Gwendolin Kirchhoff puts it as a question: is the one thing the punishment for the other, wrapped in a legal fiction, or is it an inner drive to know? She asks her viewers whether, in their relationships, they have experienced remembering that they once stood on the other side themselves.

If karma means that deeds have consequences, then karma exists, says Gwendolin Kirchhoff: deeds definitely have consequences, the question is which ones. What they leave behind in the world can be recognised again or read.

How does karma show up in a family constellation?

In constellations, Gwendolin Kirchhoff sees that whatever lies in an ancestral line is repeated in one form or another, or that there are attempts to atone for it, an unconscious entanglement with it or a taking-on of burdens. For the generations that follow, it does not remain without consequence.

Karma Meaning: Punishment or an Inner Drive to Know?

Q: What does karma mean?

The German dictionary DWDS explains karma, a word of Old Indian origin, as an inescapable fate of retribution that, according to a person's good or bad deeds, leads to rebirth in a higher or lower existence. Gwendolin Kirchhoff describes karma as the connection between a deed and its consequences.

Q: Is karma the same as fate?

In the dictionary the two sit close together: the DWDS explains karma as a fate of retribution and lists Schicksal (fate) among its related terms. Asked whether fate should be equated with karma, Gwendolin Kirchhoff first answers with the question of what we understand by nature, and only afterwards turns to karma as an idea from India.

Q: What does karma mean in Buddhism?

In Buddhism, Gwendolin Kirchhoff says in her symposium on death, karma means not only the consequences of one's own actions but a field of action in which one is embedded. The Dhammapada uses the image of ripening fruit to describe the consequences of a deed.

Karma is the connection between a deed and its consequences: that is how Gwendolin Kirchhoff describes the word in a 2026 interview (cf. Interview with Gwendolin Kirchhoff, 2026, unpublished). In a conversation with Elisa Gratias for TransitionTV (2026) she calls karma “an awareness that surfaced in the Indian world” (Kirchhoff, 2026, TransitionTV, 01:26:00, translated from the German), and describes the question it raises: that our deeds have effects and that a stream of rebirths arises from them (cf. ibid., 01:26:08–01:26:20). Two minutes later she asks whether the one thing is the punishment for the other, or whether karma is “an inner drive to know” (ibid., 01:28:21–01:28:34).

#What does karma mean?

In the dictionary, karma means an inescapable fate of retribution. The German dictionary DWDS explains the word, which is of Old Indian origin, as a fate that, according to a person’s good or bad deeds, leads to rebirth in a higher or lower existence (cf. DWDS, n.d., “Karma”).

In his translation of the Sechzig Upanishad’s des Veda (Sixty Upanishads of the Veda, 1897), Paul Deussen renders the Sanskrit word karman as “Werk”, the work or deed. Summarising the teaching of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, he writes: “The work (karman) outlasts death”; knowledge, work and newly acquired experience, he says, bring forth a new earthly life in keeping with their nature (Deussen, 1897, introduction to Chândogya Upanishad 5.3–10, translated from the German). The Buddhist Dhammapada uses the image of ripening fruit to describe the consequences of a deed:

Even an evil man fares well So long as evil has not ripened; But once the evil fruit is ripe, Then the bad man fares badly.

(Dhammapada, verse 119, translated from Karl Eugen Neumann’s German, 1921)

In Buddhism, Gwendolin Kirchhoff says in her symposium “Nachdenken über den Tod” (Thinking about Death, 2024), karma means not only the consequences of one’s own actions but a field of action in which one is embedded and in which one takes part in the fullest sense (cf. Kirchhoff, 2024, Nachdenken über den Tod, 00:39:08–00:39:27). The idea that a stream of rebirths arises from the effects of our deeds is one she sees, on a certain level, within a single life too, as she says in the TransitionTV conversation: the mysteries of birth touch on something deeper that goes beyond the mere idea of reincarnation and concerns this life as well (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, TransitionTV, 01:26:20–01:26:44). Processes of initiation, she says, are also experienced as birth processes (cf. ibid., 01:26:44).

