The Riddle of Fate and Free-Will

[Jonathan Bricklin]

Vidyasankar Sundaresan writes:

[...] Swami Sivananda explains the advaita viewpoint of prArabdha
> and karma very well. Coming from the mouth of a sannyAsin, it should
carry
> weight for at least some members on our list. And it should also come as
a
> revelation to many, that such Hindu teachers do not teach a blind
fatalism
> that many of them have been accused of.


Anyone who thinks he or she knows what the next moment, year or decade is
going to be is not blind, but "seeing things."   Predetermined is not to be
confused with predeterminable.  Stephen Hawking put it nicely:  "Is
everything determined?  The answer is yes, it is.  But it might as well not
be, because we can never know what is determined."   As for karma, which,
according to the Advaitin scholar Eliott Deutsch, must have for the
Advaitin the status of a "convenient fiction,"  discussions of it never
seem to offer a single example, even a single hypothetical example.


Jonathan Bricklin