Yesterday I was too tired to think and understand what you were
saying. But now I looked at your posts and they were clearly
fatalistic. Not Buddhist at all. Definitely has nothing got to do
with no-self. It is simply the idea of fatalism. And no will. There
is will, but no self making will. There is thoughts, but no
thinker.
Nothing of this mentioned about no-self.
This statement assumes that there is an existence of 'you' and
'i', and if 'i' become 'you', 'i' will act the same as 'you'. This
is an illusion. How has that got to do with 'no self'? Conditions
serve as a possibility for you to act on them. It does not mean you
will act on them.
It doesn't mean you will do charity. Some people might choose
not to do charity due to selfish or evil thoughts. Conditions are
there, but whether you make a will to do charity is another thing.
No-self doesn't mean no-will. And will doesn't mean self. Will is
just will, there is no self.
But Eckhart Tolle's 'Choice implies consciousness' applies. If you
are 'unconscious', then you will simply go along with the
conditionings. If conditions are bad, you will grow up as a drug
addict, gangster, and screw up. If you are 'conscious', karmic
conditions make you live in a drug addict, gangster family, but you
grow upright. You are not lured due to 'unconsciousness' into the
Step 3 and Step 4 of what Teacher Chen said. So you will not end up
in jail. Therefore there is a saying that Buddhadharma can change
your 'fate'. This is absolutely true.
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.
On a higher level, nothing ever arose and exists merely as a
potential. I think that is called 'alaya' and is beyond time and
space.
By the way those who have paypal or bank accounts, please support
sgForums by signing their membership. The servers are crawling now.
I typed a similar reply as this one, pressed Submit, waited for 3
minutes and my post is gone. And I have to retype it again. I have
no paypal accounts and I don't use bank accounts (my parents take
care of them).
