Self

This ant is rather consumed with the Sisyphean task of improving her "Self" in a deliriously-confusing and rapidly-evaporating world of pheromones. She eagerly follows counterclockwise along a sparse scent trail laid by what she assumes to be some other, more successful ant. Alas, there is no other ant leading the way -- our focal ant is reliving her own past experiments in walking. Locally, the ant's walkway appears to have two mutually-exclusive sides upon which to rest. However, conceptualizing of the entire Möbius walkway in her efficient brain, the ant realizes that any disagreement to be had about the path must stem from discordant reductionism, from two complementarily-limited ways of looking at the same one-sided system. 

Consider that the trail pheromones are the traces of our worldly works, that the walkway's meander is the infinite rebirthing cycle of Samsara, and that the inevitable distortions of pheromonal phenomenology are Maya. The differences between the trail that we laid yesterday and the trail that we re-walk today are not "due to" Karma, this process is Karma itself. Karma is not a future outcome, a distant Something that you could ask for an extension from. Karma is the present realization that you realizing your present realization can only be due to past actions, themselves only due to past actions.