शरीरवाङ्मनोभिर्यत्कर्म प्रारभते नरः।न्याय्यं वा विपरीतं वा पञ्चैते तस्य हेतवः॥
śarīra-vāṅ-manobhir yat karma prārabhate naraḥnyāyyaṃ vā viparītaṃ vā pañcaite tasya hetavaḥ
Word by word
The verse says
Whatever a person sets in motion with body, speech or mind, whether it is right or whether it is the opposite, these five are what bring it about.
In plain words
The rule is applied evenly, and that is the important word in the verse.
Right actions have five causes. Wrong actions have five causes. The same arithmetic covers both.
He does not give himself the usual exit, where good outcomes have many contributors and bad ones have a culprit. It is the same five either way.
Where you've felt this · in relationships
An argument between you and your brother-in-law at a family lunch gets ugly. Afterwards everyone agrees on who started it. But he had been awake since four, you had already had a bad call that morning, the room was too hot, someone else had raised the subject, and the two of you had a version of this conversation last year. One person got the blame.
Going deeper
Applying the same five causes to wrongdoing as to good work is where this gets uncomfortable, and it should not be softened into an excuse.
The claim is about causation, not about responsibility. Saying that five things produced an action is not saying nobody need answer for it. Courts, families and friendships all run on holding people to account, and nothing here suggests they should stop.
What it does say is that the story we tell afterwards is too simple in both directions. We overstate the villain in a bad outcome and overstate the hero in a good one, because single-cause stories are easier to hold.
The use of this is mostly in how you treat the person who did the thing, including when that person is you. Accurate accounting tends to produce less cruelty without producing less seriousness.