Within the Ajivika vision, karma is acknowledged but radically reinterpreted. Rather than serving as a moral law that shapes future births, it is absorbed into an uncompromising doctrine of fate, or niyati. All events, from the smallest action to the final attainment of liberation, are held to be fixed in advance by this cosmic order. In such a framework, karma as “action” occurs, but it does not function as an independent, causally efficacious moral force.

Because of this, human deeds—whether virtuous or harmful—do not alter the trajectory of one’s existence. Ethical conduct, ascetic discipline, or spiritual practice are not seen as means to accumulate merit or purify defilements; they are simply elements of the path that destiny has already laid out. There is no genuine moral agency capable of steering the course of rebirth, and no possibility of hastening or delaying liberation through effort. What other traditions treat as a dynamic law of moral causation becomes, in Ajivika thought, a predetermined sequence that unfolds mechanically within an unchangeable cosmic design.

Liberation, therefore, is not the fruit of karmic purification but the inevitable culmination of a fixed cycle. When the destined course of births has run its length, release occurs not because of what has been done, but because fate has decreed it so. This perspective sets Ajivika teaching apart from neighboring traditions, which place great emphasis on intentional action and its transformative power. Here, karma is stripped of its salvific function and viewed as one expression of niyati’s all-encompassing rule, leaving no room for altering the script of existence through personal striving.