Somewhere between what happens to us and what we make happen, life unfolds.
We inherit a world shaped by choices we did not make, but we navigate it through choices that are entirely our own. The interplay of karma and dharma – one handed to us, the other shaped by us – is the quiet tension behind every decision, every path taken or untaken.
Karma is the life we inherit.
It is the weight of history, genetics, upbringing, past actions – our own and those of countless others before us. It is the echo of things beyond our control, the momentum of past causes rolling forward into effect. Some of it is visible: the circumstances of our birth, the opportunities we are given, the burdens we must carry. Some of it is subtler: the habits ingrained before we understood we were forming them, the unconscious beliefs passed down through generations, the invisible currents that pull us toward certain experiences and away from others.
Dharma, on the other hand, is the life we choose.
It is not simply destiny or duty, as it is sometimes translated, but rather the path we carve out in response to what we inherit. If karma is the hand we are dealt, dharma is how we choose to play it. It is the sum of our actions, our principles, our commitments. It is the way we choose to meet the world, no matter how it meets us.
The tension between these two is what makes life dynamic. We often mistake karma for an immovable force, something that dictates who we are and what we can become. But karma is not fate – it is simply the foundation upon which we build. And if we pay attention, we realize that our choices, our dharma, are shaping the karma of tomorrow.
This is as true in business and leadership as it is in life. The organizations we inherit, the teams we manage, the systems we operate within – they all carry the weight of past decisions. But leadership is not about lamenting what came before; it is about choosing what comes next. A great leader understands the inertia of history but refuses to be bound by it. They recognize the flaws in what they inherit but do not use them as an excuse for inaction. They step into their dharma and make choices that shift the course of what will be inherited by others.
The same principle applies to personal growth. We inherit fears, biases, expectations – some from society, some from our families, some from our own past selves. But we are not required to carry them forward. The moment we recognize that we have agency, that we can choose a different response, is the moment we begin to rewrite our own karma.
At its core, this is about responsibility – not in the burdensome sense, but in the liberating sense. The more we understand what we have inherited, the more power we have to shape what we pass on. The more conscious we become of our patterns, the more freedom we have to break or reinforce them.
There is no guarantee that making the right choices will immediately override what we have inherited. Some karmic weights take time to shift. But every moment of conscious action chips away at the idea that we are merely at the mercy of what came before.
Karma may explain why we are where we are, but dharma determines where we go next.