Is Free Will An Illusion?

It feels so real that there is something inside of you, inherently independent, making a free choice. But what if that assumption is wrong?
What are the implications of believing you have free will if you don't? What does it mean if you are a spiritual seeker - trying to surrender, to flow in peace and harmony while still holding on to a belief that you have free will?

Transcript

We have a pretty big topic today,

A very deep and profound topic that can sometimes be a little bit unsettling for people.

So I am going to go really slowly introducing this topic today to help you really understand what it is I'm trying to point to here,

Because it is an integral part of our practice,

Of our path.

If we want to awaken,

It is an integral part.

So I want to start with a Chief Seattle quote,

A Native American Indian.

Humankind has not woven the web of life.

We are but one thread in it.

Whatever we do to the web,

We do to ourselves.

All things are bound together.

All things connect.

And a central part,

Or actually the central tenet of Buddhism is that all things are interconnected,

Are interdependent,

That have a cause and effect relationship,

That everything is arising through causes and conditions in each and every moment and passing away as those conditions change,

That there is nothing inherent or solid in there,

That everything we see,

Experience that we are in the universe is interdependent and interconnected.

And to use just a very simple analogy to start,

One that we can all wrap our heads around,

If we take an oak seed and we put the oak seed in the ground in some good soil,

And we give it some water,

And that little seedling starts to come up above the ground,

And it gets some sunlight,

And it gets some more water,

That oak seed will turn into an oak tree.

Not independently.

The oak seed itself was dependent upon the previous oak tree upon which it fell.

Upon the previous oak tree,

Upon the previous oak tree,

We could keep going back again and again and again.

And so the oak tree,

We can see how the oak tree arises through causes and conditions and then passes away through causes and conditions.

We are of the same nature.

We are who we are because of our causes and conditions.

Because of the parents that we were born to,

Right?

50% of our DNA from our mother,

50% of our DNA from our father,

Their DNA from their parents,

And their parents,

And their parents,

All those different causes and conditions,

Previous causes,

Creating a unique strand of DNA here.

The blueprint the blueprint for Meredith,

For Jackie,

For AJ.

And where we were born plays a role in how we,

In who we are today.

If we were born in Australia,

In America,

In Alaska,

In Cambodia,

In Papua New Guinea,

In Yemen,

In Afghanistan,

Wherever we were born,

Those causes and conditions shape who we are.

The time period that we were born,

A 20-year-old in 1950 is very different than a 20-year-old today or a 20-year-old in 1850.

And the views and the opinions and the beliefs of the people that we were surrounded by as we were growing up also shape us into who we are today.

And if we look back on our lives,

If you were to create a timeline of your life and you looked back on it,

You could see how one small change and it would have been a completely different life.

You would not be who you are today.

You would not have the life that you have today.

If you had met,

If you're married and you have kids,

Maybe you have grandkids,

And you met your spouse 40 years ago at a party,

And let's say instead of going to the party that night,

You felt sick and you didn't go,

One little change,

You would have a completely different life.

I often think back on my own experience,

One of the most significant points that seemed to nudge this one off in a certain direction was because in the 90s Deepak Chopra had a meditation center in La Jolla in San Diego.

And in 99,

When I transferred to the Merrill Lynch office in La Jolla,

It was two blocks from my office.

And back then there were no meditation apps,

There were no apps,

Of course,

Right?

You know,

We didn't have all of this that we have today.

But because of the good conditions,

The good conditions of my suffering,

And that that Chopra center happened to be two blocks from my office,

Every morning I would go and meditate.

And two years later,

He moved that meditation center to another part of San Diego,

Which would not have made it feasible for me to go in the middle of the workday.

Eight o'clock for us,

Because we worked market hours,

Was the middle of the workday.

So it would not have been possible for me to leave and go and do that.

If he had moved that center two years earlier,

I would have had a completely different path,

Right?

It feels so much like in this moment,

We are the ones that are the,

You know,

Charting out our lives,

That we are making our lives happening.

But when we look back on our lives,

We can see how one little change,

And it would have been a completely different life.

And so while we could look at all the causes and conditions that would bring you on to a Dharma talk today,

Right,

Your own suffering or dissatisfaction in life and yearning to find some,

Some solution to this,

To be exposed to meditation or a book or something that kind of brought you along this path,

You know,

Brought you here to be a Dharma talk,

Hundreds,

Thousands,

Millions of billions of causes and conditions that brought you here to this moment.

