Within the Charvaka perspective, the notion of karma as an invisible moral law is fundamentally rejected. Karma, understood as a subtle force that links deeds to future rewards or punishments across lifetimes, is seen as an unverifiable religious construct rather than a demonstrable truth. Because Charvaka insists that valid knowledge must rest on direct perception, doctrines that depend on unseen realms or forces are treated as speculative at best. The elaborate moral accounting imagined by traditional karma theory thus finds no foothold in this materialist outlook.

This rejection is closely tied to Charvaka’s denial of an eternal soul and an afterlife. Without an enduring self to migrate from one birth to another, there is no bearer of karmic residues and no arena in which posthumous consequences could unfold. Consciousness, on this view, arises with the living body and ceases entirely at death, leaving no scope for future reward or retribution. The grand edifice of karmic continuity collapses once the ideas of rebirth and a persisting atman are set aside.

What remains, then, is a focus on the immediate, observable consequences of action within this single, embodied life. Charvaka acknowledges that deeds have effects—social, psychological, and physical—but these are understood as straightforward results of natural and human interactions, not as the workings of a hidden moral mechanism. Actions may bring pleasure or pain, praise or blame, health or harm, yet all of this unfolds within the tangible world that can be seen and experienced directly. In this way, moral life is framed not as obedience to an unseen cosmic ledger, but as navigation within the palpable web of causes and effects that constitute ordinary existence.