The Tattvartha Sutra presents eight principal kinds of karma, distinguished above all by their effect on the soul’s innate qualities. Four are described as destructive (ghāti or ghātiyā), because they directly veil knowledge, perception, right faith and conduct, and the soul’s natural energy. The remaining four are non-destructive (aghāti or aghātiyā); they shape embodiment, status, lifespan, and the tone of experience, yet do not themselves obscure the soul’s essential capacities. In this way, the text offers both a map of inner obscuration and a chart of the outer conditions through which the soul journeys.

Among the destructive karmas, jñānāvaraṇa (knowledge-obscuring) karma blocks right knowledge, affecting all forms of cognition, from ordinary sensory and scriptural understanding up to omniscience. Darśanāvaraṇa (perception-obscuring) karma similarly veils right perception, from sense-based apprehension to the highest omniscient perception. Mohanīya (deluding) karma is said to be especially powerful, as it distorts right belief and right conduct themselves, generating attachment, aversion, and the passions that sustain worldly bondage; it is distinguished into belief-deluding (darśana-mohanīya) and conduct-deluding (cāritra-mohanīya). Antarāya (obstructing) karma hinders the soul’s inherent energy and capacity to act, creating obstacles to charity, gain, enjoyment, re-enjoyment, and the exercise of power or vigor.

The non-destructive karmas describe how the soul appears and what it undergoes in the world, without directly dimming its inner light. Vedanīya (feeling-producing) karma determines the experience of pleasure and pain, divided into pleasurable (sātā) and painful (asātā) feelings, thereby coloring the subjective quality of each moment. Nāma (body- or form-determining) karma fashions the type of body and its characteristics—such as species, structure, and sense organs—thus providing the concrete vehicle through which karmic results are lived out. Gotra (status-determining) karma fixes high or low status, including family and social standing, which may or may not reflect the soul’s true spiritual attainment. Āyu or āyuṣya (lifespan-determining) karma sets both the realm and the duration of a particular embodiment, establishing how long a given life-course will endure.

Taken together, these eight karmas portray a finely graded system in which inner obscurations and outer circumstances are intimately linked yet conceptually distinct. The destructive karmas explain why the soul does not naturally shine forth in its full knowledge, perception, and purity, while the non-destructive karmas explain the particular form and conditions under which that obscured soul wanders. The Sutra’s analysis suggests that spiritual practice must gradually weaken and remove the destructive karmas, even as it transforms the way the non-destructive karmas are experienced, allowing the soul’s inherent clarity and freedom to emerge.