And even if we just think about in the last few hours,

Right,

The things that did happen and didn't happen,

That enabled you to keep nudging forward to be on this call right now.

The fact that you weren't sick,

Your partner wasn't sick,

Your dog wasn't sick,

You were able to be on the call.

The fact that you didn't get a phone call from someone 20 minutes ago that said,

I really need you right now,

I'm going through something really difficult,

Right?

That the internet is working.

Last week on my Sunday morning call,

Jackie was on it,

You know,

I lost the internet,

Right?

So that the internet is working for us,

That Zoom is working for us,

Right?

And we accept,

We go,

Well,

I don't have control over whether I get sick or not.

I don't have control over whether someone calls me and needs my help or,

Or I don't have control over the internet,

We readily accept all that.

But I wanted to be on the call.

Oh,

I wanted it.

That was the part of me that was controlling this.

But you no more control your wants,

Your likes or your dislikes,

Than you control the weather,

Or the internet,

Or whether you are sick or not.

I like Diet Coke.

I don't like Diet Pepsi.

I have no control over that.

I can't,

No matter how much I could tell myself,

I want to like Diet Pepsi,

I don't like it.

I can't want to like Diet Pepsi.

I don't have a choice in that.

You don't have a choice in whether you like to be on Dharma talks or not.

Just as the people don't have a choice that don't like to be on Dharma talks.

It's their causes and conditions,

Right?

We don't determine our likes,

What we like and what we don't like.

So what I'm talking about here is that we do not have free will,

That free will is an illusion.

And when we hear the quotes from Chief Seattle and the other great masters that talk about how we're all interconnected,

And we're all part of this great web,

This giant tapestry,

And we love it.

We lap it up.

We love it.

Yes,

I want to be connected to everything.

But then we still kind of hold our hands behind our back and go,

But this little part of me is making decisions.

It's independent of all of this.

We still want to hold on to that little part of us that is not not interdependent and interconnected.

And this is where it gets a little scary for people.

Because I'm kind of threatening your very existence of who you think you are,

The you that is the captain of your life.

And we want so much to believe the teachings of that little separate self,

That ego,

That insufferable little voice that is always carrying on is not me.

And yet we still hang on to this idea,

But no,

There is a little separate me over here that's making decisions.

And we can't hold the two things.

They're both,

In fact,

The same thing.

It is the separate self just disguised as the one in control,

As the one making decisions.

And why it feels scary is,

Of course,

Because you think you are something.

And I'm not telling you you are nothing.

You're all there.

I can see you clearly.

I am here.

What I'm saying is you do not exist the way you think you exist.

You are not nothing,

Right?

You are no thing.

You are not a thing.

You are a process that is arising each and every moment through millions and billions and trillions of causes and conditions,

Things that are happening and are not happening,

That keep nudging you a little bit forward.

But we fall back on the only evidence we have that says,

But it feels,

It feels like I'm doing this.

Just like it felt like to thousands,

Excuse me,

For thousands of years.

Scientists,

Astronomers,

Humans believe the earth was the center of the universe because it feels like I'm looking out at everything and we are the center.

It feels like the sun is revolving around the earth.

It rises and it goes down.

It must be revolving around the earth.

And because of this false assumption that scientists had for a long time,

Their calculations weren't working.

They had a false assumption.

And it is the same in spirituality.

We hold on to a false assumption.

We want to believe we're not the separate self.

We want to believe we're not the ego.

But we still hold on to this false assumption that there is something acting independent,

Inherently independent,

That is separate from all of this.

And as long as we think there is something here,

We cannot see what is really going on.

We're not even looking for it because we're so zeroed in on that something.

And so when we look to see what's really going on,

We notice when we're really looking,

There is hearing.

There's no hearer.

There is thinking.

There's no thinker.

There is doing.

There's no doer.

And we're all okay with that to some degree.

But then we can make this next leap.

There is decision making happening,

Choicing happening,

Brain processes happening.

But there is not a decision maker.

There is no one thing making the choice.

And so as long as we hold on to this belief that we are independent and separate,

We will be lost in the illusion.

We will not come out of the illusion.

You can't say to yourself,

I don't believe in the separate self.

I don't believe in the ego.

And yet I do believe over here,

I am independent.

