Tit for tat
Meaning: A blow or some other retaliation in return for an
injury from another.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/tit-for-tat.html
"Bhikkhus, for anyone who says, 'In whatever way a person makes
kamma, that is how it is experienced,' there is no living of the
holy life, there is no opportunity for the right ending of
suffering. But for anyone who says, 'When a person makes kamma to
be felt in such & such a way, that is how its result
(vipaka) is experienced,' there is the living of the holy life,
there is the opportunity for the right ending of stress."
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.099.than.html
... Another school, the Jains, accepted the Vedic premise that
one's actions shaped one's experience of the cosmos, but they
differed from the Vedas in the way they conceived of action. All
action, according to them, was a form of violence. The more violent
the act, the more it produced effluents, conceived as sticky
substances that bound the soul to the round of rebirth. Thus they
rejected the Vedic assertion that ritual sacrifice produced good
kamma, for the violence involved in killing the sacrificial animals
was actually a form of very sticky bad kamma. In their eyes, the
only way to true happiness was to try to escape the round of kamma
entirely. This was to be done by violence against themselves:
various forms of self-torture that were supposed to burn away the
effluents (asava), the "heat" (tapa) of pain being a sign that the
effluents were burning. At the same time, they tried to create as
little new kamma as possible. This practice would culminate in
total abstinence from physical action, resulting in suicide by
starvation, the theory being that if old kamma were completely
burned away, and no new kamma created, there would be no more
effluents to bind the soul to the cosmos. Thus the soul would be
released.
Despite the differences between the Vedic and Jain views of
action, they shared some important similarities: Both believed that
the physical performance of an action, rather than the mental
attitude behind it, determined its kammic result. And, both saw
kamma as acting under deterministic, linear laws. Kamma
performed in the present would not bear fruit until the future, and
the relationship between a particular action and its result was
predictable and fixed.
These divergent viewpoints on the nature of action formed the
backdrop for the Bodhisatta's quest for ultimate happiness. On the
one side stood the Ajivakas and Lokayatans, who insisted for
various reasons that human action was ineffective: either
non-existent, chaotic, or totally pre-determined. On the other side
stood the Vedic and Jain thinkers, who taught that physical action
was effective, but that it was subject to deterministic and linear
laws, and could not lead to true happiness beyond the round of
rebirth. The Buddha's position on kamma broke from both sides of
the issue, largely because he approached the question from a
radically new direction.
... To begin with, every act has repercussions in the present
moment together with reverberations extending into the future.
Depending on the intensity of the act, these reverberations can
last for a very short or a very long time. Thus every event takes
place in a context determined by the combined effects of past
events coming from a wide range in time, together with the effects
of present acts. These effects can intensify one another, can
coexist with little interaction, or can cancel one another out.
Thus, even though it is possible to predict that a certain type
of act will tend to give a certain type of result — for example,
acting on anger will lead to pain — there is no way to predict when
or where that result will make itself felt.
The complexity of the system is further enhanced by the fact
that both causal principles meet at the mind. Through its views and
intentions, the mind keeps both principles active. Through its
sensory powers, it is affected by the results of the causes it has
set in motion. This allows for the causal principles to feed back
into themselves, as the mind reacts to the results of its own
actions. These reactions can form positive feedback loops,
intensifying the original input and its results, much like the howl
in a speaker placed next to the microphone feeding into it. They
can also create negative feedback loops, counteracting the original
input, in the same way that a thermostat turns off a heater when
the temperature in a room is too high, and turns it on again when
it gets too low. Because the results of actions can be immediate,
and the mind can react to them immediately, these feedback loops
can sometimes quickly spin out of control; at other times, they may
provide skillful checks on one's behavior. For example, a man may
act out of anger, which gives him an immediate sense of dis-ease to
which he may react with further anger, thus creating a snowballing
effect. On the other hand, he may come to understand that the anger
is causing his dis-ease, and so immediately attempt to stop it.
However, there can also be times when the results of his past
actions may obscure his present dis-ease, so that he doesn't
immediately react to it at all. This means that, although
there are general patterns relating habitual acts to their results,
there is no set one-for-one, tit-for-tat,
relationship between a particular action and its
results. Instead, the results are determined by the entire
context of the act, shaped by the actions that preceded or followed
it, and by one's state of mind at the time of acting or
experiencing the result.
In this way, the combination of two causal principles —
influences from the past interacting with those in the immediate
present — accounts for the complexity of causal relationships on
the level of immediate experience. However, the combination of the
two principles also opens the possibility for finding a systematic
way to break the causal web. If causes and effects were
entirely linear, the cosmos would be totally deterministic, and
nothing could be done to escape from the machinations of the causal
process. If they were entirely synchronic, there would be no
relationship from one moment to the next, and all events would be
arbitrary. The web could break down totally or reform spontaneously
for no reason at all. However, with the two modes working together,
one can learn from causal patterns observed from the past and apply
one's insights to disentangling the same causal patterns acting in
the present. If one's insights are true, one can then gain freedom
from those patterns. This allows for escape from the cycle of kamma
altogether by developing kamma at a heightened level of skill by
pursuing the noble eightfold path.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/refuge.html#act