The Case for Reason: Volume One: Understanding the Anti-superstition Movement

by Narendra Dabholkar

The doctrine known as the karmavipak siddhanta states the following: ‘An individual has to suffer or enjoy the fruit of his bad and good deeds respectively.’ These deeds are classified as kriyamana karma, sanchit and prarabdha. Kriyamana karma means that, whatever we do in the present, the fruits of those doings are accumulated and added to what is known as ‘sanchit karma’, that is, the fruits of the deeds of previous births. A person is reborn in the present because he is obliged to suffer (or enjoy) the fruit of some of his accumulated deeds—his sanchit karma. These deeds of the past (to suffer which we are born in the present) forms our prarabdha karma. All Indian philosophies, except the Charvaka Darshan (the philosophy of the Charvakas), have accepted this theory of karmavipak; it has become a distinctive characteristic of Indian philosophy where karma siddhanta is recognised as a universal law.