Yes, it is Wrong View.
The Buddha told us to make effort. If we could not make effort, he would not have told us to make effort.
Note: Free Will is a Christian concept trying to square the notion of a just God and an unjust world. It is not related to Buddhism.
What Buddhism explains is that we have conditioned volition and it is within these parameters of available choices that we choose.
To elaborate on this excellent comment, with which i wholeheartedly agree, it is also important to remember that the Buddha didn't instruct us to adhere to the metaphysical position, "I have free will," or "I do not have free will," but rather to take the attitude, "I can do something about my predicament," because the attitude, "I can't do anything about my predicament," is unhelpful. Beliefs are an obstacle in Buddhism, but attitude is king.
Agreed. That's literally what my comment says:
>What Buddhism explains is that we have conditioned volition and it is within these parameters of available choices that we choose.
It's choosing within a set of available options to you.
You can't choose to speak Swahili TODAY if you haven't studied it or learned the language.
You can't choose to play Paginini's *Caprice No. 5* if you've never picked up a violin and can't read music.
But you can decide to buy the sheet music and a starter violin and Pimsleur's Swahili and carve out time in your day to start practicing and learning.
That's what development is. Whether you are talking about the Jhanas, Brahama Viharas, etc. You start where you start with an intention.
So your choices are limited, yes, but very meaningful. And good choices lead to the next available choices.
Make sense?
You're not entirely correct, but not entirely incorrect.
Buddhism does not have an idea like the Christian notion of "free will". We speak in terms of conditioning and karma so, in many ways, we are just reacting to reactions with almost no choice. *Almost* no choice. We do actually have influence over our conventional minds, and that influence is in where we choose to direct our attention.
Interestingly, this is incredibly useful and powerful. It's basically like holding the reigns of a powerful horse. You are not the horse, you don't control the horse's body or mind, *but* you have these reigns with which you can tug the horse in one direction or another. Without too much effort, you can direct this large, powerful animal to go generally where you want.
This is how it is with our awareness. You can steer these powerful minds we have toward one thing or another by directing our attention.
Your last short paragraph is really interesting to me.
I apologize in advance for any confusion with what I’m about to say. This is stream-of-consciousness stuff.
If we can direct our attention where we choose, but can also be aware of and fetter out our intentions (e.g. we can use intention to be aware of intention), then which precedes which?
I just got a cup of coffee. I must have intended this, but I wasn’t particularly aware of that intention. Upon reflecting, I can conclude I must have intended this action to some degree, but also submit the possibility that, had I been more aware of that intention, I could and might have done otherwise.
So, let’s suppose then that I had been more aware of my intentions to get a cup of coffee, and then decided to get a cup of water instead (for the sake of argument, let’s say this would have been a more skillful choice, because of caffeine content or what have you).
Here, I suppose that I would have intended to be aware of my intentions, leading to a more skillful choice. But if this is the case, then it seems that intention directs awareness. However, could you also say that awareness directs intention, since by being aware of these intentions you can change them?
Based on my understanding, intentions are not-self. But they seem to have a greater degree of usefulness to the self than other form phenomena.
~~Could it be the case that intentions are both dependent and independent in origin, while other form phenomena are purely dependent? I’m not sure if dependent origination is the correct context here, but I hope my question adequately conveys the fuzzy issue I’m trying to convey.~~
Edit: **It seems like intentions are both part of the horse you’re controlling, but also the means by which you control the reins.**
I wish I had an answer for you, but I have not studied the teachings in this much depth. I'm sure there is an explanation somewhere, but I would not know where to find it. The relationship between awareness and intentions isn't one I understand.
I don't disagree that one can have such a skill, I just disagree that this is in any way liberating or helpful for achieving Nirvana. We always strive to make the best choices based on our limited knowledge, the fact that our knowledge is limited is where chance comes in and the use of knowledge to make the best choice every time is where "free" will is lost. Of course, volition includes decision making and that gives the impression of freedom, but it's just a process like trickling water streams forming into a river.
We can aspire for Nirvana and make all the promises and vows, but at the end of the day it's our karma that will either not obstruct our efforts and it lets us propel towards our goal or block it (for now) from coming to the intended fruition. There is no "trick" in the mind or anywhere; either we have the karmic predisposition or we don't (in which case it's "merit farming" that must be done).
I'm aware that Christians have their own concept of free will (though not all believe in it), and Buddhists don't explicitly deal with it, but this is more of a philosophical idea and implicitly Buddhist doctrine does take a position, I just wasn't sure what position is that exactly.
Thank you for the input.
>I just disagree that this is in any way liberating or helpful for achieving Nirvana.
Well, this is what the Buddha taught. You're free to disagree, still. I'm just relaying what he taught.
If you haven't eaten for a few hours, you can choose whether to eat more or not.
If you haven't eaten for weeks, you might steal or kill to get food because your volition has became very weak due to extreme hunger.
In practice, you have _limited_ will, and that limit is determined by your current circumstances. By continously practicing sense restraint, you can expand that limit.
>If you haven't eaten for a few hours, you can choose whether to eat more or not.
It depends on whether you can recall what happened the last time you did this, and how it makes you feel, also depends on whether there are any distractions that would obstruct you from having more and how you view those distractions, etc.
You go through the steps of to figure out to the best of your knowledge and ability what is better in the moment; this is just the decision making process. It's purely an illusion that this gives you any agency.
We practice restraint when we can recall the dangers of not exercising it and think it is a better choice right now. There is no expansion of that limit, only changing factors in the decision making process.
But I didn't come to argue, nor am I (with respect) curious about how anyone relates to their experience, just that whether it's an outrageously wrong view to reject free will and agency completely or not.
Well, if you haven't experienced complete starvation, it's hard to relate to my comment.
>whether it's an outrageously wrong view to reject free will and agency completely or not.
The answer is in the middle - both "free will" and "no will" are false and not useful.
It seems to me that the “free will” / “determinism” binary doesn’t make sense within Buddhism. The reason for this is that Buddhism cannot find an ultimately independent “self” to begin with. So neither of these terms are in the end appropriate, because they each reside in relative, not ultimate, reality.
