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Is ‘Free Will’ the Only Option?

I think back over all the years I let my life-options distract me from what I knew I ought to do. As Buddha’s Fourth Noble Truth says, “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”. There was always ‘tomorrow’ I felt— an insidious later. Then I began realizing that ‘tomorrow’ never comes. This automatically gave me no choice but to do my “duty”. Facing the truth makes being distracted less possible. Ironically, deeply feeling I had no choice became a type of free choice… no will is free will. As life’s options fall by the wayside of life, the last option is the one that holds the freedom. Chapter 48 suggests this…

One does less and less until one does nothing at all, and when one does nothing
at all, there is nothing that is undone
.

Dec 2, 2008 by Carl Abbott
Filed Under: Autobiographical Tagged With: freewill

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