The begun action
And the begun action, if you ask? The action that, having brought this body forth, gives pleasure and pain here in this world, is the begun action, prārabdha. It is worn away by being lived through; the begun actions are spent only in the undergoing.
What is prārabdha (begun karma)? The karma that has produced this present body and now gives pleasure and pain in this world is prārabdha. It is exhausted only by being experienced; for prārabdha karma there is no end except through living it out.
- prārabdha-karma
Why is prārabdha the one kind of karma that knowledge does not cancel?
- Because it has already ripened into this body and is being spent as this life is lived
- Because it is the largest of the three stores and knowledge reaches only small amounts
- Because the knower chooses to keep it as a discipline
- Because only good karma can be cancelled, and prārabdha is mixed
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The karma already in flight
Of the three kinds of action, this is the one nearest at hand: the karma that has already come due. It did not stay a seed. It grew into this body, set this life in motion, and now it pays itself out as the pleasure and pain you meet from day to day. This is prārabdha, the begun action, the work that has already started.
The stored karma can be burned by knowledge, and the coming karma never settles on one who has seen through the doer. But the begun karma is past the point of cancelling. It has left the bow. An arrow once released does not stop because the archer has changed his mind; it travels until its force is spent. So with the body that knowledge wakes up in: it keeps going until the result that raised it is used up.
And it is used up in only one way, by being lived. There is no shortcut around it, no knowing that dissolves it, no merit that pays it off. It is worn away in the undergoing, hour by hour, until the body it raised is set down. The teaching says this plainly so that no one mistakes liberation for a life without weather. The knower still feels heat and cold, still meets gain and loss; what has changed is that he no longer takes any of it as happening to a self he must defend.
This is why the path does not end with the body falling away. Freedom is not the end of sensation. It is standing in the midst of the begun karma, letting it spend itself, and no longer being bound by it as it goes.
If the body you stand in is a result already in motion, what would it mean to stop fighting it and simply let it finish?
In the commentaries
Prārabdha is the portion of past action that has already ripened: it has brought this very body forth and set it going, and now it pays itself out as the pleasure and pain of this life. The other two stores can be touched: sañcita, the karma still held in store from past lives, is burned away by knowledge, and āgāmi, the karma the knower goes on doing after knowledge has dawned, never sticks once the doer is seen through. But prārabdha has already left the bow. It is not undone by knowing, only worn down by being lived. So the teaching does not promise the knower a painless body. It says exactly the opposite: the body that knowledge dawns in is itself a ripened result, and it runs its course until the result is spent. Liberation is not the body ceasing to feel; it is the one who knows no longer taking the feeling as his own.