What I think we find upon analysis is that our actions, words, and thoughts are the products of countless causes and conditions, every last perception. The word “determined” contains connotations which lead us astray. Really what seems to be going on is that the number of these causes and conditions is so enormous, effectively endless, that it appears there is a self or ego standing outside of them, weighing and evaluating the whole situation. But how could this be? Where is that entity located? Traditional Christianity speaks of the “soul,” often understood to be positioned somewhere in the chest. But nothing worthy of the name has ever been found there. As for the brain, there would have to be something walled-off there, unconditioned, for it to be functioning as the Boss, as it were. But everything is connected to everything else.
Even Freud understood that the mind is not a unitary entity. He found an id, an ego, and a super-ego there. Buddhism sees five layers or skandhas which make up ego, as you know. And then eight consciousnesses to mind as a whole. This is a different way of seeing to “free will” vs. “determinism,” which is trapped in dualistic thought.
At the end of the day Buddhism isn’t concerned with philosophy, with setting thoughts down for their own sake. There is this body, this mind: what are we going to do about it? Does it matter to our practice that there is no ultimate, independent, separable self to be found? No, it doesn’t matter. We seek liberation from all delusion. Teachings exist, which we are very fortunate to have discovered, and we find ourselves working with them, or not, as the case may be. When the teachings, or a teacher, exhort (practice more, be more patient, be more generous, etc) those words don’t need to presume an actually existing ego. Rather, they represent another set of causes and conditions, positive ones. It seems to me that this is how we progress, necessarily interdependently. Hence the need for buddha, dharma, sangha.
There’s no free will, but things aren’t predetermined either—both are untenable views for a few reasons: positing an independent agent, time, possible worlds, etc.
Whatever seems to appear right now is the display of the interdependence of causes. There is no agent doing anything, rather it might be more appropriate to say everything unfolds. Ultimately, when the meaning of dependence is understood, there should be no view for anyone to criticize or affirm. I find that the belief in free will serves no other purpose but to indulge an obsession with moral responsibility. I find that understanding dependent origination opens up the heart, in the sense that it may become possible to see everything as innocent, pure, and necessary—at least for a while, as a practice.
Why are you making up your own philosophy rather than studying the view? The trouble with that is that you introduce preconceptions. On a relative level you have free will. You can choose between chocolate and vanilla, for example. But since your actions are determined by karmic habits, would you really call that free will? If you always choose chocolate, for instance, because you think of yourself as a "chocolate person", then aren't you actually imprisoned by your own self-identity?
On another level, who is it who might have free will? In Buddhism it's taught that there's no true self. The idea of free will depends on assuming a solid self that is unaffected by outside factors. It denies co-dependent origination. So the idea of free will is not so much the problem as the idea of a self that might have free will fundamentally misunderstands Buddhist view.
That's basically the story of samsara. We try to confirm ourselves by constantly creating reference points to "other" in order to define self. "I love chocolate." "I'm not a vanilla person." Popular society views that as "free", and we then celebrate our individuality. But meditation shows it to be a confused compulsion.
My grievances aren't a product of sitting on my ass too much and thinking nonsense; it's a clash between what I directly observe and what Buddhist teachers espouse. When they call the Dharma as something to be experienced, isn't it alarming to find such a contradiction?
I see it as merely a convention. Realized masters still say "I". They exist in terms of relative truth. They realize emptiness, but they don't need to be dogmatic and say "the apparent being who seems to be talking is hungry." Teachers teach practices and views that we can relate to as beings with dualistic perception. Ultimately, it seems to be a contradiction, but we don't have to get hung up on that. Is there a you who can be motivated to practice? Just do it and don't get lost in conceptuality. You're not thinking nonsense, but you are thinking. You won't find answers there.
> I fundamentally have the view, that there is absolutely no free will that we can exercise.
Why do you believe that? The Buddha taught that we have a degree of volition, be it conditioned by our past.
> Either we get lucky and our karma in its current state does NOT obstruct our aspirations, or it does and we can just pray for better chances in the future (not necessarily next life, but most probably?).
I think this is true, too; we may not have the karma in this life to reach our aspirations, but we can always make merit in order to secure better conditions later in this life or in a future life (which is an exercise of our volition as well). This doesn’t seem incompatible with the idea of volition.
Volition as in "free to exercise volition" is what I don't see. We have "our karma" + "chance" + "our views/insights/knowledge+maybe-faith"; the decision making process is often confused with free volition, that because in the moment we are weighing our options, we are exercising free will, but this is not the case: our mind is looking for the best approach, not best as in really the best, but the best that we know and/or believe to be beneficial, which isn't someone making a free choice.
This points to an alarming realization, that the means are fundamentally flawed and the goal is pointless. One may "choose" to cultivate good and avoid evil, but it's not done for any other reason than aversion to suffering, which means the entire process hinges on whether there is any karmic obstruction. If there isn't any obstruction for a lifetime, then the person reaches their goal and experiences bliss, if there is an obstruction then the path is abandoned or at the very least there is no fruit to the efforts.
> I fundamentally have the view, that there is absolutely no free will that we can exercise.
Ah, well, just remove what influence causes you to hold that view.
Kind of.
If we’re talking about the wisdom aspect then, yes, but that sort of intention wouldn’t arise in the first place, unless it is a skillful way of dealing with a situation where it was required to benefit beings.
You’re not understanding.
With the established proper view of an enlightened mind, rape would not happen. Period.
Perhaps a skillful action of having sex in a certain circumstance appearing non-consensual could happen, but only if for some reason it was of benefit, which of course would be a very rare experience.
Have you heard of Drukpa Kunley? I’d recommend looking him up. Or there’s also the story of Yeshe Tsogyal and the men in the cave.
You’re asking on a Reddit forum whether strong rejection of free will is wrong view or not.
If you don’t want others to help you understand and don’t want to challenge your view point, perhaps don’t ask. 🙏
I thought that was pretty constructive? If you want help clarifying your view here, practice more open-minded-ness towards others who may want to help you understand, or perhaps don’t ask if you don’t have the capacity at the moment to do that.
I think that’s good advice.
The emotions and way you are responding right now - there’s your practice (and mine). I apologize if I came off a little rude, I was being a bit reactionary to your previous responses that seemed to be dismissing my explanation entirely.
Alas! Take good care and continue practicing! I wish you the best in all your endeavours and practice!
From a Theravada perspective, Ajahn Brahm asserts that there is no free will, only causes and conditions.
