A question on fate and destiny

[Washin]

Hi Vanbui

That is a good question! Thank you for asking.

Zen, and Buddhism as a whole, does not see things as fated. Life unfolds as a result of our individual and collective decisions and it is within our power to influence that.

However, our actions are influenced by conditioning which comes from the environment we grew up in, our genetics and our previous choices and actions (karma). So, it is not like our actions are completely free of influence and I am sure you are aware that humans quickly develop habitual patterns which can be hard to break. That is not the same as fate though.

I think that the problem with seeing events as fated is that you can avoid taking individual responsibility for what is happening. This is certainly not the Buddhist way. We may not be in complete control of our lives and are at the mercy of external circumstances and events to some degree. However, we can always choose how we respond.

The fact that life is open to our choices means that the precepts matter and our actions matter. One act of kindness and compassion can change how things are, as can one act of cruelty.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

So well said, Kokuu. Thank you

Gassho
Washin
st-lah

[Hokin]

How can there be free will. The Buddhist pillars are : Impermanence, No self and Interdependent origination. In other words, there is no individual person and all is entangled. So who is there to choose.

I heard the expression once : don't see it as predestined, but things go their way unavoidable.

Seeing that there can be no free will ultimately means that you have to act as if you have free will. But it gives some freedom in realizing afterwards that you could not have choosen otherwise .....

And the modern neurological research also comes to the conclusion that there can be no free will.

Gassho2
Hosei
Sat Today

Hi Hosei.
I hope you are doing fine!
With due respect, I would like to suggest you read (again if you already did...) the original teachings of the pali canon, where, here and there you can find wonderful direction about these confused points of view. In particular may I suggest, foremost, the famous first and second sermons in the Digha Nikaya (The Long Discourses): The Brahmajala Sutta and The Samaññaphala Sutta. I think that these might be a very nice point from where to start and also particularly "to the point" in all concern with this topic.

I leave here the links to the suttas for you to read and for all those who are interested.

https://suttacentral.net/dn1/en/bodhi

https://suttacentral.net/dn2/en/bodhi

Enjoy.

Gassho.
Arya.
ST&LAH.

[Jundo]

I saw this report today and thought of this discussion. The foundation of the world is an amazing order which is chaos, chaos which is order. There is causation and surprise emergence, conditions yet freedom.

Certainly, reality leaps beyond all our small human ideas of "caused vs. uncaused, past present future, free or bound."

Physicists entangle 15 trillion hot atoms

Physicists set a new record by linking together a hot soup of 15 trillion atoms in a bizarre phenomenon called quantum entanglement. ... Entanglement, a quantum phenomena Albert Einstein famously described as "spooky action at a distance," is a process in which two or more particles become linked and any action performed on one instantaneously affects the others regardless of how far apart they are. Entanglement lies at the heart of many emerging technologies, such as quantum computing and cryptography.

... Entangled states are infamous for being fragile; their quantum links can be easily broken by the slightest internal vibration or interference from the outside world. For this reason, scientists attempt to reach the coldest temperatures possible in experiments to entangle jittery atoms; the lower the temperature, the less likely atoms are to bounce into each other and break their coherence. For the new study, researchers at the Institute of Photonic Science (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain, took the opposite approach, heating atoms to millions of times hotter than a typical quantum experiment to see if entanglement could persist in a hot and chaotic environment. ...

The researchers heated a small glass tube filled with vaporized rubidium and inert nitrogen gas to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 degrees Celsius), coincidentally the perfect temperature to bake cookies. At this temperature, the hot cloud of rubidium atoms is in a state of chaos, with thousands of atomic collisions taking place every second. Like billiard balls, the atoms bounce off each other, transferring their energy and spin. But unlike classical billiards, this spin does not represent the physical motion of the atoms.

In quantum mechanics, spin is a fundamental property of particles, just like mass or electric charge, that gives particles an intrinsic angular momentum. In many ways, the spin of a particle is analogous to a spinning planet, having both angular momentum and creating a weak magnetic field, called a magnetic moment. But in the wacky world of quantum mechanics, classical analogies fall apart. The very notion that particles like protons or electrons are rotating solid objects of size and shape doesn't fit the quantum worldview. And when scientists try to measure a particle's spin, they get one of two answers: up or down. There are no in-betweens in quantum mechanics.

... The surprising thing is that these random collisions didn't destroy entanglement. ... In fact, the "hot and messy" environment inside the glass tube was key to the experiment's success. The atoms were in what physicists call a macroscopic spin singlet state, a collection of pairs of entangled particles' total spin sums to zero. The initially entangled atoms pass their entanglement to each other via collisions in a game of quantum tag, exchanging their spins but keeping the total spin at zero, and allowing the collective entanglement state to persist for at least a millisecond. For instance, particle A is entangled with particle B, but when particle B hits particle C, it links both particles with particle C, and so on. ...

https://www.livescience.com/physicis...hot-atoms.html

I think it easier to be a Zen fellow than a physicist. In Zen, often there is nothing to research, no data to prove, because we simply drop the question to find our answers.

Perhaps we might say that, in sitting Zazen, all our Zafus are both entangled and unentangled at once with every atoms of the universe.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Shinshi]

I think you're forgetting that Buddhism resolves this with the concept of the two truths: that there are both relative truths (we exist and decide what we do) and absolute truths (that there is no independent origination).



That's not quite true. There have been some studies using fMRI that find that the brain reacts before people think they are reacting, but these studies are probably not measuring correctly. (And neuroscience has not come to conclusions on much; the very nature of this type of science is that they know that they have to keep changing what they think is right.)

If there were no free will, it was pre-determined that I would come to the forum today, see your message, and post this reply. And that everything else I do is just moving forward in a clockwork universe. I don't see how Buddhism could support that. What about the Boddhisatva vow? That seems to suggest that there is free will.

Gasso,

Kirk

SAT

Interesting article on the studies regarding neuroscience and free will.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/

Gassho, Shinshi

SaT-LaH