middle path between determinism and choice

[befriend]

hey everyone,
what does buddha say about some actions being involuntary and some actions being totally free will. for example, ive noticed that if i get angry and there is a pencil in my hand, i dont realize ive broken the pencil until i notice it snapped in two in my hand. meaning there is no pause in between the intetion to brake the pencil and the actual act of breaking the pencil. there is no room to make a choice.

[daverupa]

there is no room to make a choice.

Sure there is, you simply need stronger mindfulness to experience it. Practice, practice, practice!

[cooran]

Hello befriend, all,

This article and these previous threads may be of interest:

Journal of Buddhist Ethics / Annual, 2007
"Freedom of the Will" in the light of Theravada Buddhist teachings
Abstract
A well known issue in Western Philosophy is that of "freedom of the will": whether, how and in what sense human beings have genuine freedom of action in the context of a broad range of external and internal conditioning factors. Any system of ethics also assumes that humans have, in some sense, a freedom to choose between different courses of action. Buddhist ethics is no different in this--but how is freedom of action to be made sense of in a system that sees human beings as an interacting cluster of conditioned and conditioning processes, with no substantial I-agent either within or beyond this cluster? This article explores this issue within Theravada Buddhism, and concludes that the view of this tradition on the issue is a "compatibilist" middle way between seeing a person's actions as completely rigidly determined, and seeing them as totally and unconditionally free, with a variety of factors acting to bring, and increase, the element of freedom that humans have. In a different way, if a person is wrongly seen as an essential, permanent Self, it is an "undetermined question" as to whether "a person's acts of will are determined" or "a person's acts of will are free." If there is no essential person-entity, "it" can not be said to be either determined or free.
read article ....
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7 ... n28513265/

Freewill, is it an illusion?
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5049&start=40

Free will?
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=8105

with metta
Chris

[Nibbida]

A great talk by Rick Repetti:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaHtmm46OP0

and the article:

http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2010/05/Repetti-Meditation-Freedom.pdf

[phil]

I always find it interesting that when I'm soaking in a hot tub before bedtime as is the custom here I never get out after thinking ok, enough of this nodding off, time to get out, the getting out always happens suddenly, involuntarily. May have no meaning, may have important meaning about how intentions (conventionally understood) condition actions...

But for me there is rarely free will about andandoning the sensory pleasure of the hot bath on a cold winter's eve, may apply to clinging to sense pleasures in general, in some way...