This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Hello from a rainy San Francisco evening. It's a joy and an honor, actually. It's a blessing, actually, to have rain here in California. It's been so dry for so long, so I can feel it already. making a difference just in the atmosphere. So as Koto mentioned, by the way, if you're having trouble hearing me because of the rain, sometimes the Wi-Fi can be a little funky. So if you have trouble hearing me, let me know, see what we can do. Anyhow, as Koto mentioned, we're in the midst of a 10-week practice period. I believe this is week three, in which we've taken up the study of karma. And so we're making an effort to understand, work with, and ultimately become unbound by karma, unbounded.

[01:03]

So karma is a term for anyone who's not so familiar with it that arose in India before the Buddha lived. And it literally means action or activity, but particularly intentional activity. And the Buddha said that karma is defined as intention, volition, or will. And also he taught that karma can take three forms, body, speech, and mind. And so we do intentional activities with body and speech, which are, of course, based on intentions of the mind. And all of these have their results. Now, as karmically expressive beings who are typically and continually manifesting some form of action of body, speech and mind throughout today, something, some response is continually being asked of us. So something arises, a situation unfolds, and a response is required of us.

[02:04]

For example, we're in our car, we're taking our kids to school, when suddenly another driver deliberately cuts us off in traffic. And threatening, of course, our family's safety, and who knows, other people's safety. So how do we act? How do we react? in that situation. And knowing that any action we take, whether it's, you could say, wholesome or unwholesome, we'll have results. How do we choose to decide what we're going to do? You know, make a gesture, hop the horn, chase after them in a rage, you know, to check on our kids, how are they doing something? What are we going to do? And the Buddhist teaching about karma have a lot to do with this aspect of our lives, seeing the places where we have choices to make, and examining how it is that we're going about making choices. And if, as the Buddha taught, we are conditioned beings, where then is our place of freedom to make choices?

[03:13]

Furthermore, if we accept the teaching also of the Buddha, of Anatta, that there's no permanent eternal, unchanging, or autonomous self inhabiting our bodies or living our lives, who then is it that wills and makes choices? So with these questions in mind, the same thing, I'd like to share some thoughts on how we might view karma in relationship to the concepts of choice, free will, and determinism. And when we speak of intention and choice, we also need to understand the place of free will in both setting intentions and making choices. And as I'm not deeply versed in Western philosophy, I looked up free will in the dictionary. And what I found is free will is the freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention.

[04:16]

So in other words, free will means that humans are inherently capable of deliberating and making choices that are not determined by outside influences. And while we don't talk much about divine intervention in Buddhism, we certainly do talk about higher causes and interdependent influences. And given that if we follow the dictionary's definition, it doesn't look like there's free will in the view of Buddhadharma, because the teachings say that everything that happens, including choice, when we make choices, is determined by conditions and causality. So before I consider a possible Buddhist approach, to the concept of free will, I want to briefly note several Western philosophical perspectives on free will, or you could say its absence.

[05:20]

And the question of free will has occupied an important place in Western thought and philosophy for thousands of years, all the way back maybe 25, 2500 years. And philosophers who support the idea of free will, they'll disagree, however, over exactly how it works. Although they generally agree that because of free will, humans have some degree of control over our own lives. And, however, other philosophers have proposed we are not as free as we think we are, arguing the opposite of free will, which is determinism. Sometimes it's called causal determinism. And I also looked up this term in the dictionary. And... Determinism is a theory that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social and psychological phenomenon are causally determined by preceding events.

[06:23]

So now, on an initial impression, this sounds a lot to me like the Buddhist teaching of dependent origination or conditioned causality. So according to the philosophical view of determinism, free will is limited or does not exist because all events are somehow determined by factors outside of human will. And the factors can vary. There may be laws of nature, of God, of destiny, of something else. And furthermore, in its extreme forms, sometimes it's called hard determinism, determinants suggest that Only one course of events is possible. And that everything has been determined outside of human well, all the way back to the beginning of the universe. So in this sense, everything is already fated or written down, you know, in the giant books.

