Forty years ago I had various and sundry options that would win my heart over, distracting me from what I knew I ought to do (or as Buddha put it in his Fourth Noble Truth, “There is salvation for him whose self disappears before truth, whose will is bent on what he ought to do, whose sole desire is the performance of his duty”). Now, almost nothing manages to distract me, so I have no choice but to do my ‘duty’(*) . In a way, truly feeling one has no choice is free choice — no will is free will. As options fall by the wayside of life, the last option is the one that feels the most freeing. Simply put, free will lies in the freedom of nothing.
(*) the word ‘duty’ can be misleading, perhaps dharma is a better word. On the other hand…
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