Popular usage treats karma as a single, undifferentiated ledger of consequences owed, but classical Indian philosophy divides it into three distinct categories, and the distinction matters practically, not just technically. Sanchita karma is the total, accumulated stock of past karma from all previous actions across all previous lifetimes, vast and mostly unmanifest at any given moment, the way a person’s entire financial history exists as a total sum even though only part of it is currently relevant. Prarabdha karma is the specific portion of that total stock that has already begun to bear fruit in the present life, shaping this particular body, this family, this set of circumstances, and this portion is generally held to be fixed for the duration of the current life, not alterable by present effort. Kriyamana karma, sometimes called agami, is the karma currently being generated by present actions, and this portion is entirely within present control.
The distinction between prarabdha and kriyamana carries the tradition’s actual practical instruction: the circumstances a person is currently experiencing, the family born into, the specific difficulties faced, are treated as already set in motion and not usefully resisted through complaint or denial, while the response to those circumstances, the actions taken now, remains fully open and is where genuine spiritual and ethical work actually happens. This is close to the practical stance the Bhagavad Gita recommends, act without excessive grip on outcome, since the outcome of present action folds into future prarabdha rather than being fully controllable now, while the quality of the action itself, kriyamana, is available to be shaped with full attention.
This threefold division also resolves an apparent tension in how the tradition talks about karma: sometimes describing it as a fixed, inescapable destiny, and sometimes describing spiritual practice as capable of changing one’s fate entirely. Both descriptions are accurate to different parts of the model. Prarabdha genuinely functions like fixed destiny for the present life’s basic circumstances; sanchita and kriyamana remain genuinely open to being worked with, exhausted through disciplined practice, or added to through further action, respectively.
What makes any of this stick to a person across multiple lifetimes, rather than simply dissolving once an action is complete, is a specific psychological mechanism the tradition names separately, the groove an action leaves behind even after the action itself has ended, which is the subject taken up next.
Part 46 of 100 — Series II: To the Eternal
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