#Is karma punishment?

Whether karma is a punishment, Gwendolin Kirchhoff leaves as a question and sets a second one beside it. She starts from the question “What effects do our actions have?” (Kirchhoff, 2026, TransitionTV, 01:27:24, translated from the German) and asks her viewers about an experience: whether, when they experience certain things from others in a relationship, they remember having once stood on the other side themselves, and now see the matter from the other side (cf. ibid., 01:27:28–01:27:49). She asks how many of her viewers have within them a mind that sees a tendency in life to see things from more than one perspective (cf. ibid., 01:27:49–01:28:12), and then: “Is that karma? That things want to show themselves from both sides?” (ibid., 01:28:12) Whether the one thing is “the punishment for the other”, wrapped up in a “legal fiction”, or an inner drive to know, remains a question for her (ibid., 01:28:21–01:28:34).

The reading of karma as retribution is described by Arthur Schopenhauer in the first volume of The World as Will and Representation. The myth of the transmigration of souls, he writes, teaches “that all the sufferings one inflicts on other beings in life must be atoned for again in a following life on this very same world, through exactly the same sufferings” (Schopenhauer, 1859, § 63, translated from the German). For Schopenhauer this myth is the form in which a truth was communicated to the people, a truth that the Upanishads state directly in the formula tat twam asi, “This you are” (cf. ibid.).

#Is karma real?

If karma means that deeds have consequences, then karma exists, says Gwendolin Kirchhoff: “if we say there is karma, that is, deeds have consequences, they definitely do, the question is which consequences.” (Kirchhoff, 2026, TransitionTV, 01:29:22, translated from the German) She assumes that everything that has ever happened on the planet is happening again now, all at once, and appeals to the saying she attributes to King Solomon, that nothing new happens under the sun (cf. ibid., 01:29:37–01:29:57; Ecclesiastes 1:9). In this picture karma is like “lines in space” (ibid., 01:29:57) or like motivations that press towards particular actions and repeat themselves until something has been recognised and comes to its end (cf. ibid., 01:29:57–01:30:18). What she says straight afterwards about entanglement as an unquestioned space is in the entry on freedom.

She answers the question of where karma shows up herself, in her conversation with Laurens Dillmann (2026): “where does karma actually show up? It shows up in the field of relationship. Through how we have interacted, how we have thought and spoken.” (Kirchhoff, 2026, Durch den Nebel, 01:22:45, translated from the German)

#Can karma be recognised?

Karma can be recognised, according to Gwendolin Kirchhoff: what deeds leave behind in the world can be recognised again or read, or surfaces again as in a dream (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, TransitionTV, 01:29:30). In a 2026 interview she says: “The oracle is always also an insight into karma”, into the connection between a deed and its consequences (Interview with Gwendolin Kirchhoff, 2026, unpublished, translated from the German); what an oracle is for her is described in the entry on divination.

In the Manova conversation with Walter van Rossum and Stefan Weidner (2025) she points van Rossum to his ancestors and to how many of his thoughts are inherited; he is connected through these levels, she says, and a perception of these connections would be, in Kirchhoff’s words, perceiving the karmas, “the connections, the karmas” (Kirchhoff, 2025, Manova, 00:27:28, translated from the German; cf. 00:26:55–00:27:31). Earlier in the same conversation she says of yoga: “If I have access to an inner space of the world, then an ethical ideal also comes to me from this inner space.” (ibid., 00:10:16, translated from the German) Conduct is then not arbitrary, she says; it produces consequences that come back to the one who acts, and this includes slowing down in order to be able to foresee deed and consequence (cf. ibid., 00:10:27–00:10:52). The word karma does not occur in this passage; this entry places it beside her statements on karma because it is about deed and consequence.

#What remains in an ancestral line?

