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Self vs. Volition - Choice Paradox
zen_world
Veteran
Guys,
Can you explain to me how volition or intention/willing can exists without self?
In Budhdist point of view, things are mechanical. One condition leads to another and things exist the way they are.
In abidhamma, volition is categorized under mental factors. Now, I can understand there is no thinker but only thinking, there is no seer but only seeing. It makes sense to me that all these acts do not require a do-er. They do exists interdependently.
But volition is different. How come you can choose or intent to do something without a do-er, without self.
If there are two choices with equally weighted probabilities (50%-50%), then one path has to be fulfilled - the path will be selected based on your intention. If this is a completely mechanical process, then the paths with equal probability can NOT be choosen. Because the mechanics cannot assign a specific path randomly, the system would collapse or stuck.
To choose the path, there must be an active agent in play with free will.
Do you agree/disagree?
If you agree, the whole notion of non-self fails, no? Maybe there is no permanent self but there still is self?
Who is choosing the path?
Can you explain to me how volition or intention/willing can exists without self?
In Budhdist point of view, things are mechanical. One condition leads to another and things exist the way they are.
In abidhamma, volition is categorized under mental factors. Now, I can understand there is no thinker but only thinking, there is no seer but only seeing. It makes sense to me that all these acts do not require a do-er. They do exists interdependently.
But volition is different. How come you can choose or intent to do something without a do-er, without self.
If there are two choices with equally weighted probabilities (50%-50%), then one path has to be fulfilled - the path will be selected based on your intention. If this is a completely mechanical process, then the paths with equal probability can NOT be choosen. Because the mechanics cannot assign a specific path randomly, the system would collapse or stuck.
To choose the path, there must be an active agent in play with free will.
Do you agree/disagree?
If you agree, the whole notion of non-self fails, no? Maybe there is no permanent self but there still is self?
Who is choosing the path?
0
Comments
you are a process of various things coming together. then there is a concept placed over that.
so mind, body, consciousness + my name (idea of personality).
you exist nominally. thus if you change your ideas about yourself then you change who you are. this is only possible because you are empty of inherent existence. if you weren't empty of inherent existence then you couldn't exist. emptiness points to infinite potentiality and change.
so once you realize this or have your ahha moment.. you realize that there is no true agent. what driving force is there now?
there is only the natural flow of things. what is the natural flow? causality.
either you can actively engage with whats in front of you with intention. or you can just chill out.
we still exist here. just not as we "thought". we are just constantly changing processes. there is only the verb. the subject is projected afterwards. it's okay to define yourself as long as you don't cling to it. cling and you suffer. lol.
if you study and really experientment with what you do and how you do it and what you think and how you think, etc. you can start living life now. engaging with the world and seeing how the flow expresses itself is interesting.
byebye selfishness.
if it doesn't exists than how do I choose?
it's not that you are these parts. the parts are just coming together and you have this experience of life!
okay now what happens is that we project concepts or ideas and construct stories.
that is what consider "self".
the stories are just ideas. if we create new stories then we have a "new" personality. haha.
that is the self in the old view.
there is no "self". all is empty. you cannot find it, you're right.
but here we are. we are in the world still. we can still engage with others.
realizing emptiness is great, now see how emptiness moves. how do you function? do you still eat? you still talk to friends? how is your conduct? are you more compassionate? are you clinging onto things?
as jesus said. to be in the world but not of it.
with the realization of emptiness you realize all is empty, thus you let go.
but like all great things. time to do laundry.
i think the issue is you're trying to view this from the old view. there is no answer. life isn't about making clear or right choices. we just do what is most obvious moment to moment. to the ego that is terrifying. to the free mind that is how its always been. just do what naturally arises. doesn't work? then use causality. fix it. move on. live life.
But this doesn't explain my question.
If self is various parts coming together then there is no self that exists independently.
If there is no such self, how the act of choosing happens? Who chooses?
If a choice is only a result of past causes then what happens when you need to choose a path that has 50-50 probability ? Which one you go? who chooses? that requires a self that exists independently from all the causes.
but i'll give you this example.
when i am thirst, i get a glass of water.
when i am hungry, i get some food.
moment to moment i do what is necessary.
learning how emptiness function in this world is obvious.
but when one clings to emptiness or form, then there is only confusion.
the body has to pee, then the body goes to toilet.
the mind wonders should i pee or shouldn't i pee? where should i pee?
=]
Just take a piece of paper, cut in half, and put one half in your right hand and the other piece in your left hand. In 10 seconds you will choose one. Close your eyes and wait. Then you pick one and drop the other. Now what is the cause of that? The cause of you choosing the paper in left or right hand?
It is easy to see the causes of peeing, or drinking water because there is an obvious cause.
Now, do you agree your choice is still conditioned somehow when you choose that piece of paper in your right or left hand?
in awareness you see left and right.. and then you choose..
the event of "picking" is conditioned but how choosing left-or-right is conditioned?
I could have chosen left instead of right or vice versa? What is the conditoning here?
Anatta is not-self it is not 'no self'..
