Is everything in life pre-determined?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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thank you do you believe that everything in life is predetermined? certainly not there is many ways of understanding this first of all if we consider scripture itself scripture tells us do this, don’t do this there are many places there are prescriptive statements do this or don’t do this now those statements would become meaningless if everything in our life were destined if everything is destined that would mean we have no free will if we have no free will then what is the point of telling us do this or don’t do this anyway we are just going to do what we are genetically programmed to do or what we are karmically programmed to do so the sheer presence in scripture of directions indicate that we have the capacity to choose the directions that’s one point second point is that when we say that everything is destined, everything is predestined, that question raises the question that okay is our asking this question predestined is the answer to this predestined if everything is predestined then why worry about everything is predestined I am getting a logical paradox in this, it’s like saying if somebody says I can’t speak a single word of English well you already spoke you already spoke that I can’t speak a single word of English it’s a self-contradictory statement somebody says I don’t exist you have to exist to say that you don’t exist it’s a self-contradictory statement so like that you ask the question is everything destined is there absolute destiny that question itself is contradictory it’s self-contradictory because it presumes the capacity to ask if everything were predestined then we would not even have the capacity to ask if it’s predestined don’t get it, don’t worry about it the point which I am making here is to say that everything is predestined is logically incoherent it’s logically incoherent so certainly everything is not predestined we do have free will but the way we use our free will determines whether our capacity to access the free will increases or decreases I’ll give you two examples to illustrate this say somebody is a alcoholic so this is the hotel sorry this is the hostel this is the school and there are two students one of them has become habituated to drink the other has never drunk no interest in drinking so now both of them pass by along the way at the bar both of them pass by the bar the student who has never drunk has passed by without worrying at all thought of drinking was not coming he was thinking ok I have to do this I’ll just move on without any distraction without any trouble the student who is drunk what happens he gets into a mood no maybe I won’t drink no I won’t drink I’ll drink right now the whole agitation and tension is removed because attachment becomes very strong they have got to speak up when the student passes by the bar as soon as the student comes out of the house I want a drink the people who become compulsive, addictive the moment they wake up the first thing they think of is I want a drink the last thing they do before sleeping is drink what has happened for them they physically seem to be as free as anyone else but mentally they have become bound their thoughts can’t go very far almost here there but then soon it has to go to infinity so now how did this person nobody is born drinking a bottle of alcohol how did they become alcoholics like this it was by their actions so now it may be a situation where they just can’t after every 3-4 hours after every 1-3 days they just feel as if I haven’t drunk so the scope of their free will has become increasingly reduced by the way they interact so we always have free will but the scope of our free will can become decreased by the way we choose to act so in that sense if we consider destiny as the things that happen to us sometimes what happens to us can also become more and more negative based on how we respond to it so for example a snake bites now we could say that we are just walking along the road and the snake biting me was distant but just because the snake bit me doesn’t mean I have to die I can immediately put a bandage around my leg, get the poison out go to doctor, save myself but if at that time I become angry how dare the snake bit me and I start chasing the snake to find it and stamp it the snake is slithering away, I may find it also I may stamp it, but in the process my blood is circulating faster my heart is beating faster, the poison will reach my brain poison will reach my vital parts of my brain and I will die so here the snake bite doesn’t kill me my reaction to snake bite doesn’t kill me so there is our reaction which can aggravate what happens to us so destiny is not absolute but we can aggravate whatever destiny is there or we can mitigate whatever destiny is there by our choices is this your question?