There is something over here making a decision,

Something separate from all of this.

It's the same thing.

It's just the ego again,

Because it's thought claiming after something's happened,

Thought claiming responsibility.

It's the same thing.

And the implications for understanding this,

For knowing this to be true,

Are astounding.

Because we can finally accept who we are.

You wouldn't be anyone else.

You could not be anyone else based on all of the causes and conditions of your life.

And we spend so much of our lives wishing we had done something differently,

Wishing we had turned out somehow differently.

You wouldn't have done anything differently.

We imagine,

Because we think there was free will,

I could have made a different choice.

No,

You could not.

Because all of the causes and conditions that nudged you in one direction versus another proved that.

Now,

Of course,

We can look back in hindsight and say,

Well,

Now with new information,

A new cause,

I would have done something differently,

But not then.

And now that's a new cause for the future.

A similar situation arises,

You probably do act differently based on new information.

But there is no room for regret anymore.

You wouldn't have done anything differently.

All of the things,

The guilt that we carry around,

The shame,

The mistakes that we've made,

All the shit that we've done that we beat ourselves up endlessly about,

You wouldn't have done anything differently.

It was all based on causes and conditions.

So we can accept like the good,

The bad,

The ugly,

The beautiful,

All of that came into making who you are in this moment.

And if you could not be anyone other than who you are based on causes and conditions,

Then neither can anyone else.

So when we take things personally,

When someone's unkind to us,

It's not personal at all.

It's causes and conditions.

I'm not suggesting that people don't have consequences for their actions.

We absolutely have consequences for our actions,

Right?

The law of karma,

Of course.

You break the law and you get caught,

You're going to pay a price for that.

If you're treating someone really badly,

You know,

If someone's being really unkind to me,

Taking advantage of me in some way,

You know,

They're not going to be my friend any longer.

But I am not going to harbor any anger or hatred towards that person.

In fact,

Just the opposite,

Because it's not personal.

Like we say to ourselves,

And in,

And I love that book,

The Four Agreements from Don Miguel Ruiz,

Where one of the agreements is,

Don't take things personally.

And again,

We all go,

Yeah,

That feels,

Wouldn't that feel great to not take things personally anymore?

But we take things personally because we think there is something in here that is independent to take it personally.

If you truly see that everything is arising through causes and conditions,

Then there is nothing to take personally.

And I don't just say this theoretically.

I shared this at one of our Dharma talks down here in La Ventana in the last class.

And I think it's important because I think sometimes people think I live in some kind of glass house here,

Definitely not glass,

Concrete house,

But you know,

That I live in some kind of conditions that no one's ever unkind to me.

I'm a teacher,

A spiritual teacher,

How could anyone be unkind to me?

And I had this situation earlier this year,

The beginning of this year,

This woman had texted me that I know,

And I was friends with at one point.

And I had really distanced myself from her over the last few years,

Barely seen her at all.

She comes down to La Ventana in the winter.

And she had texted me.

And I saw the text.

And I didn't respond right away.

I was kind of trying to decide how am I going to respond to this?

And it was just a pretty,

In fact,

She was asking,

Are you doing meditation classes?

Can I come to your meditation class?

And because she's a little,

She's suffering,

I'll say that,

I was a little bit concerned on whether I wanted her to come here for our meditation classes or not.

So I was thinking about it.

So I really had kind of two sides,

Right?

Not me deciding,

But there was some kind of giving some space and time,

Like she really needs the help,

She could really come here,

And she could also be really disruptive to the group.

So I was trying to give it some time to see what the decision was going to be,

What the choice was going to magically appear as it always does.

And about seven hours later,

Because she had texted me on WhatsApp,

You can see the checkmark that someone has seen your message.

She texts me again.

And she says,

I know you saw my message.

And then she went into this absolute vicious,

Cruel,

Calling me every name under the book.

I mean,

The most horrible thing.

I've never had anyone speak to me in this way before.

It was unbelievable,

The things that she was calling me,

Because I hadn't responded fast enough to her text.

So of course,

You know,

I'm human,

Right?

I had that minute of like,

Oh my God,

I kind of couldn't believe what I was reading.

But because I also very clearly understand that I am not controlling any of this.

I am arising through causes and conditions.

And so is she arising through causes and conditions.

And I cannot imagine the causes and conditions that this woman goes through.

