Skip to main content

Do we have a choice in life?

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to attend the discussions at the J Krishnamurti Foundation and we discussed a lot of things. We discussed whether there exists something called choice. In life, there come many situations wherein we exercise choices. For example, the choices of food to begin the day, choice of friends to talk to, choice of decisions to make at the office, the choice to study or socialize, the choice to watch a movie, the choice to study a particular stream, the choice to choose a particular career, the choice to enjoy the material world or move along the spiritual path, and the list is unlimited. However, do we actually have a choice in any of these decisions?

If one is clear, where is the choice? For example, if a child is clear that it wants to study Physics, where is the choice? If the child is not clear, there is a choice of hundreds of subjects. If the child is clear that he wants to study science, the choice gets restricted to only a few subjects that come within the basket of science. Isn't choice just a result of lack of clarity and the moment one is clear, there is no choice. There appears to be a choice between the pursuit of the material life and the spiritual life. However, the moment one tastes the divine, there is no choice. 

Availability of choice just seems to be the result of confusion. There will be confusion so long we do not look inward and sort out ourselves. The moment a kid looks inside and understands his temperament, he has no confusion about the stream he will take. The moment we look inside and understand our drive, we will understand that we do not want to stay incomplete and discontented. We lack something that we are seeking. We will also see clearly that we have been seeking contentment in the outer world such as the taste of the food, a well-decorated beautiful home, friend circle, relationships, jobs, promotions, wealth, power, accumulation of information and knowledge, and even so-called spiritual experiences. We will also see that despite all our efforts and choices so far, we feel more discontented than when we were kids. This simple observation brings clarity to all of us. 

A simple act of observation inside brings clarity that we are discontented and seeking something to be complete. We have tried different external means and this discontentment has not reduced but rather increased. Different people have tried different ways and means to be contended through different other means that we have not tried but deep interactions with even those people have revealed that they too feel equally discontented after making all these choices. That brings us clarity that all choices are just the outcome of sheer confusion within. With this clarity confusions drop and we live life with clarity. In a state of clarity, there is no confusion. Ram had no confusion about whether to go to the forest or not. Krishna had no confusion whether to fight the battle of Kurukshetra or not. There was no choice. There was only one possibility being the expression of the divine. When the divine takes over, one is complete inside and there is no discontentment. Since there is no discontentment, there is no confusion, and since there is no confusion, there is no seeking and there is no choice to make, rather there is absolute clarity. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weak Minds

 I don't know what Rama would have felt like when he developed Vairagya looking around at the temporariness of life, and all the material objects. He had the blessed company of saints like Vashistha and Vishvamitra who could answer hundreds of his questions with example and their experiences. King Dashratha was spiritually mature and therefore rather than snubbing the Vairagya of Rama, he could request Vashistha and Vishvamitra to answer the questions asked by Rama. When Siddhartha had similar questions in his mind, he had nobody to answer and his father, in fact, tried to keep him away from the questions about life. That is the strategy of probably the entire society today. If you can not answer the question, prove the question itself to be wrong.  That is what happens to anybody having these questions about the purpose of life. The first response he gets from society is that all these questions are a waste of time. In the entire history of humanity, we have not been able to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Choice of Happiness

I often wonder as to what is the meaning of equality? Some are born into families that can spend thousands of crore rupees to make their kids happy, and many can not buy enough food for their kids and their kids sleep hungry stomach and still remain happy and grateful. Some travel by private jet while many have to travel in the locals like cattle. Some own many buildings worth thousands of crores while many sleep on the streets. If somebody knows how to manipulate the systems, the sky is the limit in this world. However, all these hold true, if we believe that happiness is a by-product of money. In fact, I see that the reality is quite the contrary. First of all, life is much more than money. There are 12 houses in Astrology representing 12 different dimensions of life. The first house represents health, the second wealth, the third initiatives and younger siblings, the fourth vehicles, properties, and everything that comes as a result of our initiatives, the fifth new direction, and k...
2 comments
Read more

Use of AI to understand the purpose of Life

I was listening to an interesting debate on the following YouTube link that ignited a series of thoughts in my mind: https://youtu.be/o2aAx3wk6dg?si=qLSwKnR0Cp4TyLPC It is interesting to imagine a world where we can get almost everything done with just a command right from driving a car to flying a plane, doing the homework to making presentations for the meeting, taking care of the plants to taking care of the parents, getting the food cooked to get the surgeries done.  After listening to the discussions, I was quite amazed at the idea of delegating the decision-making to the AI and investing our time in exploration. Decisions about whatever is in the domain of known may be taken by the AI in the future and human beings may be busy exploring new possibilities.  However, how will AI make the decisions? Suppose, during the Ramayana times, AI was fully developed. How Kaikeyi would have taken the decision? I believe for AI or anybody to make a decision, the desired goal has to be...
Post a Comment
Read more