A while ago I was at a dinner party (read: playing a drunken game of dice at a table of foul-mouthed ladies) when the concept of karma came to the floor (as did several ounces of pita chip pieces, a glass of 3 buck chuck, and half a mini brownie).  The following summarizes our arguments, which were repeated with little variation for the duration of the "discussion."

Artist: I think karma means we have limited choices.  Like a choose-your-own-adventure novel.  Hey, I rolled 1000 again!
Social Worker: People aren't born with the same opportunities!  We can't be blamed for our failure to thrive in this unjust  world!  But we can't give up thinking it's fate!  Or the bootstraps thing!  Karma is no excuse!  I'm confused and upset!  Down with the establishment!  And whatever you're talking about!  Is it my turn?
Friend of Friend: I have to roll 3 of a kind in the SAME throw now?  This is bull.  What?  Who cares.
Pastry Chef: Of course I have free will.  I can do whatever I want.  Try to stop me.  Who needs another drink? 
Yoga Teacher: It's just cause and effect, ease down.  No, nothing.  Yeah, again.  Next time maybe I'll meld.

As much as I love to tangle about choice and freedom and fate, I think karma is actually pretty simple.  The way I see it, karma, which means "action," refers to nothing more than the causal chain of events in one's life, and yes, past lives.  And here's a word on past lives, for the squeamish.  Do you think you were made out of nothing from out of nowhere, suddenly and without warning?  Come on.  Everything is made out of something.  Einstein was on that game years ago.  You have parents, ancestors, a family tree that reaches further back than anyone would care to trace.  And because you have those things, you do not arrive on planet Earth with a clean slate.  Sorry, folks.  Doesn't happen.  Not for anyone.  Thanks to my pre-birth backstory, I came here with blue eyes, impressive external hip rotation, hazardous menses, wicked headaches and a fervent preoccupation with unanswerable questions. 

The reason why is nothing more than cause and effect.  My genes are a certain way, so my body and mind are a certain way.  Genes aren't everything, though, and for all that stuff modern science hasn't yet decoded, an answer could be karma.  Karma is simply the genealogy of actions.  Folks say things like, "karma means you're getting what you deserve."  I've had a hard time swallowing the concept of "deserving," personally, because firstly, it invites a hint of shame when cause and effect will do fine without it, and secondly, how the hell can deservingness be calculated?  Back when I was a Christian, I got very much into Jesus because it felt right to me that I was deserving of eternal punishment, and simultaneously (because of Jesus Christ's redemptive act) totally pure and cleansed of all guilt.  It was an explanation for a phenomenon that baffled me.  (Still does. I still feel both evil and holy.  It isn't just that this seems right to me, it's that I actually perceive it with some amount of visceral detail.)  There were a few reasons why I left the Christian church, but the main idea was this: I don't think anyone (not even Jesus) can ultimately take the effect of my causes for me, and if I am conflicted about feeling both evil and holy, maybe it's because those things don't exist in the way I'm gripping them.

A tangent on evil: I'm not going to be one of those rainbow light hippies who say that there is no evil in the world.  But I will say that I don't think it is a distinct force which opposes good.  I think "the force" is probably a scale here, like light and heat.  Dark and cold are the names we've given to low amounts of light and heat.  I might say Evil is the name for a very low amount of Good.  It could be said the opposite way, actually, that Good is a low amount of Evil, but this is a glass full or empty, thing.  My point is that, in a half glass of water, the water and lack of water aren't at war with each other, they simply co-exist in proximity, at a particular and changeable proportion.  As it follows, I harbor both Good and Lack of Good, shaken and stirred in the glass that is me, at a particular and changeable proportion.

Back to the matter at hand.  People get all jacked up about karma for two reasons that I can see.  1) They are afraid this means they are screwed, choice-wise. (Agency)  2) They are afraid this means they have to clean up a mess they don't remember making.  (Justice)  As for forgotten mess-making: too bad.  Those bottles aren't going to recycle themselves, don't matter what you remember.  As for choice, one of the things I carried with me from Calvinism - and by the way, I use Christian references because its the language I have.  I'd happily use others, but I wouldn't know what the heck I am talking about, and I am, let's face it, already out on a limb here - is the idea that time is an important factor when we are ruling out variables.  We perceive that we have choice because we live inside of time.  We're total chumps to it.  If our awareness reached outside of time, we might not perceive choice at all.  It may look like a fixed causal chain so meticulously specific that there were never any options at all.  Now, sure, it does no one any good to look at things that way.  But it's interesting, isn't it?

Sometimes I think I might not have any choice at all about the way things go.  But thankfully, if I avoid excessive memory, prophecy, astral travel or pyschoactive drugs, I will continue to live inside of the (infintely liberating) confines of time, strapped inside the tiniest now moment making choices like it's going out of style.  I can say, "I could have avoided the use of a cliche at the end of the previous sentence," for example.  And I could have.  But there the sentence is.  There is an outcome.  That we know.  Is there only one outcome?  That we do not really know.  So, there are a lot of points at which these ideas break down.  Here is what I'm going to say, I think.  My point.  For now.  My point is this: we are so extremely limited by our perception, we shouldn't get too worked up about it.  Karma is the name for the cause and effect of our actions.  It doesn't mean we are slaves to anything.  Here we are!  Making choices!  Dealing with other people's choices!  Bitching about it!  And who can stop us!

For me, karma means I can think before I act: "What chain of events am I about to fire off here?"  It also means I can say to myself, when life seems a disaster-mess that needs a superhero, "this is neither chance, magic nor mystery and shan't be cured by such things."  Chance is a whole nother thing, actually.  It's the thing that had me rolling zero for most of the aforementioned game of dice, in spite of my furvent prayers to meld.  It's a thing that makes all sense and no sense.  A very misunderstood thing.  A thing I will not be tackling today.  I should point out that I am not saying I believe the concept of karma is "true" or "a real thing."  (We don't know whether the id and ego actually exist, but we use them to understand the mind, right?)  Like everything I yammer on about, it is just an idea.  It is a way of looking at things.  And it is a way of looking at things that I find helpful enough, for the moment.  I promise we won't talk about it in class.