[07:28]

And we're just somehow puppets acting out a script and with no... choice for introducing any changes or spontaneous randomness to any of it. According to determinism, it's really an illusion that we have free will, that we have the ability to actually choose our actions. You could say in this way, determinism is a form of fatalism, the idea that human beings are not able to act other than we do. depending on your particular spiritual beliefs, for instance, if you believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing God, who is a preordained, designed for everything and everyone, then if I, for example, encounter misfortune, I may be either distraught that God chose me to suffer in this way, or I might be comforted, especially if I believe that it was fated,

[08:35]

to be so, because it was God's will. In a number of ways, such a belief could lead me to become somewhat passive in my life, thinking that my actions and choices don't matter. And I grew up around, my family is Mennonites historically, and I grew up around many Mennonites, and oftentimes they would say something, it's God's will, according to God's will. So everything that was a blessing was God's will. Everything that happened that was unfortunate was somehow God's will, and it wasn't for us to understand, but simply to accept. So this is this kind of form of working with, you know, things are fated outside of human control to a certain degree. And then there have been some philosophers, including some in ancient India, who proposed neither free will nor determinism. but claim rather that events are mostly random and not necessarily caused by anything whatsoever.

[09:41]

And this particular perspective could be called indeterminism. And again, I looked it up. The dictionary definition says that indeterminism is the idea that events are not caused or not caused deterministically. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. So in other words, indeterminism holds that human will is free, and that deliberate choice and actions are not determined by or predictable from antecedent causes. That is, not every event has a cause. So, I share these definitions to show that even as free will figures significantly in much of Western philosophy and religion, there are many varying opinions and nuances regarding how to view it and relate to it. So, what is the Buddhist orientation to free will?

[10:48]

The shorthand answer is that Buddhism doesn't take a specific stand on the question of free will, but neither does it propose that we have nothing to say about the course of unfolding of our lives. So while the question of free will doesn't figure predominantly in Buddhist writings as it does in Western theology and philosophy and psychology, it's a topic that was addressed but indirectly in the earliest Buddhist writings. I found an article, a 2011 article, by B. Alan Wallace in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. He's an author in a Buddhist book. He said, according to these counts, the Buddha rejected both determinism and indeterminism, as understood at the time, for both pragmatic and ethical reasons.

[12:01]

So in essence, the Buddha taught that all events have a prior cause and that our lives are deeply conditioned by cause and effect, basically karma, right? So this is refuting indeterminism. And he taught that we are personally responsible for our lives and actions, thus refuting determinism. But the Buddha went even further as he also rejected the idea that there is a An independent, autonomous self, either apart from or within the skandhas, the five aggregates, that make choices and acts in the first place. So Wallace writes, thus the sense that each of us is an autonomous, non-physical subject who exercises ultimate control over the body and mind without being influenced by prior physical and psychological conditions. is an illusion.

[13:02]

And that, it seems, pretty much refutes the Western notion of free will. So another well-regarded Buddhist monk and scholar, Wakala Vahula, in his book, What the Buddha Thought. It's a very good book. If you had a chance to read it, I would check it out. It's 1950s, mid-50s or something. Anyhow, he acknowledges that that the question of free will has occupied an important place in Western thought and philosophy, but he writes, according to dependent origination, this question does not and cannot arise in Buddhist philosophy. If the whole of existence is relative, conditioned, and interdependent, how can will alone be free? Will... like any other thought, is conditioned.

[14:03]

So-called freedom itself is conditioned and relative. Such a condition and relative free will is not denied, meaning not denied in Buddhism. There could be nothing absolutely free, physical, or mental, as everything is interdependent and relative. If free will implies a will interdependent of conditions, independent of cause and effect, such a thing does not exist. How can a will, or anything for that matter, arise without conditions, away from cause and effect, when the whole of existence is conditioned and relative, and is within the law of cause and effect? Here again, the idea of free will is basically connected with the ideas of God, soul, justice, reward, and punishment. not only is so-called free will not free, but even the very idea of free will is not free of conditions.

[15:10]

So given this, we could say that the key to understanding a Buddhist orientation to free will is in Mahula's choir qualifier, that there is free will. It's just that it's condition and it's relative. So in other words, free will can't stand outside of causes and conditions. Free will isn't really free because it's conditioned. Unless we think we may have one remaining foothold in which to kind of stand or rest, Ahula kicks that away. He kicks away the very last one. He says, not only is so-called free will not free, The very idea of free will is not free from conditions. So the concept of free will itself is merely a fabrication based on other condition and conceptual applications.

[16:16]

So there's no there there to free will. So then maybe it's some... Maybe it's a matter of how we understand the word free. Maybe it's because we really don't want the word free to mean it's really free, especially from a Western perspective. So in other words, I really want to believe that I really do have the ability to choose, you would say, equally, all things considered, but I have such a wide, inclusive degree of freedom. All the choices in the world are available to me. Maybe imagine that freedom of choice means I have the freedom to have available to me all the choices I could ever possibly imagine. And sometimes one gets the sense when walking down the aisles of some of the largest American grocery stores, right, with this infinite number of varieties and choices of products.

