You’re a lot more right than a lot of others. Karma is consequence; however it is not cause-effect. The sages and priests of karma didn’t believe in cause-effect relationships. Things happened as an expression of the way the world was, the way all the forces were lined up, and so on. Westerners think infections cause a fever. The traditional Orient saw the fever as indicative of the state of the body, as cracks in heated tortoise shell or thrown yarrow stalks indicated the state of the universe. The way things were was not reducible to chains of cause-effect, but rather to the nature of the system. Nor were these things determinate in the mechanical nature of cause-effect. In pure brute causation, when the fuse is lit, the dynamite will explode. I can’t recall who said karma is fan-shaped, meaning you seem to have wide latitudes of choice at an earlier point, you have fewer later, none at the narrow end. Where you are on the fan-shape of your particular karma–the consequence of the way things were at your entry and the choices you made along the way–limits what you can reasonably do. In short, the state of the universe does not cause things, but enables somethings as it necessarily impedes others. You are free to ignore what the bowels of the chicken say about the state of the universe. But the choice puts you on the wrong side of the universe and has consequences, as all your choices will, for your karma. Having free will and making choices wasn’t necessarily a good thing in the traditinal orient. Better to attend to your dharma and have “good” karma.
