Just a reminder of certain things we discussed before:
http://www.londonbuddhistvihara.org/lectures_week/WEEK5.HTM
There is a widespread misunderstanding that kamma carries with it
the idea of predestination or fatalism, that since everything is
conditioned by kamma, there is nothing we can do to influence the
course of our lives. This is not so. If everything down to the
minutest details were preconditioned, either by kamma or by the
physical laws of the universe, there would be no room for the
functioning of freewill. It would be impossible for us to free
ourselves from the mechanism of cause and effect and to attain
Nibbana.
"If one says that in whatever way
a person performs a kammic action, in that very same way he will
experience the result - in that case there will be no (possibility
for a) religious life and no opportunity would appear for the
complete ending of suffering. But if one says that a person who
performs a kammic action (with a result) that is variably
experienceable, will reap its results accordingly - in that case
there will be (a possibility for) a religious life and an
opportunity for making a complete end of suffering."
(A.3:110)
Kammic laws state tendencies, not inevitable consequences. It is
true that once an act has been performed, we cannot altogether
avoid its consequences, BUT it is how we react to what we
experience that determines whether we shall create wholesome or
unwholesome kammic results in the future. A man born in poverty,
squalor, etc. may be in an environment conducive to crime, but he
may not commit any. A man born into wealth, etc. may commit theft.
It is how we act in the present which will determine what we shall
experience afterwards; we make our own heavens and we make our own
hells. This is the very opposite of predestination.
