"The law of karma goes a step further than the law of destiny and states that the future lies under the control of human beings since they have the capacity To change it by regulating their self-effort from now on. Thus, if in the past, one had chosen the ‘path of the pleasant’, one has to suffer the consequences of it in the present. However, one’s self-effort today may be exercised in choosing the ‘path of the good’. This self-effort combines with the past and will make the future better than what it is at present. The future, therefore, is a continuity of the past modified in the present. The freedom to modify the past and to create a new future, either for the better or for the worse, is purushartha or self-effort."