Katha upanishhad verse I.2.23

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Cameron Reilly wrote:

[..]

>
> "Who" decides? There is no "who"! There is *no* duality to accomodate a
> "who".

This is fine if you keep paramaartha and vyavahaara distinct.

> The Destiny of a particular organism is created by everything that
> has happened in the history of the universe. The actions and thoughts of
> this particular organism have been defined by everything that came before
> it, its biology and its conditioning... which are both out of its control.

Is there a particular organism that has a destiny? However provisionally
you admit of such an organism, that organism is a who, that organism
decides, that organism considers itself to be distinct, and that organism
does not know that there is *no* duality.

>
> As for the cycle of births, what is there to be re-incarnated? As there is
> no individual separate from the rest of the universe, who or what is there
> to be re-born?

The thing that is reborn is the organism that considers itself distinct,
and does not know non-duality.

Is non-duality nothing more than the fact that the entire universe is
interconnected? Can't one legitimately think of the interconnected
universe as being made up of constituent parts which interact with one
another. But to really know brahman is to know brahman as having no parts.
So long as one makes such distinctions of parts and interactions, one does
not know non-duality.

>
> Energy is neither created nor destroyed (see - I *did* listen in Senior
> Physics!). And so the energy which makes up a body today will, in one

No argument with that. But then, so what if energy is conserved?

> hundred years, make up something else. Perhaps eventually another body. And
> somewhere, sometime, perhaps one of those bodies will realize it is not
> separate.

Does the body define all there is to the person?

>
> My experience has lead me to believe in *total* non-volition. I cannot for
> the life of me see how any organism can *ever* choose to think a single
> thought.

What is a thought? How does an organism think? Why does an organism think?
And fundamental to all these, what is an organism? Unless you have answers
to these questions, there is not much point in talking of choosing to
think or otherwise.

>
> >The acceptance of non-volition should not lead to lethargy. We are back to
> >the "there must be an intensity in seeking" bit.
>
> Yes, there *must* be an intensity. But whether or not one has that
> intensity, is entirely out of one's hands. If there is to be intensity, it
> will arise spontaneously.
>
> There is the common mis-conception that the acceptance of non-volition will
> lead to lethargy or anarchy - "Well, if I don't have any control, that
> means I can become a mass murderer and nobody can blame me!".
>
> I continually point out to people that they have *never* had any volition -
> and have they been lethargic? Have they felt anarchic?
>

Let's see. I'm feeling hungry and have to eat today. I can go home and
cook, or eat out. I decide to eat out. There is an Italian restaurant and
a Thai restaurant next to each other in my town. I like both kinds of
food, and both restaurants are equally inexpensive. I choose to eat at the
Thai restaurant. Do you mean to say that my decision not to cook today and
the decision to eat at the Thai restaurant were all out of my control, and
had all been decided beforehand by the entire history of the universe?
This is exceedingly hard to believe.

It seems to me that your position leaves no room for the question, "who is
the I that decides?" The real "I" is the Atman. The "I" that says, "I am
hungry" results from a misidentification of the real I with the body.
Given this basic misidentification, which is avidyA, decisions are made.
Decision always implies choice among alternatives, and along with it comes
what is called free will. It doesn't seem very useful to deny free will,
without first removing the avidyA that results in the false "I".

Vidyasankar