In other words the self we refer to is a stream of causes and conditions. In that vein every moment both is and isn't a choice.
you can choose right or you can choose left...fifty fifty...then I choose left or right. is there any conditioning here, sorry I don't understand..
I think so..
Anyhow here is a cool short story called: The Lady or the Tiger? By Frank Stockton..
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LadyTige.shtml
One interesting thing is that when we make a 'decision', that decision is actually made in the brain before we actually realise we've made it. It can be witnessed via brain scanning techniques. It was explained that our 'brain' knows the sort of stuff 'we' like (sounds kinda like karmic conditioning), and makes the choice; then 'we' later think we made the choice. Sometimes it is witnessed that our brain makes the choice about 6 seconds prior to us making the choice.
But the program is well worth watching if you have an interest in the nature of the 'self'
That kinda accords with my experience as a (recovered) alcoholic. Even though I wanted to stop drinking, I couldn't, until I was shown how to create the causes that enabled me to exercise my free will.
I'm saying that my own experience of 'free will' wasn't exactly free.
we can choose our actions, but ultimately we cannot control every outcome of such action as that is based on probability and certain conditions.
from my practice it has always been a practice of letting go and accepting what is. in doing so the illusion of a personal will has faded.
in some ways because there is only the infinite potentiality, which isn't limited by self views or clinging...one really becomes quite eccentric. in some ways a true individuality is born out of such realization of potentiality. there is nothing to hinder such potential.
but this isn't what we're here to talk about.
you can make choices and intend.
but how things work out is based on circumstance and causality.
while at the same time you realize that it's all a dream.
fun huh? sorry if that doesn't answer your question. i don't think anyone can answer it other than your own experience.
An excerpt from BuddhaNet about the 5 Aggregates:
Finally, there is the aggregate of mental formation or volition (Samskara). This aggregate may be described as a conditioned response to the object of experience. In this sense, it partakes of the meaning of habit as well. We have spent some time discussing the component of mental formation when we considered the twelve components of dependent origination. You will remember that on that occasion, we described mental formation as the impression created by previous actions, the habit energy stored up from countless former lives. Here, as one of the five aggregates also, the aggregate of mental formation plays a similar role. But it has not only a static value, it also has a dynamic value because just as our reactions are conditioned by former deeds, so are our responses here and now motivated and directed in a particular way by our mental formation or volition. Mental formation or volition therefore has a moral dimension just as perception has a conceptual dimension, and feeling has a emotional dimension. You will notice I use the terms mental formation and volition together. This is because each of these terms represents one half of the meaning of Samskara - mental formation represents the half that comes from the past, and volition represents the half that functions here and now. So mental formation and volition function to determine our responses to the objects of experience and these responses have moral consequences in the sense of wholesome, unwholesome or neutral.
Link: http://www.buddhanet.net/funbud14.htm
I am investigating the link between the volition and the phenomena of self.
In your opinion, what really is volition? Is it a seperate entity on its own, an energy, and idea, a thought, what is it? Is it simply a past karmic formation?
Seeing is seeing, hearing is hearing - so I have no problem associating noself with sense faculties, or awareness with noself but intention is not like that.
If everything is mechanical and only a process of cause and effect then there should be no need for intention or volition. Because everything will flow as it supposed to be - if we had no intention.
Just like a machine. The very basic existence of intention creates choices. And choices can only be made by a seperate entity, a truly existing entity.
you can run but there is no one running.
lately i've been opening my emotional body with mindfulness. i have boughts of sadness that arise out of no where, but it obvious that at one point i repressed my sadness. so now as i open my heart more the sadness comes and goes, but there is also the capacity to feel more.
when we integrate our whole human experience into truth we realize that there is no where to grasp. even emotions come and go. when we are empty, we allow everything to manifest. they come like thunderstorms and leave like thunderstorms.
when i see someone suffering if i am not attached to emptiness nor form. what is my action? instantly what arises is the willingness to help them.
while before the bodhicitta was forced. prior i had to create desires out of selfishness to help others. my helping of others was rooted in my own suffering, thus i could relate. i wanted my own freedom.
now with the natural function of bodhicitta there is just clear moment to moment functioning.
prior to insight one intends. after insight there is natural functioning if there is no clinging.
but one can still intend.
there never was an agent, yet the energy is still there. either we direct it will mindfulness or it directs itself based on circumstance.
also there cannot be anything that is independent. such thing could not make choices, nor could it interact with anything.
So right at that moment, you could choose to do wholesome act and you could also choose not to do wholesome act. Doesn't matter even if you become a prophet, you still have the option to do wholesome and unwholesome act. But that choice is always available...And if there was no "chooser", that choise would never be available. Because automaticaly it will lead to wholesome or unwholesome act based on previous conditions. The fact that choices are available and the fact that one of the choices are realized, indicates me an existence of "chooser"...
See you cannot apply this to sense faculties for instance. You always see, there is no need for seer. Because there is no act of "seeing" there is only "seeing".
Its only an awareness...
But choices requires an action. A doer. Because one of the choices have to be selected. Wtihout free will, how choices can be selected? Only past conditions? Hmmm...
Thats where I am confused...
Is a wave (what we take to be a "self") really separate from the ocean? Everything flows.
