Often, our life’s course is not our own. We already have a choice. chosen by a superior whom we follow, by our environment, by our routines, by our morality, or by our compulsions. We hardly ever choose our lives. In this very moment, we are on a journey in life. Do we really have the free choice to choose it?
Even the decisions we think we make based on our own free will aren’t actually our own. Our decisions are influenced by the environment we grew up in. All of our wants, anxieties, aspirations, preferences, inhibitions, and goals are out of our control. We have been fed these since the moment of our birth. These were not our choice of free will. We are who we are now because of everything, including the gods we worship, our likes and hates, favorite colors, clothes, foods, and musical genres. Everything we do is governed by the upbringing we received.
Do we actually possess free will, then? We assume we are free because, when faced with a situation, we believe we have a choice in how to react and that we could have acted quite differently. We don’t pause, though, to consider why we chose the course we did. This is largely subconscious. The window seat on a plane, the sort of food ordered at a restaurant, even the toothpaste and the news channel are all things we do without even realizing they are habits.
We hardwire everything into our brains. We repeatedly play out stories and drill routines as part of our habits. Our brains automatically engage these circuits and pathways as default ones.
Zen teachings have a concept called shoshin, or the beginner’s mind which is about letting go of one’s preconceptions. In fact, there is a problem with becoming an expert in anything since the brain’s pathways cannot break out of preconceived notions and ideas. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna asserts, “Everywhere, it is the dispositions (gunas) of nature (prakriti) that perform all works. But deluded by egoism, man thinks, ‘I am the doer’.”
On the other end of the spectrum is the deluded man who believes that he needs to do absolutely nothing since the divine will take care of everything. There’s a Sufi story about such a man, who was walking through the forest. He came upon a fox lying at the bottom of a tree. On going closer, he realised that the fox had lost its legs. The man began to wonder as to how it survived. Suddenly, he heard a growl, and leapt behind the tree in fear. He saw a huge tiger walking towards him and began to tremble. The tiger ignored him and walked straight to the limbless fox and sat down near him. In the tiger’s mouth was some animal it had killed. The tiger ate its fill and got up, leaving the rest of the meat for the fox. The man was astonished and left a while later.
