Karma is the result of our own doing

Whereas fate is decreed by whatever powers there be, Karma is the result of our own doing. Sins of omission are just as important karmically as sins of commission. What we ought to have done but did not do counts also as a karma-maker.

Although karma is clinched by what a man does, in fact, it is built up also by what he long thinks and strongly feels.One of the greatest misunderstandings of karma by its believers, and perhaps one of the chief hindrances to its acceptance by others, is the idea that it produces its effects only after very long periods of time. What you do today will come back to you in a future incarnation several centuries later; what you experience today is the result of what you did hundreds or even thousands of years ago .... We have only to open our eyes and look around us to see that everywhere men are getting now the results of what they have done in this same incarnation.

Events and environments are attracted to man partly according to what he is and does - that is, individual karma, partly according to what he needs and seeks or evolution, and partly according to what the society, race, or nation of which he is a member is, does, needs, and seeks - in other words, collective karma.