Long ago an Indian Sage offered up some wisdom into an age-old philosophical dilemma: free will versus determinism.
Most of us enjoy the day-to-day experience of freedom as we choose the time we rise, our fare for breakfast and the route to work or school. Sometimes the multitude of choices may even overwhelm. Consider breakfast and the over-stocked cereal isle at the grocery store-Frosted Flakes or Frosted Mini Wheats? Sometimes, we just choose none of the above.
We also choose our friends and relationships; we choose our career paths and our politics. We become upset, and sometimes choose to lash out and even harm others. Most would agree that we make these decisions and are responsible for them.
But are we truly free? Some behaviorists argue for the profound effects of the environment to influence, if not determine, our actions. And some proponents of biological determinism posit that our physical and mental selves are a function of the physical body and hereditary traits. These influences of nurture and nature, respectively, are briefly mentioned here to set the scene for that Sage cited above.
The karmic principle of cause and effect was central to this Wise Man’s analysis and it aligns with determinism. By this spiritual concept, our seeming choices for setting the alarm, picking breakfast foods and driving routes are not choices at all but an expression of the thousands if not millions of factors that preceded those actions: “everything is predetermined”. Harms to others are an expression of this principle too. Referring to the everyday experience of me as the Ego, one could thus imagine an egoic being, predestined by its nurture/nature past, while just imagining a life of free will. Our suffering emanates from this core delusion. If I am free and do these harms I must be bad. If you are free and do these harms you must be bad. All is unforgivable.
But suppose our nature is two fold. There is the Ego, an expression of nurture and nature, conditioned by both with the illusion of free will. And there is a Self, or Soul or Buddha Nature which exists without encumbered conditioning and in perfect understanding and freedom. Identification with the former invokes a path of suffering; of guilt and grudge, of karma. Identification with the latter is to awaken to that sacred space of freedom and responsibility.
Note the irony. The conditioned and predestined Ego while un-free suffers the illusion of freedom. Our failure to understand that we are all the effect of a myriad of causes promotes endless fault-finding; blame and self-blame. On the other hand, The Self, free by its very nature, is unconditioned and embodies wisdom and compassion. From that perspective, there is deep understanding of the Ego predicament and tenderness over the pain of grudge, resentment and unforgivable acts.
Most of us occupy that Ego space a lot with an occasional glimpse into our True Nature as we experience a little freedom. But maybe that’s enough to understand that somehow we are both free and determined. These experiences are compatible-the compatibilist view. In that space, the free will illusion starts to recede. We begin to understand that the messes of life are karmic and nobody’s fault. In some sense, we all have done what we were destined to do. Nobody’s fault. In and from that space, we all might release and be released from past transgressions. This fragile insight comes and goes at first. The fault-finding Ego is unsatisfied, with last gasps to never pardon and forever condemn self and others.
We persevere and continue to cultivate those synergistic qualities of wisdom and compassion. We contemplate these elements; we chew and swallow the sacrament. Cause and effect wobbles; conditioning corrects to mere ethers. The Old Sage smiles.
We arrive without baggage at the forgiveness impasse again, and prepare to conquer it. But then the unexpected- All causes and effects have disappeared into the Self where the Truth is suddenly upon us. The Truth is that each of us has been natured and nurtured and acted as only we could all our lives. And in this brief, bright moment we understand. No blame.
There is nothing more to do. We are, all of us, already forgiven.
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