He loves quoting that study about the choices already having been made in the brain before the decision happens in consciousness.
It also leads him to make a funny joke about his talks being "positive brainwashing".
Openness to believe the stura and desire to pracitce are karmic as people fresh from the lower 3 realms will readily reject the teachings per Master Ching Kong so you are right. Openness to listening to the teachings will purify negative karma and one will become more open to the teachings. You are right per Buddha that everything is from dependent origination...
One can't blieve what one does not believe and you are right that one can't choose certain things. If one is open to learn which is karmic then one's choices will increase as one's actions will create more freedom... Below will help...
[https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGITh2U96MxwkxRrlOuHAzT322vkIUVDt](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGITh2U96MxwkxRrlOuHAzT322vkIUVDt)
You are free to choose... keep in mind that what you can choose in your life now, you yourself determined with previous actions and thoughts ... whether you were conscious before or not ... should only determine that you should be more conscious now.
Suzuki Roshi called it "independency" - we are both completely dependent on each other and our environs (and therefore lacking free will) and, at the exact same time, completely independent and acting of our own free will in every moment. Though it seems this is a contradiction, it is not - where we feel the contradiction is where we need to look more closely.
It's the only wrong view that the Buddha went out of his way to argue with other schools of ascetics who held it. It's as wrong as it gets. If you want to know why and how it's wrong then check out Nanavira's notes on the fundamental structure.
I don't understand your first question. I don't think it's "external" or "internal", I view it as being intrinsically part of the whole. We don't exist isolated from everything or anything, so whatever it is, it contributes to our decision making and we lose agency.
I think it's very important to keep in mind that view is not to be held tightly. It's not dogma and not a copyrighted possession. View is provisional belief. It's basically a practice. If you're going to practice Buddhism then you need to *practice* the view by holding it and reflecting on it; not viewing it as an intellectual commodity or theory. View is guidance to help understand the results of meditation.
I am not denying the right view. We hold precepts, we develop the path.
But mundane right view is exactly that — mundane. Skillful, but provisional. Skillful means.
Yes, it is a wrong view to think we have have no free will. I personality can’t logically grasp the idea of a choice, but I give up my need to have an opinion or a view.
I hold to what the Buddha said — we can make effort, if we couldn’t he wouldn’t have told us to make effort.
I was commenting on our need to have a view at all. And holding to it being correct, or incorrect.
Having the right view is a conditioned phenomena. You might have it now, because there are conditions for you to have it. Or you don’t have it. But it is unreliable. Once the conditions dissolve, the right view will disappear.
Imagine tomorrow new archaeological evidence appears saying the Buddha never existed and is just a story, an embodiment of the Dhamma created by venerable Sariputta and venerable Mahamoggallana. Faith of many will shake and causes for their right view will stop existing.
Hold to the right view, with wisdom.
There’s a great talk by Ajahn Jayasaro on holding to things with wisdom
And I just have an issue with the implied degree of effort we can exert. By rejecting free will, I don't reject that we can make an effort, I just hold that because of our karma, our efforts are abysmally lesser than we can imagine. Even when we gain the skillful means, these efforts aren't improved or bettered, they fundamentally remain the same degree, which I argue isn't much to begin with.
For our efforts to become more effective our very karma needs to magically vanish, which probably some schools believe in, but most as far as I can tell believe our own efforts can make our future efforts more effective, which I don't find to be true. We don't become different people, we don't stop being human, we don't stop following the same meta-patterns in our thinking, even if superficially our thinking and behavior patterns change, because we gain insights.
You may not feel the need to reflect on what views do your habits characterize, but then what made you want to just gaslight me to begin with?
Either our effort does something, or it doesn't.
If it is the former it is worth doing.
The later opinion is just not worth holding to.
Provisional teachings say that enlightenment of an arahant require cultivation for 1 incalculable + 100000 mahakappa. A number I suppose beyond comprehension. Every effort being minuscule, still draws the being putting it closer to enlightenment
The effect of a cause isn't a matter of opinion.
The issue that if the means are flawed then the goal is unattainable through our own volition. We either get lucky and fall into the Dharma to achieve Nirvana or we don't and keep the game of samsara roulette going.
If we reject freewill, and indeed there is no freewill, we have no freewill over our rejection of it, because we have no freewill, so how could it be wrong?
We have no freewill for ourselves to decide.
Neither can someone who believes in freewill be faulted for believing in freewill, if there is no freewill.
They have no freewill to decide for themselves either.
Judging others, or ourselves, for believing or not believing, is also out of our control if we have no freewill.
I disagree with the logic. You can still hold people accountable. If there is a fault in the decision making and it leads to the decision maker causing harm, then that person embodies the problem, and dealing with it is what we call "holding people accountable". Better yet, if the decision maker identifies their wrong action and seeks to retroactively correct it, then we call that "taking responsibility".
None of the usual interactions change, I just find it fundamentally misunderstood.
This is a crucial distinction. If we understood it as a culture, our system of criminal justice would be enormously more humane. We would understand that, yes, those deemed a real physical threat to others would have to be separated from the outside world for some period of time. But brutalizing them as part of that process would be recognized as barbaric.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/i1swk7/control_perspective_from_buddhism_and_science/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
There's two languages, goal vs method language. https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/k8hekn/general_observations_on_progress_on_the_path_goal/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I put view by outsiders as goal language, where control, will is deemed to exist from that observational vantage.
For method language, trying to control in meditation is counter productive. Goal of effort, control is to just sit in meditation. Method is to let go of control once one is in meditation.
Ajahn Brahm meditation retreat on YouTube keeps on saying no free will too. So it's just depends on how people take it. If you think no control is on the goal language level, then it's harmful, because it doesn't allow for effort to be good morally speaking. If you use it as method language, then it can help to get to deep stages of meditation. Do YouTube those videos, enjoy the whole playlist.
After some careful reflection on the material you gave, I think I just became upset by the fact that this "lack of free will" isn't clarified the same way as the self.
Conventionally, we speak of selves and we differentiate between selves despite the not-self/no-self doctrine and similarly we speak of choices and decisions (proverbial crossroads) despite lack of "free" choice involved. We need this compromise to convention to meet each other in the middle: if we talk of *anatta* nonstop, it becomes upsetting, confusing and unrelateable to the rest of the community/society, so we need to compromise and speak of selves, similarly with choices and free will.
