A predetermined mind

"All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else."
- The Buddha

Humans live with the prospect of death from the time of birth; but the mind of man hopes that death will not come in a hurry because he has so much to accomplish.

Thus, it is possible to say that our minds are predetermined to the extent of our beliefs and hopes. A predetermined mind means that its form or nature is, decided by previous events or by people rather than by chance. Yet, we know that a man can do as he will, but not will as he will.

The Buddha postulated that human experience is but a reflection and manifestation of universal law - not human "will"; that humans must adhere to the imperatives of natural laws - like gravity and magnetism - which harmoniously rule everywhere without exception.

However, despite this deterministic philosophy and the science of it, man realised that people's belief in free will is pragmatically necessary for a civilised society; that it causes them to take responsibility for their actions, and enables society to regulate such actions.

So we are compelled to act as if free will existed, even if it did not; because if we wish to live in a civilised society we must act responsibly; despite the fact that in the mind, there is no absolute free will.

The mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.

Hence, free will is a myth in making. However, if free will is a fiction, does this then mean that, philosophically, a murderer is not responsible for his crime?

Values

That question will necessarily bring us to the question of values. The foundation of all human values is morality; and the destiny of civilised humanity depends more than ever on the moral forces it is capable of generating. However, acting morally implies human freedom of choice.

If so, how can we reconcile the passion for social justice and morality with this deterministic ideology that human beings, in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free; but are as causally bound as the stars in the cosmos are: in their motions, their births, and demise?

The truth is that there is a law made by man that is essential for society and keeps changing as society evolves; and there is the law of nature, the unchanging cosmic law that governs everything.

It is when we are able to come free of our predetermined mind and see this truth, we become truly free. I quote: "The soul is beyond all laws, physical, mental, or moral.

"Within law is bondage; beyond law is freedom. It is also true that freedom is of the nature of the soul, it is its birthright: that real freedom of the soul shines through veils of matter in the form of the apparent freedom of man.

"There cannot be any such thing as free will; the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation. Everything that we know, or can possibly know, must be subject to causation; and that which obeys the law of causation, cannot be free. The only way to come out of bondage is to go beyond the limitations of law, to go beyond causation by self-identifying with soul or spirit... to attain freedom while living." - Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga.

What Vivekananda meant by "soul" is that: rational, emotional, and volitional faculties in man; and not any of the several other meanings that the word connotes.

Human

The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet that is orbiting around a decidedly average star in the outer suburb of one among a couple of hundred billion or more galaxies.

We are so insignificant that I cannot believe the whole universe exists for our benefit. That would be like saying that you would disappear if I closed my eyes. For millions of years, we lived just like the animals. Then something very wonderful must have happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. I do not know, and for that matter, no one knows what it was; but because of it, we learned to talk and we learned to listen.

Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible.

Our greatest achievements have come about by talking, as is our greatest failures by not talking. Kind words, kind looks, kind acts and warm handshakes, these are means of grace when men in trouble are fighting their unseen battles with their predetermined minds. Yet how few men realize this? It does not have to be like this.

Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded.

All we need to do is make sure we keep talking to one another: kindly, compassionately, lovingly; as it was and is, meant to be. But the predetermined mind of man is unable to attain this because it is full of moral and religious bias.

The unthinking man, or better still, the man who thinks that he thinks, and that includes ninety percent of humanity, is not interested in truth and reality - the source of wisdom. So much so, all the wisest men have thought our ignorance incurable, conceiving it to arise from the natural dullness and limitation of our faculties. That is the reason why we do not see the interdependence and inseparability of this cosmic whole: the different manifestations of the same ultimate reality.

Space

The fundamental element of the cosmos is Space. Space is the all-embracing principle of higher unity. Nothing can exist without Space. We are under an invincible blindness as to the true and real nature of things. We realise not that all those bodies, which compose the frame of our world, have not any subsistence without a mind.

Hence, reality is something that we cannot find; because of the limitations of our mind and interconnection of all things with one another - unless one ventures beyond the perceived reality. The essence of the teachings of the Buddha is, also based on this principle: that the nature of reality was impermanent and interconnected.

We suffer in life because of our desire to transient things; and since we are unable to find reality in its true sense. In fact, " Buddhism recognizes that humans have a measure of freedom of moral choice, and Buddhist practice has essentially to do with acquiring the freedom to choose as one ought to choose with truth: that is of acquiring a freedom from the passions and desires that impel us to distraction and poor decisions." - Walpola Rahula, in What the Buddha Taught.

If so, we revert to the question: Is the way of our mind, predetermined; or is the way of our mind, freely chosen? I am inclined to the belief that, as long as we have a choice, surely there can be no freedom.

The mind that is capable of choosing is not free because in choice there is always conflict, conscious or unconscious, and a mind that is in conflict is never free.

Our life is full of conflict; we are always choosing between good and bad, between this and that. We are always comparing, judging, evaluating, accepting, rejecting.

That is the process of our life, which is a constant struggle, and a mind that is struggling is never free. Thus, I say, good is it to control the mind.

A controlled mind brings happiness; not a predetermined mind, nor a mind with free will.

For views, reviews, encomiums, and brick-bats: [email protected]