Swami Dayananda Saraswati presents karma first and foremost as “action” in its fullest sense: every deliberate physical, verbal, and mental activity. These actions are never isolated; each is inseparably linked to its result, called karma-phala. The connection between action and result is not random but part of a precise moral order, governed by Īśvara, the intelligent principle that ensures that no action is ever lost. In this vision, what is commonly called “fate” is better understood as the unfolding of past karma-phala, while the choices made in the present are new karma that will bear fruit later. Thus, present circumstances—pleasure and pain, opportunities and obstacles—are seen as the manifestation of past actions, yet the present moment remains a field of fresh initiative and responsibility.

Within this framework, traditional Vedānta distinguishes three broad categories of karma. Sañcita karma is the vast accumulation of past actions whose results have not yet manifested. From this storehouse, a portion becomes prārabdha karma, which fructifies as the basic framework of the present life: the body, the family and environment of birth, and the general contours of one’s experiences. Āgāmi karma is generated by current actions and will shape future experiences. Swami Dayananda emphasizes that this structure explains human diversity without resorting to arbitrary divine favor or punishment, while still preserving a meaningful role for conscious choice.

Because karma is inseparable from dharma, the ethical order, the quality of action and the intention behind it become crucial. Actions aligned with dharma and universal values, performed with a clear understanding and a responsible intention, produce beneficial results and contribute to inner growth. Actions born of ignorance or adharma generate painful consequences and reinforce bondage. When one adopts an attitude akin to karma-yoga—doing what is to be done, in keeping with dharma, while accepting the results as prasāda, a gift from Īśvara—likes and dislikes gradually lose their grip, and action ceases to create new binding karma. In this way, life itself becomes a means of assimilating past karma while avoiding fresh entanglement.

At the deepest level of his teaching, karma and its results belong to the realm of saṁsāra and can never themselves produce liberation. Mokṣa arises from self-knowledge: the recognition that the true self, ātman, is actionless consciousness, not the limited doer or enjoyer who seems to be bound by karma. For the one who has assimilated this vision, actions may continue at the level of body and mind, and prārabdha karma may still play out, yet the sense “I am the doer, I am the sufferer” falls away. Karma then loses its binding force, and life is lived in harmony with the cosmic order, free from the compulsion of inner bondage.