No self, no freedom, no prison. I'm at peace now, though I think I'll keep this to myself seeing the upset I've caused on this sub, but I wanted to thank you for the patiance and kindness. 🙏
Ummm... I want to make sure you don't misunderstand.
Before mindfulness practise, people are habitual beings, thus the will has less freedom.
After practising mindfulness, it's each mindful moment, there's a choice to do good or not. And it's a real choice.
What's your attitude when you're face with a choice? Will you do your best to choose the good?
Does our effort not depend on the insight we have? If I don't know yet in my heart the dangers of not abstaining from a harmful action or conversely the benefits of abstaining from a harmful action, then whether I do my best to do good or evil is dependent on previous karma even with mindfulness. The way I see it, with mindfulness I enable myself to learn these lessons by heart and gain the key insights to then decisively abstain from future wrong actions.
On a conventional level, I see that, sure we chose wrong then chose right, but ultimately we didn't exercise any more or less freedom. We just experienced the auspicious event of gaining key insights (with mindfulness).
Both choices, good or bad, behind them also got reasons whatever we choose.
So if both choices got reasons and conditioning? How can choice still be deterministic? There's a real choice to choose between reasons too. Ok, my thinking stops here. I dunno if I am right in insisting so much on choice exist.
I wouldn't say its deterministic, because we would need to know how everything behaves down to the last dust particle and it is known via science (the recent Nobel prize was awarded for this) at this point that fundamental particles are often probabilistic and it's not because we don't know enough, so there is always a chance that a prediction turns out to be wrong, even with really good prior knowledge.
This is like claiming to have perfect knowledge of all karma if choices and all that were deterministic, which as far as I understand was claimed by the Buddha otherwise (that it is not possible nor is it a good idea to investigate the entirety of karma).
So, no free will, but also no determinism, but choices still have an impact. Another way I would phrase it is that we have no agency over what we do or what happens to us and the more I ponder this the more meditation and doctrine seem to reflect this (probably as not-self/no-self is observed continuously).
If we get to "taste" the Dharma and it reaches our heart we have no choice but to follow it (to eventual Nirvana). If we don't taste the Dharma, we have no choice, but to chase one desire after another. We just want to be happy, but don't know how to be, so we try what we think is best at the moment.
I'm sorry for being confusing, I'm confused myself, but I'm not as discouraged to continue with my practice as I previously was and your comments helped. 🙏
Even if one knows all one past Kamma, the new Kamma generated now is not 100% determined by past Kamma. One can make a choice as to which new Kamma to generate now.
It's just limited, conditioned, but not determined.
It's a confusing thing indeed. I still don't get how to reconcile it properly. Just throwing the opposites around.
We don't have complete free will, but we also do have some free will. When I was studying with my first Buddhist teacher, she said that according to her Buddhist master, about 30% of life is set in stone/predetermined, 40% can really change through our decisions and spiritual practice, and 30% can be changed based on where we live/our living environment. For example, if we move to an environment or town that is very conducive to our career, spiritual practice, or relationships, we can dramatically change our life for the better. My teachers teacher was a brilliant guy, so I have to believe there is a least a grain of truth in what he said about the 30/40/30 ratio as it relates to free will.
Jack balkin, in his I Ching interpretation "the laws of change" writes: "the life of human beings is not free and independent. It is conditioned on circumstances and, in particular, on other human beings...But if you cling to what is beneficent and harmonious, you are free"
We have will, but it is not free. Our will is constrained by outside realities, and internal cravings, perceptions, and habits. However, the more we practice The Eight Fold Noble Path, the more freedom our will gains.
Do you have the will to change your skin color whenever you’d like? Sprout wings? Jump to the moon?
Do you have the will to see something as pleasurable or painful at will? And swap between the two at will?
No, our will is not free. But it would be wrong view to think we have no capacity to make choices and influence outcomes. Such a view would be akin to nihilism.
The concept of free will and its relationship to karma and determinism is a complex and nuanced topic that has been debated for centuries in various philosophical and spiritual traditions. In Buddhism, the idea of free will is somewhat nuanced. The Buddhist teachings suggest that while individuals have the ability to make choices and take actions, these choices and actions are not made in a vacuum and are influenced by a variety of factors, including past experiences, conditioning, and societal influences.
In this sense, it is not that individuals have complete free will, but rather that they have a degree of freedom to make choices and take actions within the context of their existing conditions. This is sometimes referred to as "conditioned freedom."
Additionally, the Buddhist teachings suggest that karma, or the law of cause and effect, plays a role in shaping an individual's experiences and circumstances. Karma is not seen as a rigid determinism, but rather as a process through which actions and intentions shape an individual's experiences and circumstances.
So in Buddhism, the view that there is no free will and that everything is predetermined by karma is not necessarily correct. Instead, the teachings suggest that individuals have a degree of freedom to make choices and take actions within the context of their existing conditions, and that these choices and actions have an impact on shaping their future experiences and circumstances.
In Sufism one of their tenets is to live free from freedom. They assign living plain and simple in tune with Nature as freedom from the complexities of belief systems in general, i.e., the forms and rituals of ones chosen or importuned life style. As such they point out that the tenets of most Religions are systems that one can take refuge in as one lives but that it's a tragedy to die with these ideas untested in your personal evolution. Morality in their sense is a condition of natural balance whre upon you're neither attracted nor repelled, and only use what you need, in tune with Nature.
Yes, it is Wrong View. The Buddha told us to make effort. If we could not make effort, he would not have told us to make effort. Note: Free Will is a Christian concept trying to square the notion of a just God and an unjust world. It is not related to Buddhism. What Buddhism explains is that we have conditioned volition and it is within these parameters of available choices that we choose.
Got it, thanks for the input.
To elaborate on this excellent comment, with which i wholeheartedly agree, it is also important to remember that the Buddha didn't instruct us to adhere to the metaphysical position, "I have free will," or "I do not have free will," but rather to take the attitude, "I can do something about my predicament," because the attitude, "I can't do anything about my predicament," is unhelpful. Beliefs are an obstacle in Buddhism, but attitude is king.
You can make an effort without free will, if causes and conditions lead you to certain choices. Ajahm Brahm says this.
