Karma (karma)

Karma means action, and by extension the moral residue an action leaves behind, which ripens into consequence in this life or a later one. In the Mahabharata it is the engine that makes curses, boons and inherited guilt intelligible: nothing simply happens, everything is owed. The Bhagavad Gita reframes it as a problem of attachment rather than of activity, arguing that action cannot be avoided but bondage to its fruits can.

Stories such as Gautami and the snake use it to argue that blaming an immediate cause misses how far back the chain really runs.