Fate and Free Will – IX

Compiled by S. Nagarajan
Article No.1505; Dated 22 December 2014.

In our series we may include one more important dialogue on Fate and Freewill.
(The following dialogue is available on net and I am thankful to the provider who has done a great service by doing so. The readers who want to read the original, may refer Dialogues with the Guru at http://srisharada.com/QA/QA.htm)

Sringeri Sankaracharya HH Chandrashekara Bharathi III was a jeevan muktha. (October 16, 1892 – September 26, 1954). He shed his body on the day of Mahalaya Amavasya. He took a bath in the Tunga river in Sringeri on that fateful day.

Afterwards, he sat in padmasana posture and attained Videha Mukti on the banks of the river. His body was discovered floating in the river. The body was brought to the shore. The face was calm and peaceful as it used to be daily. There was no symptoms of any struggle for breath nor water had entered inside. It was very clear that the great guru had shed His body at His own will. (pl refer Wikipedia for more information)
He used to clear all the doubts of the devotees whenever they approached him.
One evening a disciple approached His Holiness with a view to obtain some valuable instruction.

D: It is no other than the problem of the eternal conflict between fate and free-will. What are their respective provinces and how can the conflict be avoided?

The pontiff told the disciple that fate and freewill are not two distinct things. The disciple asked Him how?

HH: As a follower of our Sanatana Dharma, you must know that fate is nothing extraneous to yourself, but is only the sum total of the results of your past actions. As God is but the dispenser of the fruits of your actions, fate, representing those fruits, is not His creation but only yours. Free-will is what you exercise when you act now.

D: Still I do not see how they are not two distinct things.

HH: Have it this way. Fate is past karma, free-will is present karma. Both are really one, that is, karma, though they may differ in the matter of time. There can be no conflict
when they are really one.

D: But the difference in time is a vital difference which we cannot possibly overlook.

HH: I do not want you to overlook it, but only to study it more deeply. The present is before you and, by the exercise of free-will, you can attempt to shape it. The past is past and
is therefore beyond your vision and is rightly called adrishta, the unseen. You cannot reasonably attempt to find out the relative strength of two things unless both of them are before you. But, by our very definition, free-will, the present karma alone is before you and fate, the past karma, is invisible.

Even if you see two wrestlers physically squatting before you, you cannot decide about their relative strength.

For, one may have weight, the other agility; one muscles and the other tenacity; one the benefit of practice and the other of coolness of judgement and so on. We can on these grounds
go on building arguments on arguments to prove that a particular wrestler will be the winner. But experience shows that each of these qualifications may fail at any time or may
prove to be a disqualification. The only reasonable, practical and sure method of determining their relative strength is to ask them to wrestle with each other. While this is so, how do
you expect to find by means of arguments a solution to the problem of the relative value of fate and free-will when the former by its very nature is unseen!

To be continued in the next chapter.

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