Free will

[Sarva gattah]

Quote:suchandra

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD style="BORDER-RIGHT: #666666 1px solid; PADDING-RIGHT: 3ex; BORDER-TOP: #666666 1px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 3ex; BORDER-LEFT: #666666 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: #666666 1px solid" bgColor=#e0e0e0>Suchandra - "The jivas always have a free will and one meaning of free will is the option to act wrongly".

 

 

 

 

The principle of free will has religious, ethical, and scientific implications. For example, in the religious realm, free will may imply that an omnipotent divinity does not assert its power over individual will and choices. In ethics, it may imply that individuals can be held morally accountable for their actions. In the scientific realm, it may imply that the actions of the body, including the brain and the mind, are not wholly determined by physical causality. The question of free will has been a central issue since the beginning of philosophical thought.

 

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I understand that the jivas always have a free will and one meaning of free will is the option to act wrongly.

 

Prajāpati: "Krishna has given us free will to choose or reject the godly life. Should the government take away that free will of whether they choose to…

 

Prabhupāda: Krishna says He has given free will, but His personal advice is: “I am now talking to you the most confidential words.” Sarva- guhyatamam. “You stop your so-called free will. Just surrender to Me.” This is the most confidential. “If you surrender to Me, that is good for you. But if you go on keeping your free will you’ll not be happy.”

 

There is also free will. When you come to the Krishna platform you serve Krishna with free will, not that you become a stone. There is free will. Just like our devotees they are dressing Krishna nicely, is there no free will? They are cooking for Krishna. Is there no free will? The free will is there.

 

The Māyāvādī philosopher says, the Buddha philosopher says, that “Stop this free will, and then you become happy.” But our proposition is not to stop free will but purify free will. Purify. Not stop these eyes.

 

Just if it is suffering from cataract, cure that cataract. Keep the eyes. And their proposition, “Get out these eyes and throw it. Then there will be no more seeing what is right and wrong.” That is their proposition. Nirviśeṣa-vādī. Nirviśeṣa means no speciality, no varieties. That is nirviśeṣa. And śūnya, zero. When it is zero, then there is no question of right and wrong. So our philosophy is not that."

 

Morning Walk Conversation

with His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda

December 13, 1973, Los Angeles

 

 

Hayagrīva: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel sees the religion of India as a religion in which man is handed laws from a God who is exterior to man, from a will that is entirely foreign to man. And he sees this to be opposed to what he considers to be a more advanced religion, in which the individual soul is lifted to the supernatural through the use of reason, internal sanction or subjective confirmation.

 

In other words, he sees the Indian religion as being blind following of an exterior will. He says that man can only attain God through the exercise of his own free will.

 

Prabhupāda: Then why the animals cannot? Animal is given complete free will.

 

Hayagrīva: He says animals have no will.

 

Prabhupāda: That is another foolishness. If he has no will, why he goes to different direction?

 

Hayagrīva: He says that animals have no right to life because they have no will.

 

Prabhupāda: Just see. What is the symptom of life? First of all settle up, how do you know? We can distinguish that this table has no life, that a small ant on the table there is life. How you distinguish, that here is life, there is no life? Then what is the symptom of life?

 

If the symptom of life is there in animal, there is life. Why they will say there is no life? What is the philosophy? There is life. He is eating; you are eating. He is sleeping; you are sleeping. He is having sex; you are having sex. He is also afraid of enemy; you are also afraid. Then why do you say that you have life, he has no life? What is the symptom of life? This is the primary symptom of life.

 

So if he has got these primary symptoms of life, how do you say he has no life? That means you have no intelligence even.

 

Philosophy Discussions

with His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

HEGEL.HAY

[Murali_Mohan_das]

Srila Prabhupada has soooo much common sense, doesn't he? He just cuts through all the mental crap like a knife.

 

I've been arguing these points with some hard-core meat-eaters on another site. They dogmatically insist that animals have no rights because they cannot stand up and demand their rights in the Queen's English (or something silly like that).

[theist]

 

Prabhupāda: Krishna says He has given free will, but His personal advice is: “I am now talking to you the most confidential words.” Sarva- guhyatamam. “You stop your so-called free will. Just surrender to Me.” This is the most confidential. “If you surrender to Me, that is good for you. But if you go on keeping your free will you’ll not be happy.”

"so-called" free will. A living being tightly bound up by the three modes of nature thinks he is excercising his free will at every moment. This is the joke maya plays on the conditioned soul.

 

We ar controled living entities with tiny free will. We can be controlled by love for Krsna or material lust. Love of Krsna sets our will free to express that love for Krishna in what everway we choose whereas lust in this world always brings unwanted karmic rebounds that frustrate us at every step. Woven in a way that is basically undiscernable by me there is some infintesimal excercise of free will but that is so influenced by the modes that I have not been able to see it in a pure expression in my own life.