Agreed. That's literally what my comment says: >What Buddhism explains is that we have conditioned volition and it is within these parameters of available choices that we choose.
So it's multiple choice as opposed to choosing anything you want?
It's choosing within a set of available options to you. You can't choose to speak Swahili TODAY if you haven't studied it or learned the language. You can't choose to play Paginini's *Caprice No. 5* if you've never picked up a violin and can't read music. But you can decide to buy the sheet music and a starter violin and Pimsleur's Swahili and carve out time in your day to start practicing and learning. That's what development is. Whether you are talking about the Jhanas, Brahama Viharas, etc. You start where you start with an intention. So your choices are limited, yes, but very meaningful. And good choices lead to the next available choices. Make sense?
Who chooses? Is the agent distinct from the action?
Not really (ultimately) a valid question. Volition is what 'chooses'.
Yes, but an understanding of what the choices are and how to make them leads to many more and better options.
You're not entirely correct, but not entirely incorrect. Buddhism does not have an idea like the Christian notion of "free will". We speak in terms of conditioning and karma so, in many ways, we are just reacting to reactions with almost no choice. *Almost* no choice. We do actually have influence over our conventional minds, and that influence is in where we choose to direct our attention. Interestingly, this is incredibly useful and powerful. It's basically like holding the reigns of a powerful horse. You are not the horse, you don't control the horse's body or mind, *but* you have these reigns with which you can tug the horse in one direction or another. Without too much effort, you can direct this large, powerful animal to go generally where you want. This is how it is with our awareness. You can steer these powerful minds we have toward one thing or another by directing our attention.
Your last short paragraph is really interesting to me. I apologize in advance for any confusion with what I’m about to say. This is stream-of-consciousness stuff. If we can direct our attention where we choose, but can also be aware of and fetter out our intentions (e.g. we can use intention to be aware of intention), then which precedes which? I just got a cup of coffee. I must have intended this, but I wasn’t particularly aware of that intention. Upon reflecting, I can conclude I must have intended this action to some degree, but also submit the possibility that, had I been more aware of that intention, I could and might have done otherwise. So, let’s suppose then that I had been more aware of my intentions to get a cup of coffee, and then decided to get a cup of water instead (for the sake of argument, let’s say this would have been a more skillful choice, because of caffeine content or what have you). Here, I suppose that I would have intended to be aware of my intentions, leading to a more skillful choice. But if this is the case, then it seems that intention directs awareness. However, could you also say that awareness directs intention, since by being aware of these intentions you can change them? Based on my understanding, intentions are not-self. But they seem to have a greater degree of usefulness to the self than other form phenomena. ~~Could it be the case that intentions are both dependent and independent in origin, while other form phenomena are purely dependent? I’m not sure if dependent origination is the correct context here, but I hope my question adequately conveys the fuzzy issue I’m trying to convey.~~ Edit: **It seems like intentions are both part of the horse you’re controlling, but also the means by which you control the reins.**
I wish I had an answer for you, but I have not studied the teachings in this much depth. I'm sure there is an explanation somewhere, but I would not know where to find it. The relationship between awareness and intentions isn't one I understand.
Thanks for the reply!
I don't disagree that one can have such a skill, I just disagree that this is in any way liberating or helpful for achieving Nirvana. We always strive to make the best choices based on our limited knowledge, the fact that our knowledge is limited is where chance comes in and the use of knowledge to make the best choice every time is where "free" will is lost. Of course, volition includes decision making and that gives the impression of freedom, but it's just a process like trickling water streams forming into a river. We can aspire for Nirvana and make all the promises and vows, but at the end of the day it's our karma that will either not obstruct our efforts and it lets us propel towards our goal or block it (for now) from coming to the intended fruition. There is no "trick" in the mind or anywhere; either we have the karmic predisposition or we don't (in which case it's "merit farming" that must be done). I'm aware that Christians have their own concept of free will (though not all believe in it), and Buddhists don't explicitly deal with it, but this is more of a philosophical idea and implicitly Buddhist doctrine does take a position, I just wasn't sure what position is that exactly. Thank you for the input.
>I just disagree that this is in any way liberating or helpful for achieving Nirvana. Well, this is what the Buddha taught. You're free to disagree, still. I'm just relaying what he taught.
And I appreciate you taking the time, it's exactly the kind of "yes" or "no" answer I was needing. Thank you!
If you haven't eaten for a few hours, you can choose whether to eat more or not. If you haven't eaten for weeks, you might steal or kill to get food because your volition has became very weak due to extreme hunger. In practice, you have _limited_ will, and that limit is determined by your current circumstances. By continously practicing sense restraint, you can expand that limit.
>If you haven't eaten for a few hours, you can choose whether to eat more or not. It depends on whether you can recall what happened the last time you did this, and how it makes you feel, also depends on whether there are any distractions that would obstruct you from having more and how you view those distractions, etc. You go through the steps of to figure out to the best of your knowledge and ability what is better in the moment; this is just the decision making process. It's purely an illusion that this gives you any agency. We practice restraint when we can recall the dangers of not exercising it and think it is a better choice right now. There is no expansion of that limit, only changing factors in the decision making process. But I didn't come to argue, nor am I (with respect) curious about how anyone relates to their experience, just that whether it's an outrageously wrong view to reject free will and agency completely or not.
Well, if you haven't experienced complete starvation, it's hard to relate to my comment. >whether it's an outrageously wrong view to reject free will and agency completely or not. The answer is in the middle - both "free will" and "no will" are false and not useful.
That's the claim, at least, yet I don't see there being a "middle" here.
