Why do people say its all fate and destiny but one part of sanatana dharma says that each person is responsible for his own actions or karma?

Answer 1

You can leave the consequence of what you do to fate and destiny but not your duties. For eg. you can't say that according to destiny I am going to live for 100 years so I will stop feedng myself to test this fact. The first thing here is action: You eat. The consequence is beyond your control...whether you live for 100 yrs or not.

Similarly, when you fall sick, you cannot expect divine miracle to heal you. What you have to do is act: i.e. you seek treatment, but will the treatment work?..you have to leave it to fate and destiny.

There is another interesting way to look at this question. Does destiny drive actions?

For eg: if a child is born with a horoscope which states that he will be a criminal then it would imply he is destined to be a criminal. In such a case, we could say that circumstances would eventually lead him to the predestined path. That is, life is a big jigsaw puzzle. We may/ maynot know what the puzzle looks like but over course of the lifespan, the pieces will fall in place and the puzzle is revealed. So here it is believed that we are not entirely free to do our actions the way we want.

Often we come across situations in life, where we want to do something in life in one way but one thing or another will lead us to do it differently. Probably this is the doing of destiny.