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’ — that insidious ‘tomorrow’. Then I began realizing that tomorrow never comes. Now, almost nothing manages to distract me, so I have no choice but to do my ‘duty’… although perhaps dharma is a better word. In a way, truly feeling one has no choice is 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 hints at this, albeit ironically…

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