[17:18]

And true freedom as an American seems to mean that I'm free to choose and consume whatever I damn well want. even if I really don't need it. And so most people equate choice and freedom. Choice and freedom. It seems pretty reasonable. Freedom means you are free to choose. It means you're free from restrictions. If you can't choose, then you're not free. And it would seem to follow that the more choices you have, at least if you're American, the more freedom you have, But it doesn't work out that way. One of the things I've noticed, I've discovered in my times practicing Buddhism and Zen, one of the functions of monasteries and Zen retreats and kind of the ethical codes that we have and the other structures associated with spiritual practice, including our shingi, our guides for conduct here in the temple, is to eliminate a certain degree of choice.

[18:26]

And when people attend to the relatively strict discipline that, you know, is offered at Tulsa Arzada Mountain Center, which is our monastery in Big Surf, for instance, they come away feeling, in many cases I hear, rejuvenated and refreshed. Precisely because they have had no choice for, in some cases, months at a time. You eat what is put in your bowl, basically. You get up at this time, you study at this time, you bathe at this time, you just follow the schedule. And many people say they feel more alive and free, awake in a way that they don't regularly do in their everyday lives, you know, outside of the monastery. And I've also heard that prisoners who take up meditation practice have reported that by restricting their range of... even beyond the limitations of the prison and just sitting meditation in their cell, they actually find a freedom that they never suspected was possible.

[19:35]

And how is that? How is that relationship to freedom? So going back to what we might mean by the word free, it's interesting some of the Western philosophers even say that free is not meant to modify will, when we talk about free will. The 17th century English philosopher John Locke, for example, said that the word free is meant to modify mind. He said, I think the question is not proper that will should be free, but the person should be free. I think the question is not proper that will should be free, but the person should be free, which I think goes well with the teachings of Buddhism. Not that the will is free, but the person is free.

[20:36]

But is the person free? That is the fundamental inquiry in Buddhism. The Western free will perspective is that we humans have free, rational minds with which to make decisions. But the Buddha taught that most of us are not free at all because we, our minds, are chained and being perpetually jerked around in various ways by greed, hate, and delusion, by attraction and inversion, by our condition, conceptual thinking, and other mental formations, and most of all by karma. And as we... seen in our exploration of karma in the last few weeks, volition, which is the fourth skanda, the fourth aggregate, is a mental factor. And it's a mental factor that arises dependent upon conditions, which is precisely what makes it not an independent self.

[21:41]

So if there were an independent self, then it could have free will. And in that fact, that's what we tend to you know, I'd say, feel to be true as human beings. We believe that I, as a free agent, can, within the lens of conditions imposed by the world, of course, decide what to do now. Don't we always think that? I, me, this one is deciding. There's some sense in here, a separate agent in here that's free to decide what I'm doing. If we want a positive free will, we have to ask whose free will it would be. We'd also have to acknowledge that the very fact that we practice Zen, for example, or don't practice Zen, or that we do good or bad actions or wholesome activities or harmful ones, is completely conditioned.

[22:45]

how can we even relate to the truth of this conditionality? How we even relate to that will vary based upon our conditioning, whether it delights us or depresses us. And even if we tell ourselves, I can decide to make more effort in my practice, for example. You know, I want to make more effort. I want to be a better Zen student. I'm going to be less angry and more kind, right? even that intention arises out of conditioning. And yet we may find that as we make more efforts, that somehow this effort further feeds on itself through this process of conditionality. So in other words, we may notice that once we get into making the effort to practice, that it starts to condition us in a new positive kind of way and without any actual self needing to do the work.

[24:00]

So the only thing that is required of us is that we pay close attention to how the process actually works. And of course, the intention to pay attention will arise or not according to conditions. And it's often said that hearing just the Dharma teaching, just a teaching such as this, is one of the supportive conditions for creating positive change in some way. So what are the conditions that you are cultivating in your life? And the Buddha spoke of karma as volitional action. An action that's not willed does not produce karma, according to the Buddha. So there needs to be in the mind somewhere a volition, a will, an intention that is expressed through an activity.

[25:01]

So if an apple falls from a tree, for example, that doesn't create a karmic effect. Of course, maybe unless it falls on someone's head, in which that's a different story depending on how they respond or react to that. So we kind of speak of karma somewhat loosely. And Vahula talks about this in that passage I read. He said karma applies to the action, not to its effect, not to its fruit. So karma is the action itself, and its result is called fruit. And it may ripen in this lifetime, or in the next lifetime, or in many lifetimes from now, if you believe in rebirth. So we may never see or experience the the effects or the fruit of any particular action that we do. So how do we act based upon that? If we expect to see a particular outcome in this lifetime, how do we have faith in how we take action?

