When people talk about kamma, why do they tend to focus on the punishments and hardships coming from past kamma?

Question 9. When people talk about kamma, why do they tend to focus on the punishments and hardships coming from past kamma?

Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Because they ignore the positive role that present kamma can play in shaping your life. They think that past kamma is deterministic, leaving you helpless in the face of misfortune in the present moment — which is not how the Buddha taught kamma at all. In fact, when he introduced the topic of kamma to his listeners, he focused on how it empowers you in the present moment, at the same time allowing for qualities we all know to be good — like generosity and gratitude — to actually make sense [AN 10:165]. Here’s why:

• In terms of empowerment, the Buddha’s teachings on kamma and causality explain why we can develop skills that lead to the end of suffering. On the one hand, because certain actions tend to lead to certain results, we can learn from past actions the general pattern as to what would and wouldn’t work in leading to more happiness. If the relationship between actions and results were totally random, we couldn’t learn any skills at all. On the other hand, if past actions totally determined your present situation — including your present actions — you wouldn’t have the freedom to choose to learn a skill in the first place. So the Buddha’s combination of causal influences plus freedom of choice provides just the right conditions for why we can develop skills in our actions that will lead to the happiness we desire.

• As for the good qualities of the heart, if our actions were totally predetermined, generosity would be nothing special: People would give, not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice. There would be no reason to be grateful for the goodness that other people have done for us: They would have had no choice in the matter.

But because people do have some freedom of choice, the choice to be generous is something praiseworthy. It means that you are sensitive to the needs of others, and can restrain your own selfishness and greed. And when other people help us, they deserve our gratitude. Their help may have caused them hardships, but they went ahead and did it for us anyway out of the goodness of their hearts.

In fact, one of the first lessons the Buddha teaches about freedom of choice is in the practice of generosity. It’s when we first give a gift — not because we are told to, but because we want to — that we begin to realize that we don’t have to be driven by our selfishness and greed. To protect the sense of freedom around this act, he taught his monks not to put any pressure on their supporters to give. Instead, monks should teach people to give where they feel inspired. That’s how freedom of choice becomes real in people’s lives.

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Karma Q & A, a Study Guide"