karma in Indian thought, the force whereby right and wrong actions bring benefits and punishments in this or a future existence. This occurs not arbitrarily, but by law. The conditions of birth (one’s sex, caste, circumstances of life) are profoundly affected by one’s karmic ‘bank account.’ A typical Buddhist perspective is that the state of the non-conscious world at any given time is largely determined by the total karmic situation that then holds. For all of the Indian perspectives that accept the karma-and-transmigration perspective, religious enlightenment, the highest good, includes escape from karma. Were it absolutely impossible to act without karmic consequences, obviously such escape would be impossible. (Suicide is viewed as merely ending the life of one’s current body, and typically is viewed as wrong, so that the cosmic effect of one’s suicide will be more punishment.) Thus non-theistic views hold that one who has achieved a pre-enlightenment status – typically reached by meditation, alms-giving, ascetic discipline, or the achieving of esoteric knowledge – can act so as to maintain life without collecting karmic consequences so long as one’s actions are not morally wrong and are done disinterestedly. In theistic perspectives, where moral wrongdoing is sin and acting rightly is obedience to God, karma is the justice of Brahman in action and Brahman may pardon a repentant sinner from the results of wrong actions and place the forgiven sinner in a relation to Brahman that, at death, releases him or her from the transmigratory wheel. See also BRAHMAN, BUDDHIS. K.E.Y.