And there was no hatred,

No anger,

No wanting to fire off a nasty text.

I did respond,

I responded in quite a soft,

Neutral tone,

I will say,

And then I blocked her,

Right?

Because I'm not going to carry on a conversation with someone when you said these kind of,

I mean,

They were vicious,

Horrible things to me,

Right?

But I hold her in my heart still every day after my meditation,

Whether I'm dedicating my merit to her,

Or just holding her in my heart,

Because the causes and conditions that she has are creating an enormous amount of suffering.

No one would respond like that if they were not suffering immensely.

And I gotta tell you,

If that had happened to me 10 years ago,

I'd still every time I would remember it,

I would still like,

I can't believe she said that,

You know,

What kind of person says this?

And there is zero,

Zero dialogue going on here about why did she do that?

There is just the seeing that this woman is suffering.

There are consequences,

Yes,

I blocked her after that,

Right?

If I see her in the street,

I wouldn't be rude,

I wouldn't be unkind,

But I wouldn't stop and talk either,

Right?

Because this is,

She is the result of her causes and conditions.

I am the result of my causes and conditions.

How,

What,

Where could I possibly stand in having hatred or anger towards this woman?

So when we want true compassion,

True forgiveness,

Right?

It comes out of true wisdom,

The wisdom of really knowing who you are and what everything else is,

How everything is arising here.

Truly understanding,

Not clawing yourself back,

Oh,

I better do another loving kindness meditation.

And I'm not knocking loving kindness,

I recommend it a lot,

It's great,

Right?

Because there are certain stages in our practice we have to go through.

I didn't have to do one loving kindness meditation because it was just seeing the truth of the reality.

So we let go of so much anger and hatred that again,

We carry around for people that have harmed us,

Not just this year,

But 20 years ago,

30 years ago,

We carry this around.

So it frees us from that.

And we let go of the steering wheel,

Because we realize,

Oh,

There's no one in the driver's seat to begin with anyway.

And when we let go of the steering wheel,

This belief,

This kind of illusion that I'm controlling everything,

The ride is still happening,

It's happening regardless of whether you think you're controlling it or not,

Right?

It's still happening,

It's just that you're not suffering anymore,

You're enjoying the ride,

The ups,

The downs,

Sigh,

Kind of moving around,

Ah,

This is what's happening now.

It's all just causes and conditions arising in each and every moment.

You are like,

I think of it like as a little,

Like on a pool table,

You know,

A ball gets thrown into,

You know,

It hits all the other balls.

And all of that motion is moving balls in different directions.

And that's what we are,

We are just being nudged in all these different directions.

And I know I've brought this,

I've had this topic before,

We did this class,

It was the last class we had in La Ventana,

Very,

Very similar to the class I'm giving tonight.

One of the pushbacks that people have on this is that,

Well,

If I'm not controlling anything,

Right,

If I'm just a result of causes and conditions,

Then why would I do anything?

You're not doing anything.

You weren't doing anything before.

All of this was happening without your belief that you were doing it,

Right?

That's the ego again,

Coming to come in and claim this,

Right?

Who would you be without me?

You know,

Don't let go of me,

You wouldn't do anything.

But you wouldn't,

You,

You,

An individual independent of everything else,

Doesn't exist.

You,

The you that is the parts,

You know,

All of the parts and the causes and conditions arising in each moment is arising based on a million,

Billion,

Trillion different causes and conditions.

It's still going to happen,

The likes that you have,

You're still going to like.

The dislikes that you have,

You're still going to dislike.

It's not that it fundamentally changes who you are.

I liked Diet Coke 10 years ago,

I still like Diet Coke today.

You know,

Will I still like it in 10 more years?

I don't know,

Because I'm not controlling any of that.

And that is the point to let go and to recognize you weren't controlling this anyway.

You are not going to,

Um,

You're not going to turn in to some little blob and not do anything.

It's just that you're not going to suffer anymore.

That's the difference.

You know,

All this controlling that we think we've been doing,

All this manipulating in our thoughts,

I'm going to make this happen over there,

And that's going to happen over there.

And then this happens,

And I'll say this,

And they'll say that,

Right?

We weren't making any of this happen.

Right?

We're just driving ourselves crazy.

And we're staying trapped in the illusion.

It's not that we don't exist.

We just don't exist the way we think we do.

