Karma is not fate, and Sanskrit has a separate word for destiny
In everyday English, karma often means cosmic payback or a fixed destiny. In the Indian traditions that coined it, the idea is subtler. Karma covers both an action and the intention behind it, and it operates without any god handing down verdicts. Fate, in fact, has its own distinct Sanskrit term.
At its simplest the Sanskrit word, kamma in Pali, means deed or work together with its consequences. As a religious principle it describes cause and effect in moral life: good intentions and actions lead to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad ones bring the opposite. Intent matters as much as the act. In Buddhism, actions arising without bad intent, such as greed, are treated as having neutral karmic weight.
The scholar Wilhelm Halbfass drew a useful contrast in 2000. The word kriya describes activity and the effort that goes into it; karma is the completed action and the intention behind it, which some scholars describe as a residue clinging to the actor. That residue is why karma is so often confused with predestination. Hindu thought actually keeps several ledgers. Sanchita is karma piled up across past lives; Prarabdha is the portion ripening now and shaping present circumstances, and it is this that corresponds to what English speakers call fate; Agami and Kriyamana describe karma being generated by current deeds.
Definitions vary widely. Some Hindu schools treat karma and rebirth as inseparable, some accept karma without rebirth, and a few dismiss both as fiction. Buddhism and Jainism have their own versions, and Manu Doshi argues that Jainism explored the subject most deeply. Wendy O'Flaherty notes an ongoing debate over whether karma is a theory, a model, a metaphor or a metaphysical position. One of the earliest links between karma and causality appears in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
The concept runs through Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, and appears in Taoism too, usually tied to samsara, the cycle of lives. In some scriptures, though, karma has nothing to do with rebirth at all. Many New Age followers have adopted it as a law of cosmic balance, and some of them stress that it is not a system of punishment for past misdeeds.
Source: Karma
