Fate and Free will (was Re: Katha upanishad verse I.2.23)

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Here are relevant excerpts re: fate and free will, from Dialogues with the
Guru, by Sri Jnanananda Bharati. The guru who says these words is Sri
Chandrasekhara Bharati of Sringeri.

"Fate is nothing but the sum total of the results of your past actions. By
exercising your free will in the past, you have brought on the resultant
fate, i.e. the present.

You are responsible for what you are today. You are responsible for the
pain and suffering and misery. You cannot escape your responsibility by
blaming fate, for fate is of your own making; or by blaming God, for He
only dispenses fruits in accordance with the merits of your actions.

By exercising your free will in the present, wipe out the past record and
work for a better future."

Elsewhere, the Swami explains how past actions result in the present, and
how free will can be exercised in accordance with the SAstras, to mold
the future.

"vAsanA is the resultant impression/tendency left in the mind by an action
or an experience. A vAsanA urges the person to perform the same act or
have the same experience once again. The stream of vAsanAs has two
currents, the good and the bad. It is dangerous if you try to dam up the
entire current.

The SAstras, therefore, do not ask you to attempt that. They detail which
vAsanAs are good and which are bad. They ask you to be led by the good
vAsanA current and resist being led away by the bad. It is your
responsibility to encourage the good vAsanAs and overcome bad ones.
Through the exercise of your free will, you must purify yourself.

Having practically eliminated the bad vAsanAs, the SAstras then teach you
how to free yourself from the good ones. You will gradually be led to a
stage where you are free of all vAsanAs. At that stage, your mind will be
pure as crystal, and all motives for performing actions will disappear."

It is clear from these words that Swami Chandrasekhara Bharati is not
telling everybody to accept non-volition. The very effort to overcome
negative vAsanAs and follow the positive ones, and then studying how to
free oneself from the good ones also, implies action. He freely uses
the words free will, and says that it can be put to good use in a
person's life. His teaching is clear that one cannot adopt an attitude
which says "things just happen, let us just observe," without having put
in the effort to eventually overcome all vAsanAs. It is very easy for
anybody to say, "things just happen" or to say, "the Lord is the only
doer" and escape personal responsibility. One has no authority to say
this, unless one has destroyed avidyA-kAma-karma, and thereby destroyed
the ego-hood.

Similar teachings are given by other accomplished masters like Ramana
Maharishi.

Regards,

S. Vidyasankar