In the Tattvartha Sutra’s vision, the story of karma begins wherever the soul’s innate clarity is disturbed by the interplay of activity and passion. Mental, verbal, and bodily activities (yoga), when colored by anger, pride, deceit, or greed, open the channel of influx (āsrava), drawing subtle karmic matter toward the soul. At the very instant of such action, bondage (bandha) occurs, and four parameters of that bondage are fixed: the type of karma (prakṛti), its duration (sthiti), its intensity or potency (anubhāga/anubhava), and the quantity of karmic units involved (pradeśa). These determinations are not arbitrary; they mirror the depth and quality of the underlying attachment, aversion, and delusion. In this way, karmic bondage is not merely a moral record but a precise structuring of future experience, inscribed in the very texture of the soul’s association with matter.

Once bound, karmas may remain dormant for a portion or the entirety of their allotted duration, like seeds lying in the soil awaiting the right conditions. When the appropriate time and circumstances converge, fruition (udaya) occurs: the karmas mature and manifest as concrete experiences—pleasure and pain, clarity or obscuration of knowledge and perception, the shaping of body and status, the determination of lifespan, and the facilitation or obstruction of energy and initiative. This maturation is, in principle, inevitable once the karmic parameters have been set, though the scriptures also allow that intense spiritual effort can precipitate the experience of certain karmas earlier than their ordinary schedule. Thus, the timeline of karmic fruition is both law-governed and responsive to the soul’s evolving discipline and insight.

Shedding (nirjarā) represents the loosening and final disassociation of these karmic bonds, and it unfolds in two broad modes. In natural or automatic shedding (akāma nirjarā), karmas fall away when their predetermined duration is exhausted and their effects have been fully expressed; this is the passive completion of what was set in motion at the moment of bondage. In deliberate or intentional shedding (sākāma nirjarā), the aspirant undertakes austerities, repentance, meditation, and right conduct to weaken karmas and bring about their exhaustion before the end of their natural term. Related processes such as suppression (upaśama), destruction (kṣaya), and mixed states of partial suppression and destruction (kṣayopaśama) describe the nuanced ways in which karmas can be neutralized or rendered temporarily inoperative. Over long stretches of time and many lives, this rhythm of bondage, dormancy, fruition, and shedding continues, until through Right Faith, Right Knowledge, and Right Conduct, all eight classes of karmas are finally destroyed and no new bondage arises. At that point, the soul abides in its own pure nature, untouched by further karmic influx.