Karma
The doctrine, central to Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain philosophy, that intentional actions produce consequences that shape future experience — within and across lifetimes.
Karma is the doctrine, central to Indian philosophical and religious traditions, that intentional actions produce consequences that condition the agent's future experience. The Sanskrit word means action or deed, and the philosophical doctrine builds out from a moral physics in which every voluntary act leaves a residue that ripens, sooner or later, in the agent's own life — or, on most classical accounts, across a series of lives.
Different Indian schools develop the doctrine differently. The orthodox Hindu schools (Mimamsa, Vedanta) treat karma as a real metaphysical mechanism that ties the soul (atman) to the cycle of rebirth (samsara), with liberation (moksha) consisting in the cessation of karma. Buddhist philosophy retains the doctrine of karma but reframes it without an enduring soul: it is the stream of conditioned states, not a substantial self, that bears the consequences of action. Jain philosophy gives karma the most physicalized account, treating it as a kind of subtle matter that adheres to the soul.