If destiny is supreme, how do we have free will?
Answer Podcast:
Transcript
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If destiny is supreme, then how do we exactly have free will? Okay. Destiny determines the consequences of our actions, not our actions themselves.
That means when a student studies for an exam, after that, whether the student gets marks or not, that is determined by destiny. But whether a student studies or not, that is not determined by destiny. A student can’t say, my luck is bad, that’s why I won’t study.
No. You are ruining your luck. If you say that, my destiny is rotten, that’s why I will not study.
No, we are making our destiny rotten by that. So firstly, we should not think of destiny as the absolute determiner of everything. We do have free will.
If I overeat and then my stomach gets upset, I cannot blame that on destiny. It’s my intelligence I did not use. So destiny does not force me to overeat and destiny is not the cause of the consequence when it comes when I overeat.
That’s my own foolishness. My own indiscreet way of eating. So destiny is supreme in the sense that destiny is a higher agency than human will.
Sometimes we may do something to the best of our capacity but it may not produce the result. That is why we recognize that destiny is supreme in the sense that it is superior to human agency. But the supremacy of destiny doesn’t mean that it is the absolute determiner of everything.
We have free will and our free will is what enables us to make choices which create our destiny. See our destiny is also not something which is determined by some god somewhere arbitrarily. It is our own actions in the past that make our destiny.
So the karma that we do, that karma accumulates and that makes our destiny. So when despite our best efforts, some actions don’t produce any results, that time we can understand this is because of destiny. So destiny doesn’t take away our free will, destiny doesn’t deny our free will.
Rather destiny acknowledges the limitation of our free will. We have free will but we do not have unlimited free will. We have free will within a limited scope.
It’s like if there is a pole to which a horse is tied. The horse can move here and there within the circumference of the rope, length of the rope. So it cannot move unlimited.
So like that there is limitation to what we can do. We cannot start flying in the sky. It’s the limitation of the body that we have.
So like that we all have certain limitations but those limitations don’t mean that we are absolutely controlled like puppets. We have free will and by acting positively by making healthy choices within our limitations also we can grow. So we can actually just like a person who say has a habit of over eating.
You know that person makes a habit, makes okay I’ll eat less, I’ll eat less, I’ll eat less. By making that each positive choice that person is developing a positive habit. So we may have certain inclinations which we can say are destined but we also have free will by which we can change our destiny.
So to summarize destiny is not the complete determiner of all human actions rather destiny is a determiner of the scope of human freedom. There is freedom but the scope of that freedom is determined by destiny. Shall we stop? Any other question?