The non-reality of free will

[Jonathan Bricklin]

----------
> From: Jinathan Bricklin  <brickmar at earthcom.net>
> To: Multiple recipients of list ADVAITA-L <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
> Subject: Re:  Whose Advaita?
> Date: Thursday, May 01, 1997 1:30 p.m.
>
> On Thu, 1 May 1997,
>
> > Really?  Do you think it has anything to do with St. John of the Cross?
>
> No.  (Never heard of him actually.)
>
> > The Bal Shem Tov?
>
> No.
>
> >  How about Lao Tzu?
>
> Nope.
>
> > I do not think much about whether Buddhism of any kind has any relation
to
> > free will.  It is just one of many paths that can lead to an experience
of
> > non-duality.
>
> For that matter falling down a flight of stairs can lead to an experience
> of non-duality.  We're talking about Advaita Vedanta here.

Falling down a flight of stairs can lead to an experience of non-duality,
just as thoughts of a law suit against the building owner can bring them
back again.  Which one is a superimposition of ignorance?  We're talking
about what the sages of the Upanishads (and others who may have never heard
of them) may have been talking about.  It is their experience, after all,
that gives their texts their sacred authority, and not the other way
around.

> > Ramakrishna, for example, was instructed in Advaita-Vedanta
> > by his teacher, Tota Puri, but it was surely his own experience of
> > non-duality, rather than the doctrine of non-duality  that led him to
> > abandon his belief in will
> >
>
> As I wrote earlier today, a thing even the propositions of Advaita
Vedanta
> is either true or it's false.  It cannot depend on the experience or a
> lack thereof of any person

A falsehood, such as the reality of free will, always depends on the
experience of a person, itself a false experience.  There are  myriad
quotations from the Upanishads that support the non-reality of a free
standing agent.  The textual support for this is hardly an issue.

>particularly a person like Ramakrishna whose
> connection to the Advaita parampara was tenuous at best.

A tenuous connection to Advaita parampara is not necessarily a tenuous
connection to enlightenment.  Or do you not accept that there have been
adepts who became enlightened without the benefit of a human teacher?

> I don't think a belief in Vedanta requires abandoning free will.  If you
believe otherwise you can try and prove it

Well, if you would like a 200 page manuscript to peruse, I'd be happy to
send it to you.

>but that requires the use of things Advaita
> considers authority sush as Shruti, Smrti, logic, tradition etc.  not
> utterly irrelevant things.

The authority of advaita lies with the experience of the sages who composed
its words.  This is a traditional point of view.  Apparently, as other
sacred literature attests to (see above), their shruti ("revelation") was
not confined to a particular time or culture.  Perhaps if you were to take
a peak at, say, the Tao Te Ching by the aforementioned Lao Tzu, your sense
of  what is relevant to advaitism might expand.  I prefer to equate smirti
with dhyana, as Vacaspati Mishra did, and defer to its authority, but I am
prepared to consider it in your terms, as authoritative traditional
literature.  Since a nondualistic metaphysics (such as advaitism) lacks, by
definition, the support of an agent self, I ask you for a quote that
supports the reality of free will.  I ask this in the name of  logic.