The chicken or the egg? This question gets asked a lot in different forms. Do we actually have free will? A strong argument says that actually we don't. That every single decision you make is based on your conditioning. You can't make a single decision in your whole life that's not based on your own conditioning. So do you actually have free will to make a decision of your own? Or is that decision actually already predetermined by your conditioning? On the other side we tend to believe that we have choices. We tend to believe that when we go for lunch, we can choose what we're going to eat. We tend to believe it, but I'm not sure.
So I can't really answer this question other than to throw out the possibility that maybe we don't have free will. That maybe we are developing based on our Kamma in almost the same sort of way that a tree grows. If you have a tree growing in good soil, if it gets enough nourishment, if it doesn't get attacked by too many pests, then it just grows, flowers and fruits in its own time. It lives for many years and that's the nature of most trees. Aren't we very similar? I can't answer.
Do we progress in our practice only as far as our Kamma permits us? Kind of yes, kind of hmm... does the question actually apply, can we look at this question and get any real answers? Maybe we can't. One thing that is very common in the scriptures, when the Buddha was asked questions regarding things such as Kamma, he would say, he can't figure it out, and if you do try to figure it out you're going to go insane.
So there are some questions which maybe the books will give you some answers, maybe some other teachers will give you sort of answers. But there are a lot of questions that really, we can't get an answer that's satisfying, an answer that we can actually prove and hold on to one hundred percent. And in that way the question then becomes our Dukkha, if we want the answer to that question, and we keep asking this question but we can't get a satisfactory answer, then the question itself becomes our Dukkha.
And at some point we simply have to let go of the question and get on with the practice. We get on with looking at our aversion, we get on with looking at our greed, we get on with letting go of them, we get on with developing our Compassion/Lovingkindness. And these other questions just don't seem to matter so much because we're doing the practice, and we're developing, and we're seeing that it works. And that's more important than lots of these questions.