What is karma? The Gita's answer, in plain words
The short answer
In the Bhagavad Gita, karma means action: the thing you do. Its best-known verse on karma gives you a right to your actions and no claim on their results, and it closes the exit of doing nothing.
The verse: Bhagavad Gita 2.47
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि।।2.47।।
karmaṇy-evādhikāras te mā phaleṣhu kadāchana mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ’stvakarmaṇi
Thy business is with the action only, never with its fruits; so let not the fruit of action be thy motive, nor be thou to inaction attached.
In plain words: your part is the doing. The result is shaped by many hands and by time, so it makes a poor motive. And not acting is no escape, because doing nothing is a choice too.
What 2.47 does not say
Fate. Fate is a script written in advance. This verse does the opposite: it hands you a right, adhikāra, to act now, by your own choice.
Reward. In everyday talk, karma is a scoreboard: good deeds come back as good luck. The Gita does not deny that actions have results. It says the result is not your business, so the right act is done because it is right, whether or not it pays.
Passivity. The last line rules that out: "nor be thou to inaction attached." Holding back to avoid a bad outcome is still an action, with its own cost.
Karma yoga and nishkama karma
Karma yoga means the yoga of action: a whole way of living through your work. Nishkama karma names the spirit behind it. The two terms are related, and they answer different questions.
| Karma yoga | Nishkama karma | |
|---|---|---|
| The words | karma (action) + yoga (union, discipline) | nish (without) + kama (craving) + karma (action) |
| What it names | A path: living out your duty through action | The spirit of that path: acting without craving the result |
| The question it asks | What is my work here? | Am I doing this for the act, or for the payoff? |
| In a decision | Choose the action that is yours to take | Take it fully, and let the result be the result |
Karma yoga is the road; nishkama karma is how you walk it. More on nishkama karma.
Karma in a real decision
2.47 is one of the verses that comes up most often in KarmaLens readings. Read this call from the gallery with it in mind:
"Stop chasing fame as the measure of a career; build skill and contribution first, let recognition follow or not."
The action, skill and contribution, belongs to the person. The fruit, fame and recognition, does not. The call puts the effort where the person has a right to it and lets the rest follow or not. The card's share line adds the balance: "Clarity without restraint becomes noise; restraint without clarity becomes drift."
Karma in your own reading
Every KarmaLens reading weighs your options on the Gita's 8 lenses, and one of them is this verse's own: detachment, or nishkama karma. Are you acting, or chasing an outcome? It sits beside duty, truth, non-harm, clean intent, restraint, welfare of all and discernment, and the call comes after all 8. Its partner idea is dharma, the duty that is yours. See how KarmaLens uses the Gita.
Decide yours
Karma is easy to read in someone else's life and hard to read in your own. Write the decision in front of you as it is. KarmaLens names the action that is yours, weighs it on the 8 lenses, and gives you one clear call with the first step. The action is yours today; the result can wait.
Free, private, about two minutes.