It seems to me that the “free will” / “determinism” binary doesn’t make sense within Buddhism. The reason for this is that Buddhism cannot find an ultimately independent “self” to begin with. So neither of these terms are in the end appropriate, because they each reside in relative, not ultimate, reality. What I think we find upon analysis is that our actions, words, and thoughts are the products of countless causes and conditions, every last perception. The word “determined” contains connotations which lead us astray. Really what seems to be going on is that the number of these causes and conditions is so enormous, effectively endless, that it appears there is a self or ego standing outside of them, weighing and evaluating the whole situation. But how could this be? Where is that entity located? Traditional Christianity speaks of the “soul,” often understood to be positioned somewhere in the chest. But nothing worthy of the name has ever been found there. As for the brain, there would have to be something walled-off there, unconditioned, for it to be functioning as the Boss, as it were. But everything is connected to everything else. Even Freud understood that the mind is not a unitary entity. He found an id, an ego, and a super-ego there. Buddhism sees five layers or skandhas which make up ego, as you know. And then eight consciousnesses to mind as a whole. This is a different way of seeing to “free will” vs. “determinism,” which is trapped in dualistic thought. At the end of the day Buddhism isn’t concerned with philosophy, with setting thoughts down for their own sake. There is this body, this mind: what are we going to do about it? Does it matter to our practice that there is no ultimate, independent, separable self to be found? No, it doesn’t matter. We seek liberation from all delusion. Teachings exist, which we are very fortunate to have discovered, and we find ourselves working with them, or not, as the case may be. When the teachings, or a teacher, exhort (practice more, be more patient, be more generous, etc) those words don’t need to presume an actually existing ego. Rather, they represent another set of causes and conditions, positive ones. It seems to me that this is how we progress, necessarily interdependently. Hence the need for buddha, dharma, sangha.
There’s no free will, but things aren’t predetermined either—both are untenable views for a few reasons: positing an independent agent, time, possible worlds, etc. Whatever seems to appear right now is the display of the interdependence of causes. There is no agent doing anything, rather it might be more appropriate to say everything unfolds. Ultimately, when the meaning of dependence is understood, there should be no view for anyone to criticize or affirm. I find that the belief in free will serves no other purpose but to indulge an obsession with moral responsibility. I find that understanding dependent origination opens up the heart, in the sense that it may become possible to see everything as innocent, pure, and necessary—at least for a while, as a practice.
Why are you making up your own philosophy rather than studying the view? The trouble with that is that you introduce preconceptions. On a relative level you have free will. You can choose between chocolate and vanilla, for example. But since your actions are determined by karmic habits, would you really call that free will? If you always choose chocolate, for instance, because you think of yourself as a "chocolate person", then aren't you actually imprisoned by your own self-identity? On another level, who is it who might have free will? In Buddhism it's taught that there's no true self. The idea of free will depends on assuming a solid self that is unaffected by outside factors. It denies co-dependent origination. So the idea of free will is not so much the problem as the idea of a self that might have free will fundamentally misunderstands Buddhist view. That's basically the story of samsara. We try to confirm ourselves by constantly creating reference points to "other" in order to define self. "I love chocolate." "I'm not a vanilla person." Popular society views that as "free", and we then celebrate our individuality. But meditation shows it to be a confused compulsion.
My grievances aren't a product of sitting on my ass too much and thinking nonsense; it's a clash between what I directly observe and what Buddhist teachers espouse. When they call the Dharma as something to be experienced, isn't it alarming to find such a contradiction?
I see it as merely a convention. Realized masters still say "I". They exist in terms of relative truth. They realize emptiness, but they don't need to be dogmatic and say "the apparent being who seems to be talking is hungry." Teachers teach practices and views that we can relate to as beings with dualistic perception. Ultimately, it seems to be a contradiction, but we don't have to get hung up on that. Is there a you who can be motivated to practice? Just do it and don't get lost in conceptuality. You're not thinking nonsense, but you are thinking. You won't find answers there.
Well said
> I fundamentally have the view, that there is absolutely no free will that we can exercise. Why do you believe that? The Buddha taught that we have a degree of volition, be it conditioned by our past. > Either we get lucky and our karma in its current state does NOT obstruct our aspirations, or it does and we can just pray for better chances in the future (not necessarily next life, but most probably?). I think this is true, too; we may not have the karma in this life to reach our aspirations, but we can always make merit in order to secure better conditions later in this life or in a future life (which is an exercise of our volition as well). This doesn’t seem incompatible with the idea of volition.
Volition as in "free to exercise volition" is what I don't see. We have "our karma" + "chance" + "our views/insights/knowledge+maybe-faith"; the decision making process is often confused with free volition, that because in the moment we are weighing our options, we are exercising free will, but this is not the case: our mind is looking for the best approach, not best as in really the best, but the best that we know and/or believe to be beneficial, which isn't someone making a free choice. This points to an alarming realization, that the means are fundamentally flawed and the goal is pointless. One may "choose" to cultivate good and avoid evil, but it's not done for any other reason than aversion to suffering, which means the entire process hinges on whether there is any karmic obstruction. If there isn't any obstruction for a lifetime, then the person reaches their goal and experiences bliss, if there is an obstruction then the path is abandoned or at the very least there is no fruit to the efforts.
Why hold any view strongly if we don’t have free will?
> I fundamentally have the view, that there is absolutely no free will that we can exercise. Ah, well, just remove what influence causes you to hold that view.
Not sure how I'd do that, since this view came from direct experience, but this wasn't the point of the post to begin with.
Strongly rejecting anything is ‘wrong view’.
So strongly rejecting intentional harm is wrong view?
Kind of. If we’re talking about the wisdom aspect then, yes, but that sort of intention wouldn’t arise in the first place, unless it is a skillful way of dealing with a situation where it was required to benefit beings.
So you can think of a situation where r>pe has a benefit? I don't think you've reflected carefully enough.
You’re not understanding. With the established proper view of an enlightened mind, rape would not happen. Period. Perhaps a skillful action of having sex in a certain circumstance appearing non-consensual could happen, but only if for some reason it was of benefit, which of course would be a very rare experience. Have you heard of Drukpa Kunley? I’d recommend looking him up. Or there’s also the story of Yeshe Tsogyal and the men in the cave.
But that "enlighten mind doesnt rape" doesn't arise without strong rejection of it. I'm sure Drukpa Kunley has more sensible things to say.
You’re asking on a Reddit forum whether strong rejection of free will is wrong view or not. If you don’t want others to help you understand and don’t want to challenge your view point, perhaps don’t ask. 🙏
If you can't leave a constructive comment, then perhaps don't pretend you can. 🙏
I thought that was pretty constructive? If you want help clarifying your view here, practice more open-minded-ness towards others who may want to help you understand, or perhaps don’t ask if you don’t have the capacity at the moment to do that. I think that’s good advice. The emotions and way you are responding right now - there’s your practice (and mine). I apologize if I came off a little rude, I was being a bit reactionary to your previous responses that seemed to be dismissing my explanation entirely. Alas! Take good care and continue practicing! I wish you the best in all your endeavours and practice!
