Is free will real?

[bennyboy]

Free will is like an imaginary MC Escher painting, depicting a series of different sized escalators zigzagging past one another, above, below, to the right and left; your metaphysical homunculus is always traveling on one, and continually being nudged by millions of microscopic imps to jump off whatever escalator he is on, onto another that is passing by. He just doesn't realize he's being nudged.

Okay, here's the elephant in the room.

You've identified both free-will and the "homunculus" of self as illusory. But why, knowing these things to be illusory, do you continue to act as though you have free will? How, in any non-forum-debate context, does this knowledge inform or guide your decision-making, your social relationships, etc? Why, for example, don't you study Buddhism or Hinduism, some schools of which share the same philosophy, but apply it in more depth?

Or. . . wait a minute. . . you're not turning into a closet Buddhist are you?