If everything flows as it supposed to be then there are no mistakes or errors. So nobody is barking up the wrong tree...how could it be? everything is the way it is...
If there are no choices and no free will agent - then our confusion is just part of the normal natural process.
we should also do not bother about buddhism or spirituality, because it is just the way it is.
Even letting go of everything doesn't matter because everything is just the way it is.
No matter what you do doesn't matter!
There are choices made by mind without self.
There is no individual, no mind, no self... only temporary phenomena arising and passing due to conditions.
However you understand it, it's going to conflict with other understandings. It's all a matter of perspective. Buddhism teaches us that there is no self, but while we're still under the delusion that we are an individual making decisions, we must be instructed in such terms.
Conventionally speaking, we appear to have functional choice via intention (cetana) operating within a broader framework of causality that conditions the choices available to us at any given time. However, on a deeper level, intention itself is a product of the aggregate of mental formations (sankharakhandha). Therefore, being a product or process within one of the aggregates, which themselves are types of processes and not-self (anatta), this type of internal decision maker or will-to-do, if you will, has its own requisite conditions and is also not-self, since whatever is conditioned and subject to change can't be said to have an unchanging essence or being.
In essence, volition itself isn't an illusion, it's simply not the result of an independent agent or self; and it, like everything else in the world, is ultimately the result causally determined processes. True free will requires an independent agent, and both Buddhism (as well as science) effectively deny such an agency. And while I tend to take a more moderate position myself, Buddhism is entirely compatible with causal determinism.
For example, Dhammanando Bhikkhu once gave me the example of a mosquito biting you on the nose: first you feel annoyed and want to squash it, but then you recall that you're a precept-observing Buddhist and so restrain yourself.
He explained that when this event is described in conventional terms, or according to the Sutta method, it might be said that you had a choice to kill the mosquito or to refrain, and that you chose the latter. But when it's described according to the Abhidhamma method, your abstention from killing wasn't due to choice but to the arising of kusala cetasikas (wholesome mental factors) such as moral shame and fear of wrong-doing (hiri & ottappa), and abstinence (virati), i.e., it was causally determined.
And then there are passages like this from the Dhammasangani (pp. 7-8): And the Atthasalini, pp.147-148: Moreover, I think this Abhidhammic position accords well with what Sam Harris writes about the illusion of free will here, here and here.
there is just moment to moment action.
we label and project wholesome/unwholesome afterwards.
how in the hell are we supposed to determine whether an act is wholesome or unwholesome?
we cannot. but we can only determine how if effects the mind. also if we cling all of this goes out the window.
moment to moment action is obvious when there is no cling to emptiness or form. then both emptiness and form can be used as they are the same thing. transcendence isn't avoidance. transcendence is total engagement with the inevitable.
you create the problem you solve the problem. you assert that there has to be an agent for choices to be made.
choices can be made without an agent. just like water moves around the rock in the river. the obvious move is obvious.
idk if i can clear it up for you man. you're going to have to do some sitting haha.
if i need money, i get a job.
if i am hungry, i eat.
if i need to meditate, then i meditate.
the subject is asserted and as you said there is only jobing or eating or meditating or awarenessing.
OK so processes only exist and subject/object is projected after the fact.
i don't think there is choice. for if there would it would have to be a choicing. or a process in itself based on causes/conditions.
i think the issue arises when you look retroactively. when a choice is made it is made. then it is thought about after the fact. or in this cause it is an abstract what if.
choices are made but it is choicing. there is no agent making the choice. there is only clear direction moment to moment process.
we can abstract and conceptualize all we want but life isn't lived from this angle. life is lived moment to moment on the spot. there is no thinking there is only pure action.
and even thinking is a process, a verb a pure action.
hahah
In Buddhism there are two truths, the absolute and the relative. And yet even these two truths are interdependent (this is just another way of saying emptiness is empty). The point is not to escape from the relative to cling to the absolute, but to remain in the relative is to be confused. The point ultimately is to abide in neither one. There's a time and a place for everything, but there is no fixity. There is no "ground of being," there is just this.
This is not the same thing as a sort of antinomian nihilism which says "Hey, if I'm already a Buddha, what am I bothering with Buddhism for?" The point is to awaken to that reality, not just assent to it intellectually. That's why meditation and practice is so important in Buddhism. Awakening is the ultimate trust that everything is fundamentally OK, even in the midst of suffering. You can't escape anything (where would you escape to, after all?).
But the haiku poet Issa says it much better:
Simply trust:
Do not the petals flutter down,
Just like that?
Isn't the reason we try to be mindful is so we can choose the right action?
When anger arises, we watch it and don't act on it. If we are not mindful then we will react on anger based on our conditioning? If we cannot determine wholesome and unwholesome then what is the point - we should not even try to be mindful!? See, no....water has no choice...it is following the deterministic path so it doesnt need an agent. But if water had a choice then yes ofcourse it needs an agent. Free will cannot be without an agent.
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Cheers.
this is the answer I was looking for....thanks:) I read the summary of summary of abidhamma so this piece was missing...it filled the blanks for me...
thanks for your thoughts....it raised some good points to contemplate