Why Choice Matters

The more I consider Buddhist teachings, the more I reflect on what Buddha had originally exhorted to his early disciples: try for yourself and see for yourself. If my interpretation is correct, I don't think that the Buddha was saying that a person has to do something in order to get to heaven or avoid hell. Rather, he seemed to have been revealing something as basic as a law of life: yes, you can continue to live and suffer as you do, but there are bound to be consequences. If the Buddha were advocating an experimental attitude of 'see for yourself', however, is this negating the idea that karma is an inevitable result of previous conditions? Where does choice play into the idea that karma is a result of previous conditions.
    Well, first, I believe it may be oversimplifying to say that karma is inevitable. This view is limiting because it closes off the possibility that we can influence the view of the past by what we do today. Even though something has 'already happened', that already happened is existing in mind right now. Therefore, I can't really say that anything is 'already done', as though I have no say in how it might look from this current perspective. Because time is in this continuous stream of unfolding, it makes little sense to be deterministic about it.
   But the second is about choice. I sometimes wonder if people might start to take Buddha's teachings as dogma, when they see karma as some kind of physical law, much akin to gravity. Again, I think this is too literal a reading of Buddhism, and it can lead to a very reifying attitude: "well, I need to do this because Buddha or someone else said so, and what they say must be true, so therefore I should follow it." Ironically, this kind of thinking is exactly what the Buddha was warning his disciples not to do. Why? Couldn't the Buddha have simply set up a shrine and said "Just follow me, my way is the right way?" Again, however, this idea is based on a distorted notion of cause and effect. If things are statically related to each other, then Buddha could very well have simply asked people to accept his views on a combination of faith and trust. But his teachings mitigate against this kind of trust, because the Buddha was emphasizing the impermanent nature of all dharmas. According to this idea, there is simply no resting place or position to say, 'this is it', because one's awareness is inseparable from the 'this'. It is both a part of and somehow not imprisoned by the 'this'. That being said, it is a mistake to think that karma is a law that is external to mind or attitudes. And it would be simply dogmatic to say that one has no choice in how to view the teachings on karma, or its results.