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If there is no self, who has free will? Is there a Buddhist position at all?

Nima Tsering Gurung Fellow
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Free willBuddhistIndianAbhidharmaNagasenaThe Buddha#agency#cetana#karma#no-self
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Its coordinates: 1.7 Free Will and Determinism

A Swiss client asked me last month what Buddhism says about free will. I said it depends what you mean, which was true but cowardly.

Here is my confusion. Buddhism teaches anattā, no self. Everything arises from causes and conditions; nothing is uncaused. That sounds like hard determinism. But the Buddha also insisted on effort, intention and responsibility. He is said to have rejected teachers who claimed everything is fixed by fate.

So which is it? Some possibilities I can see:

  1. Buddhism is compatibilist: intentions are causes, and that's all freedom needs.
  2. Buddhism rejects the question, because it assumes a self who owns the choice.
  3. Buddhism holds something like libertarian freedom for the mind in meditation.

Rival answers, argued properly, would help me most. I have a long season ahead with many curious clients.

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6 answers

  1. Nirmala Jayasekara

    Fellow

    Start with what the Buddha rejected. In the Titthāyatana Sutta of the Aṅguttara Nikāya he criticises three views: that everything experienced is due to past action, that it is due to a creator's design, and that it happens without cause. His objection to all three is the same: if they were true, there would be no point in wanting or making effort to do this rather than that. So the texts are clearly not fatalist.

    And there is the famous line: "It is intention (cetanā), monks, that I call kamma." Intention is a real causal factor. It is not owned by a self, but it is not nothing either. So I would say your option 1 comes closest, with the qualification that there is no agent standing behind the intentions. Intentions are the agency.

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  2. Kenneth Lam Chi-ho

    Fellow

    I'd argue for something between 1 and 2. Western compatibilism still assumes a person whose desires are the source of the act. The Abhidharma replaces the person with a flow of momentary mental events. Ask "could I have done otherwise?" and the first move is to question "I". There's an edited volume from a few years ago with Buddhist perspectives on free will, and the contributors genuinely disagree among themselves, which tells you something. Agency without an agent is a coherent idea, but it doesn't map neatly onto any of the Western positions.

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  3. Priya Raghavan

    Fellow

    Option 2 is the one I find most interesting, because it predicts something testable. If the sense of a unified chooser is constructed, then training attention on the arising of intentions should change the experience of choosing. Many meditators report exactly that: intentions appearing before "I" claim them. Whether that shows anything about freedom is another matter, but it shows the self-model is doing work in the ordinary experience.

  4. Arjun Iyer

    Fellow

    A Vedāntic counterpoint, since you're in the Himalaya. Advaita also says the true self is not the doer; but where the Buddhist removes the self, the Advaitin says the self is the witness that never acted at all. The Gita's teaching that you have a right to action but never to its fruits lives between these: act fully, but do not take yourself to be the owner. So "no owner of the choice" is shared ground; what lies beneath it is not.

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  5. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    Nāgasena's chariot gives a model for Nima's client. Just as "chariot" names an arrangement of parts and is still useful, "the one who chose" names a stream of conditions and is still the right thing to praise or warn. Conventional truth does real work. So I'd tell the Swiss client: Buddhists can say "you chose that" in exactly the sense that matters for responsibility, and deny that there is a hidden someone behind the choosing.

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  6. Nima Tsering Gurung

    Fellow

    Thank you. I now have three answers for the trail: intention is real and is the kamma (Nirmala); agency without an agent fits no Western box neatly (Kenneth); and "you chose that" is true at the conventional level (Meera). Arjun's Gita line will go to the clients who want something to carry home.

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