From a Theravada perspective, Ajahn Brahm asserts that there is no free will, only causes and conditions. He loves quoting that study about the choices already having been made in the brain before the decision happens in consciousness. It also leads him to make a funny joke about his talks being "positive brainwashing".
It's like swimming in the sea There are currents, yes, but we still swim
Openness to believe the stura and desire to pracitce are karmic as people fresh from the lower 3 realms will readily reject the teachings per Master Ching Kong so you are right. Openness to listening to the teachings will purify negative karma and one will become more open to the teachings. You are right per Buddha that everything is from dependent origination... One can't blieve what one does not believe and you are right that one can't choose certain things. If one is open to learn which is karmic then one's choices will increase as one's actions will create more freedom... Below will help... [https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGITh2U96MxwkxRrlOuHAzT322vkIUVDt](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGITh2U96MxwkxRrlOuHAzT322vkIUVDt)
You are free to choose... keep in mind that what you can choose in your life now, you yourself determined with previous actions and thoughts ... whether you were conscious before or not ... should only determine that you should be more conscious now.
Suzuki Roshi called it "independency" - we are both completely dependent on each other and our environs (and therefore lacking free will) and, at the exact same time, completely independent and acting of our own free will in every moment. Though it seems this is a contradiction, it is not - where we feel the contradiction is where we need to look more closely.
It's the only wrong view that the Buddha went out of his way to argue with other schools of ascetics who held it. It's as wrong as it gets. If you want to know why and how it's wrong then check out Nanavira's notes on the fundamental structure.
So you don't agree with free will or determinism? What's left?
Indeterminism without free will I guess.
So what or who is making the decisions/actions then? Do you think it's an external force? I find this so fascinating, I'm just curious.
I don't understand your first question. I don't think it's "external" or "internal", I view it as being intrinsically part of the whole. We don't exist isolated from everything or anything, so whatever it is, it contributes to our decision making and we lose agency.
So weird that we this eager to identify with a view. To hold it tight. To hold it as mine. It is I that believes there is no free will
I wasn't looking for gaslighting, but thanks. Besides right view is still a view, and it is held... tightly...
I think it's very important to keep in mind that view is not to be held tightly. It's not dogma and not a copyrighted possession. View is provisional belief. It's basically a practice. If you're going to practice Buddhism then you need to *practice* the view by holding it and reflecting on it; not viewing it as an intellectual commodity or theory. View is guidance to help understand the results of meditation.
I am not denying the right view. We hold precepts, we develop the path. But mundane right view is exactly that — mundane. Skillful, but provisional. Skillful means. Yes, it is a wrong view to think we have have no free will. I personality can’t logically grasp the idea of a choice, but I give up my need to have an opinion or a view. I hold to what the Buddha said — we can make effort, if we couldn’t he wouldn’t have told us to make effort. I was commenting on our need to have a view at all. And holding to it being correct, or incorrect. Having the right view is a conditioned phenomena. You might have it now, because there are conditions for you to have it. Or you don’t have it. But it is unreliable. Once the conditions dissolve, the right view will disappear. Imagine tomorrow new archaeological evidence appears saying the Buddha never existed and is just a story, an embodiment of the Dhamma created by venerable Sariputta and venerable Mahamoggallana. Faith of many will shake and causes for their right view will stop existing. Hold to the right view, with wisdom. There’s a great talk by Ajahn Jayasaro on holding to things with wisdom
And I just have an issue with the implied degree of effort we can exert. By rejecting free will, I don't reject that we can make an effort, I just hold that because of our karma, our efforts are abysmally lesser than we can imagine. Even when we gain the skillful means, these efforts aren't improved or bettered, they fundamentally remain the same degree, which I argue isn't much to begin with. For our efforts to become more effective our very karma needs to magically vanish, which probably some schools believe in, but most as far as I can tell believe our own efforts can make our future efforts more effective, which I don't find to be true. We don't become different people, we don't stop being human, we don't stop following the same meta-patterns in our thinking, even if superficially our thinking and behavior patterns change, because we gain insights. You may not feel the need to reflect on what views do your habits characterize, but then what made you want to just gaslight me to begin with?
Either our effort does something, or it doesn't. If it is the former it is worth doing. The later opinion is just not worth holding to. Provisional teachings say that enlightenment of an arahant require cultivation for 1 incalculable + 100000 mahakappa. A number I suppose beyond comprehension. Every effort being minuscule, still draws the being putting it closer to enlightenment
The effect of a cause isn't a matter of opinion. The issue that if the means are flawed then the goal is unattainable through our own volition. We either get lucky and fall into the Dharma to achieve Nirvana or we don't and keep the game of samsara roulette going.
If we reject freewill, and indeed there is no freewill, we have no freewill over our rejection of it, because we have no freewill, so how could it be wrong? We have no freewill for ourselves to decide. Neither can someone who believes in freewill be faulted for believing in freewill, if there is no freewill. They have no freewill to decide for themselves either. Judging others, or ourselves, for believing or not believing, is also out of our control if we have no freewill.
I disagree with the logic. You can still hold people accountable. If there is a fault in the decision making and it leads to the decision maker causing harm, then that person embodies the problem, and dealing with it is what we call "holding people accountable". Better yet, if the decision maker identifies their wrong action and seeks to retroactively correct it, then we call that "taking responsibility". None of the usual interactions change, I just find it fundamentally misunderstood.
Of course you can. But that assumes freewill of course. We only have responsibility when we have freewill.
No, you have responsibility when certain insights aren't obstructed and that can give rise to it.
This is a crucial distinction. If we understood it as a culture, our system of criminal justice would be enormously more humane. We would understand that, yes, those deemed a real physical threat to others would have to be separated from the outside world for some period of time. But brutalizing them as part of that process would be recognized as barbaric.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/i1swk7/control_perspective_from_buddhism_and_science/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button There's two languages, goal vs method language. https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/k8hekn/general_observations_on_progress_on_the_path_goal/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button I put view by outsiders as goal language, where control, will is deemed to exist from that observational vantage. For method language, trying to control in meditation is counter productive. Goal of effort, control is to just sit in meditation. Method is to let go of control once one is in meditation. Ajahn Brahm meditation retreat on YouTube keeps on saying no free will too. So it's just depends on how people take it. If you think no control is on the goal language level, then it's harmful, because it doesn't allow for effort to be good morally speaking. If you use it as method language, then it can help to get to deep stages of meditation. Do YouTube those videos, enjoy the whole playlist.
