The law of karma is not simply a tit-for-tat system of rewards and punishments but an organic system whereby the circumstances and even body and mind of beings are the fruits of karmic seeds that they themselves have sown and continue to sow as they are confronted by and then react to the causes and conditions of life from moment to moment and lifetime to lifetime. While the givens of present circumstances have been, at least partially, determined by past actions, in each moment beings are free to either reinforce old patterns or forge new ones for better or worse. It is with this freedom to determine present actions that beings can bind themselves more closely to unwholesome patterns of cause and effect, or cultivate wholesome patterns of cause and effect, or attempt to free themselves from being bound by such karmic patterns altogether.