(January 4, 2015 at 6:37 pm)tantric Wrote: Have you considered that there might be something wrong with your question? Just because you can poise a yes/no question doesn't force there to exist an answer that makes sense - after all, do you enjoy beating your wife? The Q contain 'free', 'will' and 'real' - all nebulous concepts.
And I know it's gonna get on your nerves, but the answer is the sound of one hand clapping. Your Q is a koan, a combination of words that seems like a meaningful question, but is actually just a logic trap that your mind can go over and over and find no end to. If you keep at it, however, you will find the answer. Your brain will glitch and you'll have an instant of perspective, an understanding of how a determinate universe can exist non-dual to free will. All the words will mean what they really mean and fit together, the problem in your question will be gone, though you still won't have any kind of answer you can write down on a philosophy test. That's what Zen is for - the non-verbal answer.
Something like this is true. All three of those words one could use to describe themselves. At one time I would have said that what I am at the core of my being is "willing". I am what I will is one sense of it. I am willing in the sense of being compliant is the other sense of it. There is a dance going on between that which is already realized and that which is becoming realized. Being "willing" means accepting the give and take of the dance, knowing that that which I will shall be that which I become. Freedom is good in this context so long as it means free to dance with all the others.
But the freedom of will that is more often talked about is the freedom of will to act without regard to other influences. But freedom to dance apart from all others is hardly a positive, no more than the isolation ward would be considered a step up.
What is real is being a part of something larger like a community or a cosmos. One could call it freedom to dance in an arbitrary manner, one that is indifferent to the beat of the music which most others hear and move to, but I wouldn't. There is much more freedom in going with it, in willingly dancing with it all as you find it. Freedom to embrace and respond sounds better to me than the freedom to withhold and maintain.
That which one wills becomes ones reality. One has the choice to embrace energy or reject it, we don't actually have the choice to create energy. If you're willing there is freedom in embracing energy that far surpasses the sense of freedom one may feel in controlling energy.
