Everyday in our lives we see tremendous inequalities of wealth, intelligence, talent and so on, seemingly caused by natural contingencies of birth. Natural contingencies such as taking birth with a silver spoon in mouth, someone with a beautiful voice, prodigal talents in linguistics or mathematics etc., there seems to be no explanation to this from a secular perspective, but to regard such inequalities in our lives as simply arbitrary and as a matter of natural lottery. But Buddhism has a different answer. It is from that answer which necessarily entails the question of free agency in human action. This blog entry is a cursory look into free will in Buddhism as I freely “chose” to go on a hunger strike against the heavy rain from going out to eat and write this.
Firstly, understanding the theory of karma is key in attempting to decipher the question of free will in Buddhism. Karma is the law of moral causation and is fundamental to Buddhism. It is the metaphysical account of justice that extends its continuum over many different lives of a sentient being. The subjective meta-life cosmic bank account of justice which is responsible for such inequalities in our lives. Unlike the Bodhisattvas, ordinary human beings have their accounts running against the law of financial accounting dictated by the Supreme Court of Buddhist Metaphysics, their credit accounts of unwholesome deeds are hugely unbalanced to their debit accounts of wholesome deeds, thus the human condition in samsara — ever suffering existence until the debt is paid and the accounts balanced in nirvana.
The fact that karmic latencies carry on as a subjective personal continuum that transmits over many lives is what seems to deprive free will in Buddhism. Because, it is those subjective previous karmic latencies that determine one’s actions and dictate present production of karma in stock for future lives. Buddhism holds that human beings are epistemically limited in grasping or keeping track of the causal chain of one’s actions, record keeping becomes meaningless for it forces into an infinite regression and Buddhism posits there is no beginning cause. Another issue of concern I won’t pursue here, may be in a later post. This cognitive closure is what is responsible for absence of free agency in moral terms in Buddhism. Often, karma becomes an object of blame as well as refuge in lives of ordinary human beings.
In some ways, the sheer absence of analysis of free will in Buddhism is due to its ontological assumptions of human condition and reality: no-self, impermanence, law of karma, samsara, reincarnation, nirvana and so on. But the notion of free will in Buddhism in its own terms is not an alien concept. It is in fact the goal of all beings, including non-humans (e.g. hungry ghosts) in the all realms of life. Nirvana or enlightenment is the state of complete freedom, liberated from all shackles of misconception, desire and hatred. Therefore, Bodhisattvas supposedly achieved full freedom and can act freely. Therefore, one can assume that those beings who are in the higher levels of steps to enlightenment may exercise and have attained relatively more freedom than ordinary beings.
Well, it follows then to hold that the position of free will in Buddhism is that of a compatiblist. Compatibilism is the standpoint which posits that free will is compatible with determinism –a co-existence of sort. To put it brutally short, the compatibilists posit that even if certain actions are predetermined, it doesn’t mean that all our choices and actions are unfree. For instance, I freely chose not to go out and eat when it was raining. I had the choice of going out with an umbrella, but I didn’t choose to. Nothing did deter my “will” to go out, the rain could only cause a change or determine in my “action” of going out with or without an umbrella, fast and slow etc..
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