The unfortunate misunderstanding of Buddha's teaching on Karma & Free Will

Namaste friends!

Today I'd like to go over what I perceive to be a very widely held misunderstanding regarding the nature of reality: specifically, free will. Even many buddhists (for example, Thanissaro Bikkhu and the editor of Accesstoinsight.org, the largest archive of English translations of the Pali cannon online), do not seem to understand that free will does not exist.

First, a cautionary note: no free will does not mean you don't need to practice to awaken. Please see this post on pathologies of insight. If what is done does not matter in terms of future outcomes, then there is no dependent causation, everything must be random. That is nonsensical.

Now, let's remind ourselves what Buddha's primary teaching was: dependent origination, or in Pali, pratityasamutpada. Here is the Dalai Lama's etymological definition:

"Dependent-arising [origination, NOT arising!] is the general philosophy of all Buddhist systems even though many different interpretations are found among these systems. In Sanskrit the word for dependent-arising is pratityasamutpada. The word pratitya has three different meanings–meeting, relying, and depending–but all three, in terms of their basic import, mean dependence.Samutpada means arising. Hence, the meaning of pratityasamutpada is that which arises in dependence upon conditions, in reliance upon conditions, through the force of conditions. On a subtle level, it is explained as the main reason why phenomena are empty of inherent existence." Dalai Lama (1992) p.35, The Meaning of Life, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Wisdom

This would naturally lead one to see that free will is an illusion. However, that is a very hard pill for many to swallow! So instead they make logical leaps to say that Buddha never taught that free will does not exist. To support their positions, they point to various suttas in which the Buddha explains that it is a wrong view to suppose that past karma causes present conditions and thus we are unable to change our circumstances. He says if this were true, then there would be no need for practice in order to awaken.

Here's a quote from Thanissaro Bikkhu:

...one of the many things the Buddha discovered in the course of his awakening was that causality is not linear. The experience of the present is shaped both by actions in the present and by actions in the past. Actions in the present shape both the present and the future. The results of past and present actions continually interact. Thus there is always room for new input into the system, which gives scope for free will.^[1]

But this reasoning misses that the "new input" into the system is a result of previous inputs. There is no such thing as a "new input" which is outside of the web of causes & conditions. Also, although it may be true that the past is somehow shaped by the present and the future, it is not true in any practical sense. One could say that our thoughts about the past determine the past "for us." But regardless of what we think of the past, it still happened the way it happened to produce the present circumstances. If this were not the case, then it would make no sense to do practice to awaken, as Buddha said, because practicing a skill relies on the assumption of the linearity of time. If somehow it were true that our future abilities determined how we practiced to develop those abilities, it still would not matter in terms of the way we approach practice. We would still have to approach practice pragmatically with a linear perspective in order to have any hope of developing skills.

Indeed, in higher dimensions, I have seen that time is an illusion. However, people often see this and then think that it means practice is meaningless. Remember, you are reading this now in linear time, even if from a higher dimension everything happens all at once. To get to that transcendent perspective, we, paradoxically, have to take actions within this linear time dimension. Also, remember that just because time is an illusion does not mean that free will exists! It doesn't matter whether time is linear or not. If everything actually happens all at once, that still leaves no room for free will. If the present influences the past & future, that still leaves no room for free will.

Although free will does not exist (in fact it is not even a logical concept that can be said to either exist nor not exist), one still must follow the moral guidance of something like the eightfold path to increase their chances of waking up from the dream of free will & identity. If we just go about our daily lives as before, satisfying our selfish desires at the expense of others, we are unlikely gain equanimity & dispassion for the world. Without dispassion & equanimity there is not much chance for liberation from samsara. But the eightfold path is a mundane teaching (which can lead to better rebirths or conditions here), which then must be superseded by the transcendent teaching of no free will, nobody here, everything already perfect, in order for a "being" to be released from samsara. As Buddha said, all of his teachings eventually must be left at the shore in order to cross the great divide between samsara and nibbana (nirvana).

Oh, dispassion is another misunderstood word. Many people think that when I talk about dispassion, I'm saying you should be like a rock. No emotions. Then of course nobody will want to be near you.

Actually, whatever emotions come up are fine. The point is not to block emotions, but rather to see thru them & to realize they are not your emotions. You can still be loving to your family, but realize that this love is not yours, this family is not yours, nobody is here, and everything is always happening perfectly according to natural laws. Indeed, Buddha taught that one should develop compassion even as one develops dispassion. Compassion is needed on the path to letting go. And with letting go, one attains the great peace and freedom from which true transcendental love (agape, metta) and compassion (karuna) spring forth.

Lest you be unconvinced by "my" pedestrian brain, please peruse the excellent book, Free Will by neuroscientist & Buddhist practitioner Sam Harris (or check his youtube videos on the subject). His book Waking Up (free first chapter online) is also excellent and possibly a better use of your time, as it includes insights from his book on free will, as well as giving sage advice on awakening, while acknowledging that he himself has only had glimpses of it (as is the case for myself as well up to this point).

If you are wondering which awakened Buddhist masters support "my" position, the only one I know of for sure in my limited readings is Ajahn Brahm. He is quite explicit that you have no free choice. And he is one of the most highly regarded masters today in Theravada Buddhism. Strangely, Brahm only makes passing mention of this key point in his book, Meditation, Bliss, and Beyond, as he prefers to teach people to enter the states of meditative absorption known as jhana. I can see why he prefers jhana, although he admits it does not directly lead to liberation, but it certainly does remove doubt about the possibility of liberation. And I can vouch for his instructions to achieve it: following them, I achieved first jhana in a week (really one day of intense practice while I was sick). It is infinitely better than sex, as he advertises!

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Now, I will be the first to admit that my understanding of dependent origination is at a kindergarten level compared to the likes of Nagarjuna. So perhaps in some sense there is neither free will nor is everything determined by conditions (since according to Nagarjuna, conditions are dependently designated based upon results). If you would like to study Nagarjuna, and then get back to me on what you learn, I'd love to hear it.