishment might even be extended to later generations, that is, to future selves:

The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Karma also serves other purposes, such as accounting for the existence of evil, rationalizing rebirth (which could also operate independently of karma), and providing a soteriological goal of final liberation.

In determining our circ*mstances and even our temperament, karma may constrict our options, but it does not deprive us of choice and deliberation, enabling it to condone social inequities and the caste system while at the same time affirming human freedom.

The Philosophy of Karma

The importance of karma, and the degree of freedom and determination within it, is a matter of debate between the Hindu schools.

But even if karma theory is not literally true, it is at least metaphorically true. Being good does pay off, if only in peace of mind and mental health.

In which case, is karma theory a firm basis for morality, or an appeal to naked self-interest?

One way around this problem, which has been taken, is to broaden the scope of karma to include thoughts as well as actions, so that the system becomes impossible to game.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not the same, and does not feel the same, as doing it for the right reason. According to the Great Forest Upanishad, the truly virtuous act is the one that is desire-less. Like the Stoic archer, one must concentrate on doing the right thing, to the best of one’s ability, without being attached to the outcome. For it is from attachment that life and misery arise.

The Buddhist Solution

The Buddha had another way around the problem, which is to deny the metaphysical distinction between the self and others so that helping others is the same as helping oneself.

Aristotle makes a similar move in the Nicomachean Ethics, when he says that there is no conflict between helping a friend and helping oneself insofar as a perfect friend is like another self.

When we are good to another, we are good to all, including ourself, because the distinction is an illusion, and karma travels.

If we have no self, why did the Buddhists not altogether give up on karma and samsara?

In part, because karma can still operate in the absence of a Self, or Atma, with future incarnations being conditioned by the sum of all the karmic actions that have been put into the world.

Every person—their parents, their teachers, and their parents and teachers—is the embodiment of every karmic action that has ever gone before. Our every action reverberates to the end of time.

Read more in Indian Mythology and Philosophy.