The Truth About Karma

Photo taken by my dear friend and colleague, Mathieu Carlot, at the confluence (Sangam) of the Ganga, Yamuna, and Saraswati rivers.

Kumbha Mela festival in Prayagraj, 14th January 2025

The Truth About Karma

In the Vedic worldview, karma is often misunderstood, because many of us hear the word and imagine a cosmic scoreboard measuring our behaviour, yet the original meaning is far more subtle and far more liberating.

Karma refers to action that binds, action taken from stress, fear, confusion, or ego that pulls us out of alignment with the natural flow of life, creating a small knot in our system. The knot is not wrong or bad, it is simply a configuration that restricts our freedom to move as fluidly as we could.

Alongside karma is the idea of kriya, which is action that does not bind, action that arises spontaneously from a rested mind, a settled nervous system, and an inner state that is less concerned with protecting an identity and more attuned to the quiet intelligence that guides all of nature.

When we act from that deeper place, nothing sticks to us and nothing creates future obligations, because our behaviour is already aligned with what nature is asking for in that moment.

Seen this way, karma is not a punishment system and it is not about moral accounting; it is a natural mechanism that gently redirects us whenever we act out of alignment. When we move against the current, life creates boundaries, not to make us suffer, but to guide us back toward a more evolutionary path.

This makes karma corrective rather than punitive, and understanding this brings a softness to the whole concept.

As our inner state becomes quieter and more spacious, the knots begin to loosen, and meditation plays a central role in this process, because each time the mind settles into silence, the tendencies that create binding action begin to dissolve.

Over time, we naturally act from a deeper, more unified part of ourselves, which means we generate less new karma simply because our choices are more aligned with our own nature.

The Vedic understanding affirms that life is always inviting us toward growth and expansion, and karma is one of the ways nature keeps us moving in that direction. 

The aim is not to eliminate karma by force, but to cultivate a state of Being where most of our actions naturally become kriya, arising freely from inner stability. 

When we live like this, clarity grows, steadiness grows, and we experience a greater sense of freedom in every step.