With respect to how it manifests in our lives, there are four kinds of karma. First is ripening or fruition karma; next is resultant karma; then there is remaining karma or karma that has not come to a conclusion yet; and finally, there is simultaneous karma, in which the result immediately occurs with the action. Where do we stand in relationship to these dimensions of karma? At any given moment in our life we are really not sure for example, whether we are experiencing resultant karma. We are not sure to what extent we are creating new karma, whether our actions have any lasting results or residues, nor do we understand simultaneous karma. I will not try to go into all of the four kinds of karma, but for our purpose today fruition karma is most important.

Now we will talk about fruition karma, or the ripening of karma. With karma-as-intention the karma created is not as great as the karma from actually doing it. On the other hand once our thought turns into karma-as-intention-manifested, the real word repercussions will be greater and karmic retribution from that action will also be greater .'Retribution 'in relation to karma carries a neutral meaning, as it depends on the kinds of cause and the kind of results.

Karma can ripen in a three ways: through thought ,through speech, and through action. Karma-as-intention that does not ripen into karma-as-intention-manifested is ‘concealed karma,’ since it only exists in one’s mind .Opposed to this is ‘manifest karma,’ which refer to karma-as-intention plus speech and/or action. Relating this to intention, we see that karma can ripen as intention only, intention plus speech, and intention plus action.