Originally posted by AndrewPKYap:
Buddhism is not about "converting" people like in Judeo-Christian
traditions...
Agreed.
No
fanaticism
Of Buddhism alone can it be affirmed it is free from all
fanaticism. Its aim being to produce in every man a thorough
internal transforming by self-conquest, how can it have recourse to
might or money or even persuasion for effecting conversion? The
Buddha has only shown the way to salvation, and it is left to each
individual to decide for himself if he would follow it.
- Prof. Lakshmi Narasu, "The Essence of Buddhism"
Buddhism is about "fate"... if you are fated (karma, rebirths)
to become a Buddhist or receive Buddhist instruction or Dharma; you
are truly "fortunate" (according to them)
I need to correct this part. Karma is NOT predeterminism. It is
about conditionality. I will post a topic on it soon.
But this, I have posted before:
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/tibet/karma_thanisaro.html
For the early Buddhists, karma
was non-linear. Other Indian schools believed that karma operated
in a straight line, with actions from the past influencing the
present, and present actions influencing the future. As a result,
they saw little room for free will.
Buddhists, however, saw that karma acts in feedback loops, with the
present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions;
present actions shape not only the future but also the
present.
This constant opening for present input into the causal process
makes free will possible.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/karma.htm
Thus, from a Buddhist point of
view, our present mental, moral intellectual and temperamental
differences are, for the most part, due to our own actions and
tendencies, both past and present.
Although Buddhism attributes this variation to Karma, as being the
chief cause among a variety, it does not, however, assert that
everything is due to Karma. The law of Karma, important as it is,
is only one of the twenty-four conditions described in Buddhist
Philosophy.
Refuting the erroneous view that "whatsoever fortune or
misfortune experienced is all due to some previous action", the
Buddha said:
"So, then, according to this view, owing to previous action men
will become murderers, thieves, unchaste, liars, slanderers,
covetous, malicious and perverts. Thus, for those who fall back on
the former deeds as the essential reason, there is neither the
desire to do, nor effort to do, nor necessity to do this deed, or
abstain from this deed."
It was this important text, which states the belief that all
physical circumstances and mental attitudes spring solely from past
Karma that Buddha contradicted. If the present life is totally
conditioned or wholly controlled by our past actions, then
certainly Karma is tantamount to fatalism or determinism or
predestination. If this were true, free will would be an absurdity.
Life would be purely mechanistic, not much different from a
machine. Being created by an Almighty God who controls our
destinies and predetermines our future, or being produced by an
irresistible Karma that completely determines our fate and controls
our lifes course, independent of any free action on our part, is
essentially the same. The only difference lies in the two words God
and Karma. One could easily be substituted for the other, because
the ultimate operation of both forces would be identical.
Such a fatalistic
doctrine is not the Buddhist law of
Karma.
But most people's idea, and the general western idea of free will
is also extreme and the term free will could be misinterpreted to
mean that there is a controller of events. It is not so.
Here is a more balanced view:
http://www.thinkbuddha.org/article/173/life-without-free-will
In other words, nirvana is the
concrete realization of no free will. It is also the concrete
realization of no determinism. For in order for something to be
determined, it must be determined by something OUTSIDE itself. But
if there is ultimately nothing outside us to force us to choose
what we do, then we are no more determined to make the choices we
do than we are free to make them. They simply arise of themselves
in relation to circumstances.
