Unraveling the paradox of Free Will vs Determinism

It's hard to find the location of agency.  We're obviously free: we
"choose" to do things, and make better and worse decisions.  Our
choices are obviously not only determined by our free will: those
choices are typically under strong influences.  Let's look at this
academic puzzle from a new perspective.

While seeking spiritual relief, I find it soothing both to say "I am
not the do-er, Shiva is the do-er", and also to say "I am Shiva".
Under transitive rules of logic, that's appears to be a contradiction.
However, an inner sense of suffering, which depends on the burden of
self-identification as agent, is released through the first; and an
exalted sense of calm is achieved by the latter.  These are both
spiritual benefits.  And both are expressions of the release of the
ego.

Determinism is a curiously related question; I studied it in
Philosophy 1 in college and forgot about it since.  No scientist can
fail to be impressed by the influences on personal choice.  Yet we
humans do have both a burdening sense of self-agency and an
enlightening experience through abandoning that identification.  Is
the debate really about whether neurons in complex groups act
predictably?  I think when people talk about free will and
responsibility, they are suffering the pain of the false
identification as the do-er of one's actions.

Consider agency again, now through the lens of karma: action.  The
global echoes of action referred to by "Karma" are not just the
physical actions themselves but also the inner consequences of one's
actions on one's stance and personality, as well as the outer
consequences of the world's reaction to our actions.  While karma is
understood an influence on future actions and situations, yet our own
karma, being our own actions of the past, communicates no other
responsibility than our own: we are the agent of those actions.  So
it's a self-influencing cycle, of course, where much of how our
current choices are determined is through the consequences of our
previous choices, thus creating an infinite recurrence.  And yes, to a
degree, it creates a strong spiral of constraint on our current
choices.

The delightful path through this thicket is inwardly to consider
action to be non-action.  We need not stew in the echoes of our
actions; rather release ourselves from their consequences as early as
possible, and then rest in the experience of inner freedom.  While
such an experience might be relatively predictable based on a person's
temperament, number of years in a Buddhist monastery, etc.; still,
whatever their neural underpinnings may be which might determine the
event, it depends on inner choices, in moments of exalted
self-assuredness and inner power.  Delight, then.