In an ancestral line, according to what Gwendolin Kirchhoff observes in constellations, nothing remains without consequence. Whatever lies there, whatever happened, surfaces again as in a dream or is repeated in one form or another, or there are attempts to atone for it, an unconscious entanglement with it or a taking-on of burdens; for the generations that follow, it does not remain without consequence (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, TransitionTV, 01:28:33–01:28:58). “Something happens with it, that much I can say.” (ibid., 01:28:58, translated from the German)

In her introduction to systemic family constellation (2024) she says that within a constellation one can experience, live through, feel and observe something like karma in practice, a word she herself puts in quotation marks; the consequences of actions, she says, become clearer in systemic constellation work than they otherwise can (cf. Kirchhoff, 2024, Systemisches Familienstellen, 00:21:39–00:22:19). How a constellation works is described in the entry on family constellation; what is passed on between generations, in the entry on transgenerational transmission; release from entanglement, in the one on entanglement and resolution.

#Is karma the same as fate?

In the dictionary, karma and fate sit close together: the DWDS explains karma as a fate of retribution and lists Schicksal (fate), Fatum and Fügung (dispensation) among its related terms (cf. DWDS, n.d., “Karma”). Elisa Gratias puts the question to Gwendolin Kirchhoff from the audience: some, she says, equate fate with karma, while for others the powers of fate lie in nature (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, TransitionTV, 01:20:55–01:21:18). Kirchhoff first answers with the question of what we regard as nature: when we in the West talk about nature, she has the feeling that we are basically talking about a head of cattle from a herd, while the ancient Chinese understood nature as a landscape with a basic polarity (cf. ibid., 01:21:21–01:23:44). Only afterwards does she turn to karma as an idea from India (cf. ibid., 01:25:59).

In a 2023 conversation, Jochen Kirchhoff calls the question of whether one is free, or only carried along in a current, the karma question in the sense of Asian thought, and describes it as the question of determinism. Gwendolin Kirchhoff answers with Spinoza: one is free only when one’s own self connects, in a higher nature, with the divine will; otherwise one is conditioned by other wills, impulses and influences (cf. Kirchhoff & Kirchhoff, 2023, Der Weltenwille, 00:17:31–00:18:27). Acting in harmony with the great whole is the subject of the entry on dharma.

#Sources

Deussen, P. (transl.) (1897). Sechzig Upanishad’s des Veda. Introduction to Chândogya Upanishad 5, Khanda 3–10. Quoted from the text at zeno.org.
Dhammapadam (1921). Der Wahrheitpfad. Translated by Karl Eugen Neumann, 2nd edition. Verse 119.
DWDS (n.d.). “Karma”. Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. https://www.dwds.de/wb/Karma
Interview with Gwendolin Kirchhoff, 2026 (unpublished).
Kirchhoff, G. & Gratias, E. (2026). «Wie frei sind wir wirklich?» Gwendolin Kirchhoff über Fremdbestimmung, Wut & die Macht der Gedanken [Video, German]. TransitionTV, YouTube, 10 October 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTW7B162RPs
Kirchhoff, G. & Dillmann, L. (2026). „Folge der Schönheit“ - Philosophin Gwendolin Kirchhoff über Beziehungen als Weg aus dem Nebel [Video, German]. Durch den Nebel, YouTube, 30 August 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNxKGk3bXeA
Kirchhoff, G., van Rossum, W. & Weidner, S. (2025). Jenseits des Materiellen — Yoga als Zugang zum Weltinnenraum [Video, German]. Manova, YouTube, 14 November 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQPq3Gh1bwg
Kirchhoff, G. (2024). Nachdenken über den Tod (1) – SYMPOSIUM [Video, German]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSltRJB88jg
Kirchhoff, G. (2024). Systemisches Familienstellen (nach Bert Hellinger), eine Einführung – SYMPOSIUM [Video, German]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwd1x1RzNoE
Kirchhoff, J. & Kirchhoff, G. (2023). Der Weltenwille als Baustoff und Lebenstrieb des Kosmos [Video, German]. Jochen Kirchhoff – In Memoriam, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPoHkJ_bEqQ
Ecclesiastes (Kohelet, Der Prediger Salomo) 1:9. Luther Bible 1912.
Schopenhauer, A. (1859). Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. 1, 3rd edition, § 63. Quoted from the text at zeno.org.

Karma