[26:06]

So not only did the Buddha reject the deterministic view of free will, but he also rejected a purely deterministic view in his teaching on karma. So for the early Buddhists, karma was non-linear. Most of the Buddhist contemporaries in India believe that karma operated in a straight line with actions from the past influencing the present. And present actions influence in the future. Your life now is the result of what you did in the past. And what you do now will determine your life in the future. The problem with this view, if you're just going to keep it as a kind of linear process, is that it leads to a degree of fatalism. There's nothing you can do about your life now in some way. But the Buddha taught that the effects or the ripening of past karma can be mitigated. by present action. In other words, one is not fated to suffer, you know, X, right?

[27:24]

Because one did X in the past. Your actions now can change the course of karma and impact your life now. The Theravadan monk, Thamsaro Bhikkhu, wrote the following. He said, Buddhist saw that karma acts in feedback loops, with the present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions. Present actions shaped not only the future, but also the present. This constant opening for present input into the causal process makes free will possible. So, furthermore, present actions need not be determined by past actions.

[28:26]

So, in other words, there is free will, although its range is somewhat dictated or conditioned by the past. And then Tanasaro also draws upon the analogy of water, and this is what I brought up a couple of weeks ago in the analogy of water when talking about karma. or without eddies, the ways that we kind of spin around, you know, in a vortex, in our mind streams, if you will, around the idea of a separate self. So, Thanosaurus says, this freedom, that is the freedom, our constant opening for present input into the causal process, is symbolized in the imagery the Buddhists use to explain the process, flowing water. Sometimes the flow from the past is so strong that little can be done except to stand fast. And there are also times when the flow is gentle enough to be averted in almost any direction.

[29:26]

Have you ever had that experience? Sometimes the karmic conditioning and everything is just, the impulse is so strong, you can barely stand your ground and not react. And other times it seems it's just soft enough for you to really kind of maneuver. with a little bit more skill and capacity. So an aspect of what we are undertaking in our study of karma during this practice period is not only to understand the nature of karma, but also how to work with karma, and particularly in a way that is transformative and liberative. So karma is said to be a natural law in that karma or the outcome of an intentional action will always manifest and ripen in some fashion. So while you can't avoid the ripening of karma, how karma manifests and how it ripens is not inflexible.

[30:29]

It's not determined. You can work with the mind stream. And this is key to how we can then work with karma. The Buddha himself said that Through the practice of the Eightfold Path, we may be freed of our deluded thinking and be liberated from karmic effects. And in the coming weeks, in Dharma talks and classes, we'll be delving into this inquiry even more deeply. But for now, I want to mention one of Buddhism's foundational practices that the Buddha himself spoke about in early suttas, which is sati-salva-janma. And Gil Vonsdal, who has the distinction of being both a Vipassana teacher as well as a Dharma-transmitted Zen teacher, says this. I can't find it first in my notes. Where did it go?

[31:30]

He says, Satya Sampajana is a compound term in Pali. Sati means mindfulness, which is one of the core Buddhist practices. And sampajana means wisdom or understanding or clear comprehension. Mindfulness is the practice of seeing and understanding what is, of what's happening now, and how you are relating to it. And sampajana has more of a sense of insight. You know not only what you are doing, but why you are doing it. So rather than just leaving things as they are, as humans, we have to respond, which includes having to make choices about what we do in response to the way things are. So the practice of sati sampajana has an integrating and a balancing quality to it. It's helping us to recognize and navigate the truth that our existence and the impact of our effort

[32:38]

is not confined to the present, and that what we will depends to a very great extent on what we do now, what we will experience in the future. So we can see that in this way, instead of promoting a type of resigned powerlessness, you know, kind of, oh, woe is me, I have no free will, and my life course is fixed and predetermined, you know, The Buddha's notion of karma instead is focused on the liberating potential, what the mind is doing at any moment. So unlike the early Hindu views on karma, which said that you were limited by your current birth, your caste, your social status, the Buddha taught that who you are or what you come from, where you come from, right? is not anywhere near as important as the mind's motives for what it's doing right now.