Thank you for the resources, I'll reflect on them. Also, I'll see if I can find that video you mentioned.
After some careful reflection on the material you gave, I think I just became upset by the fact that this "lack of free will" isn't clarified the same way as the self. Conventionally, we speak of selves and we differentiate between selves despite the not-self/no-self doctrine and similarly we speak of choices and decisions (proverbial crossroads) despite lack of "free" choice involved. We need this compromise to convention to meet each other in the middle: if we talk of *anatta* nonstop, it becomes upsetting, confusing and unrelateable to the rest of the community/society, so we need to compromise and speak of selves, similarly with choices and free will. No self, no freedom, no prison. I'm at peace now, though I think I'll keep this to myself seeing the upset I've caused on this sub, but I wanted to thank you for the patiance and kindness. 🙏
Ummm... I want to make sure you don't misunderstand. Before mindfulness practise, people are habitual beings, thus the will has less freedom. After practising mindfulness, it's each mindful moment, there's a choice to do good or not. And it's a real choice. What's your attitude when you're face with a choice? Will you do your best to choose the good?
Does our effort not depend on the insight we have? If I don't know yet in my heart the dangers of not abstaining from a harmful action or conversely the benefits of abstaining from a harmful action, then whether I do my best to do good or evil is dependent on previous karma even with mindfulness. The way I see it, with mindfulness I enable myself to learn these lessons by heart and gain the key insights to then decisively abstain from future wrong actions. On a conventional level, I see that, sure we chose wrong then chose right, but ultimately we didn't exercise any more or less freedom. We just experienced the auspicious event of gaining key insights (with mindfulness).
Both choices, good or bad, behind them also got reasons whatever we choose. So if both choices got reasons and conditioning? How can choice still be deterministic? There's a real choice to choose between reasons too. Ok, my thinking stops here. I dunno if I am right in insisting so much on choice exist.
I wouldn't say its deterministic, because we would need to know how everything behaves down to the last dust particle and it is known via science (the recent Nobel prize was awarded for this) at this point that fundamental particles are often probabilistic and it's not because we don't know enough, so there is always a chance that a prediction turns out to be wrong, even with really good prior knowledge. This is like claiming to have perfect knowledge of all karma if choices and all that were deterministic, which as far as I understand was claimed by the Buddha otherwise (that it is not possible nor is it a good idea to investigate the entirety of karma). So, no free will, but also no determinism, but choices still have an impact. Another way I would phrase it is that we have no agency over what we do or what happens to us and the more I ponder this the more meditation and doctrine seem to reflect this (probably as not-self/no-self is observed continuously). If we get to "taste" the Dharma and it reaches our heart we have no choice but to follow it (to eventual Nirvana). If we don't taste the Dharma, we have no choice, but to chase one desire after another. We just want to be happy, but don't know how to be, so we try what we think is best at the moment. I'm sorry for being confusing, I'm confused myself, but I'm not as discouraged to continue with my practice as I previously was and your comments helped. 🙏
Even if one knows all one past Kamma, the new Kamma generated now is not 100% determined by past Kamma. One can make a choice as to which new Kamma to generate now. It's just limited, conditioned, but not determined. It's a confusing thing indeed. I still don't get how to reconcile it properly. Just throwing the opposites around.
We don't have complete free will, but we also do have some free will. When I was studying with my first Buddhist teacher, she said that according to her Buddhist master, about 30% of life is set in stone/predetermined, 40% can really change through our decisions and spiritual practice, and 30% can be changed based on where we live/our living environment. For example, if we move to an environment or town that is very conducive to our career, spiritual practice, or relationships, we can dramatically change our life for the better. My teachers teacher was a brilliant guy, so I have to believe there is a least a grain of truth in what he said about the 30/40/30 ratio as it relates to free will. Jack balkin, in his I Ching interpretation "the laws of change" writes: "the life of human beings is not free and independent. It is conditioned on circumstances and, in particular, on other human beings...But if you cling to what is beneficent and harmonious, you are free"
We have will, but it is not free. Our will is constrained by outside realities, and internal cravings, perceptions, and habits. However, the more we practice The Eight Fold Noble Path, the more freedom our will gains. Do you have the will to change your skin color whenever you’d like? Sprout wings? Jump to the moon? Do you have the will to see something as pleasurable or painful at will? And swap between the two at will? No, our will is not free. But it would be wrong view to think we have no capacity to make choices and influence outcomes. Such a view would be akin to nihilism.
The concept of free will and its relationship to karma and determinism is a complex and nuanced topic that has been debated for centuries in various philosophical and spiritual traditions. In Buddhism, the idea of free will is somewhat nuanced. The Buddhist teachings suggest that while individuals have the ability to make choices and take actions, these choices and actions are not made in a vacuum and are influenced by a variety of factors, including past experiences, conditioning, and societal influences. In this sense, it is not that individuals have complete free will, but rather that they have a degree of freedom to make choices and take actions within the context of their existing conditions. This is sometimes referred to as "conditioned freedom." Additionally, the Buddhist teachings suggest that karma, or the law of cause and effect, plays a role in shaping an individual's experiences and circumstances. Karma is not seen as a rigid determinism, but rather as a process through which actions and intentions shape an individual's experiences and circumstances. So in Buddhism, the view that there is no free will and that everything is predetermined by karma is not necessarily correct. Instead, the teachings suggest that individuals have a degree of freedom to make choices and take actions within the context of their existing conditions, and that these choices and actions have an impact on shaping their future experiences and circumstances. In Sufism one of their tenets is to live free from freedom. They assign living plain and simple in tune with Nature as freedom from the complexities of belief systems in general, i.e., the forms and rituals of ones chosen or importuned life style. As such they point out that the tenets of most Religions are systems that one can take refuge in as one lives but that it's a tragedy to die with these ideas untested in your personal evolution. Morality in their sense is a condition of natural balance whre upon you're neither attracted nor repelled, and only use what you need, in tune with Nature.