And as Alan Watts says,

And I'll paraphrase this quote,

Um,

In waking up to who you are,

You have to recognize what you are not,

Or you have to let go of what you are not.

And we come to spirituality because we want to let go.

We are tired of suffering.

It's why we come on talks like this.

But that we still,

You know,

Get almost like kind of like one hand behind our back,

Fingers crossed.

I still just want to hold on to this thing over here.

And as long as you hold on to that,

This belief that you are,

There is a part of you that is separate and independent,

That is making the decisions,

Then you are still lost in the illusion.

And so I would suggest for you,

I would suggest one thing,

First of all,

Write out your timeline,

Go,

You know,

Sketch it out,

You know,

Write some of the big movements that,

You know,

Moving houses,

Changing jobs,

Meeting someone significant,

Write them,

Write them all out,

And then go back and look at it,

Spend some time with it.

Well,

What if that hadn't happened?

Would have been a completely different timeline.

If this hadn't happened,

A completely different timeline,

Right?

Really examine it,

Look at this.

And then as you go about your day,

Notice how when you get somewhere and then think,

How did I get here?

Well,

There was a thought to go to the store.

Well,

Let's see,

Do I control my thoughts either?

No,

Right?

None of us knows what our next thought is going to be.

I don't know what the next words are that are going to come out of this mouth.

I'm going to have a general outline for the talk,

Right?

But there's,

I don't know what the next words are,

None of us knows what our next thought is going to be.

So there was a thought to go to the store based on some causes and conditions of a remembering you're using,

You know,

Something in the kitchen,

You use the last bit of olive oil,

That cause and condition,

Let's go to the market because I also need to do this.

And then as you get there,

Just again,

Keep thinking back to all of the things that got you there,

Right?

Or as you're in your house,

And you're just putzing around,

It's a normal kind of day,

There's not much going on.

And then you find yourself sitting on your yoga mat doing yoga,

How did I get here?

What was the causes and conditions that brought me here?

Oh,

Maybe I had a little ache in my back,

I didn't have a class to teach,

I had some free time,

You know,

Like look at all of the causes and conditions of how you are ending up where you are ending up.

Because if you don't see this,

Then you are still in the illusion,

And we are here because you don't want to be in the illusion anymore.

And we kind of have it a little bit,

It's interesting with spiritual teachings,

We start with talking about our attachments,

And you've got to let go,

And you've got to surrender,

And everything's impermanent,

And you're grasping at rainbows,

Right?

And we have to start there,

I couldn't teach this as a beginner class,

Right,

Wouldn't make any sense to anyone.

But then we get to the point where you see,

Oh,

There is actually nothing grasping.

It's not just that the things that I'm grasping at are impermanent,

And not inherently existing,

There is nothing grasping.

And that is when you truly let go,

When you truly surrender,

Because you recognize there is nothing here,

Inherent,

Solid,

Independent grasping.

It is just causes and conditions arising in each moment and passing away in each moment.

You are not nothing,

You are just not a thing,

You are just not what you have perceived yourself to be.

You love the quote in the beginning from Chief Seattle,

We're all interconnected,

We're all part of this great web of life.

Through all of the kindness series that we did the last seven weeks,

We kept focusing on that connection,

We're all connected,

We love this.

Look at this false assumption of where you keep pulling yourself out of the web,

Because until you do that,

You won't believe you are a part of the web.

And when we don't think we're connected,

We suffer.

Reviews

Excellent talk.

Amazingly well explained!. Its almost as if the idea of free will Gives us the ability to mess up and suffer. one of the best talks I’ve heard on free will! Thank you 😊

Thank you. 🙏
I found that difficult! I fully accept that much of my 'free will' is illusory but can't accept that all my choices are determined. I had a choice to listen to this talk, or one of many others, or watch tv or snooze! I accept that these choice could be influenced by my past and will influence further choices... but I feel I had a choice in creating my experience over the past hour... I can't accept my life is determined without my involvement at all!
Perhaps I am just not getting it! 🤣
Anyway, great talk, thank you. 🙏

Wow! This was very powerful, profound and eye opening. Yes I accept that my life and our whole world is much bigger than I can understand. Im a part of that. But a childish part of me still wants to think that I'm unique and i have some individual ideas which are just mine. I don't want to be a bad or an abnormal guy for thinking like that. 😂Thank you so much for this really wonderful talk! 😀