[33:41]

So, in other words, as Tanisara frames it, he says, our measure as human beings is not the hand we've been dealt, but that hand can change at any moment. We can take our own measure by how well we play the hand we've got. So if you're suffering, You try not to continue the unskillful mental habits that would keep that particular karmic feedback going. And if you see that other people are suffering and you're in a position to help, you focus not on their karmic past, but your karmic opportunity in the present. Someday you may find yourself in the same predicament that they're in now. So here's your opportunity to act in the way you'd like them to act toward you. when that day comes. So we're going to be talking about this more when we move to collective karma, you know, close to the end of the practice period, because this is an important aspect of understanding collective karma, where individual and collective karma, you can say, interface.

[34:52]

So we see that while there isn't free will, per se, from a Buddhist perspective, to the condition and relative nature of will, there is nonetheless the space and the freedom to, you could say, recondition and use that very symbolition in such a way that the course of our future volitional action will then more likely be headed in a beneficial and a liberative direction. So our condition isn't frozen or fixed by a hard determinism. In fact, it's Because it's conditioned in the first place, this means it's flexible and malleable by nature. And this can be conditioned going forward to better serve as a more fundamental purpose and happiness. But this doesn't settle the basic question.

[35:58]

If there is no self, who is it that wills? Everyone's looking back. If all decisions are simply determined by condition, then who's personally responsible? And this is not easily answered, of course, and it may require, in some cases, a profound insight into the nature of self to clarify. And, you know, it may be kind of, you know, as Alan Wallace answers this kind of question, is that although we may be empty of an autonomous self, we function in the phenomenal world as autonomous beings, right? As long as that is so, we are responsible for what we do. So another way to say this is that, well, the ultimate nature of all things is free of an inherent nature. autonomous existence, we still live and engage in a relative conditioned world with a relative conditioned self.

[37:10]

We can't escape that. We can't go off to emptiness land, right? You're a relative conditioned being. And by the nature of this relative conditioned self, we have responsibility for our relative and conditioned choices and karmic activities. So studying karma entails studying how it is that we can take responsibility for our lives, the ways in which we can navigate them, as well as how we relate to the circumstances. And as Alan Wallace, again, he notes, rather than asking the metaphysical question of whether humans already have free will, Buddhism takes a more pragmatic approach, exploring ways in which we can acquire greater freedom to make wise choices that are truly conducive to our own and others' genuine well-being. So if we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that the idea of responsibility is it's a human convention.

[38:17]

We made it up. Because what matters to us is moral accountability. Whether or not someone's behavior is good or just. Justice is a human conception. It doesn't exist outside of the human mind. And animals and trees and stars don't worry about who's responsible and what's good or bad. And I appreciate how a former Zen Center alumnus, Koki Orenko, he frames real well in terms of moral accountability in this way. He writes that Given that we live in a world where people do believe in free will, then it's wise that we agree to go along with this conventional appearance. If other people believe I am a self with actual free will and that I am responsible for my actions, then as a bodhisattva, I would vow to go along with them.

[39:22]

A bodhisattva is one who is willing to play the game of appearing as a sentient being who is in control of herself and living in accord with other sentient beings, completely willing to receive the effects of karma, even though ultimately the set of conditions we call me that did the action is not the same set of conditions called me that receives the result. The freedom of the Bodhisattva is that by seeing the illusory nature of free will, they are willing to receive whatever effects come. Also, since they are no longer so concerned about their limited self, they don't take advantage of others. They don't say, since I'm not in control, I'll hitch you. They don't cause harm, since intentionally harming others always comes from thinking there is a self that is in control and must meet its needs even at the expense of others.

[40:31]

So in Zen, as we see powerfully invoked in Dogen's treatment of the koan Hakucho's thoughts, I know there's a class right now that's studying that particular koan and Dogen's views on it. It's not said that a person of great practice, an awakened being, for example, no longer falls into cause and effect. It's that they are no longer blind to cause and effect. That means they are always aware of conditionality, which makes them quite harmless and quite, you could say, beneficial to others. So... I'll just conclude by saying that perhaps the most important thing for us to recognize here and now, the myriad ways in which we are not free. You recognize the ways you are not free to make wise choices and follow the courses of actions that are truly beneficial to our own and others' well-being.

[41:40]

And at the same time, to continue to devote ourselves to the cultivation of such a freedom. And again, Are we not free? Due to karmic consciousness, due to conditioned mind and conditioned volition. But, as Buddhism teaches, we can recondition our minds and our karmic hatter patterns to support a more beneficial path. This takes faith. This takes continuous effort, a certain deep level of trust. giving ourselves over to this process. So I want to thank you all for your kind attention and patience. And I continue to appreciate our collective exploration into that, I would say, the complexity of the study of karma, because it's very complex. And I see, once again, I've gone on too long, and therefore there's no time for Q&A.

[42:44]

For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:10]

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