determinism and surrender

One of DhO members started a thread a while back about determinism that I found interesting as it relates to surrendering. I came upon and was convinced of determinism long ago before having any interest in meditation. While determinism is mainly a philosophical issue, I find that it could serve as a context for the practice of surrender.

That member got lots of flaks when (s)he started that thread for reasons I didn't understand.

dharmaoverground.wetpaint.com/thread/135...nism+seen+as+reality

Much of the contention was there because, I think, of confusing determinism with predestination. While both question the notion of free will, determinism is based on causality while predestination, according to my understanding, negates causality or at least marginalizes it.

Your thoughts again?

Amr

Hello Amr-
Have you ever heard of Nietchze's view of the eternal recurrance? In it, the universe is a closed causal system-- i.e., everything has a definite cause or system of causation. Each moment arises based on this causality. Because the whole thing is finite, there are only so many combinations , however vast. Therefore the whole thing repeats! Thus, our sense of freedom being part of this causal wheel, it is an illusion. The paradox, however, is to will or intend that each moment be exactly as it is, which is surrender, knowing that every moment we experience will be repeated for eternity!
Anyway, you've differentiated determinism from predestination, which I suppose Nietsche's view qualifies as. So what exactly is the difference? What is determinism?
---Jake

"Your thoughts again?"

Hi, Amr. My thought is to drop the words that are normally used in this arena (free will, determinism, predestination) and focus on the act of making decisions. If I examine just that one thing, I suspect there really is no decision making going on. Stuff happens for various and hard-to-ever-really-know-why reasons and after that I rationalize that I "chose" something.

I'm hard pressed to deal well with surrender part as I'm struggling with that in my practice right now and I'm not sure it's as much about determinism as it is about the habits of a lifetime. Of course those two things may not be separate. I've been so convinced for years that I acted as an independent person/decisoin maker with free will. It's hard to drop that real quick.

What do yo thiink?

I've read most of the discussion on that thread, and my take is that it's a matter of perspective.

The concepts and constructs that it even makes sense to discuss depend on the level of mind at which the discussion is taking place.

North and South for example are extremely useful concepts for finding one's way around on a magnetically polarized spherical orb. (edit: hmmmm....is there such a thing as a non-spherical orb? well, anyway...)

Leave the surface of that orb and North and South have now become meaningless. It will now be more useful to use a mathematically based system of Euclidean coordinates (I think). But then if you are in that Great Beyond and you start to move extremely quickly, an entirely different way of orienting might be required. (The metaphor here is about using the individual or group ego as reference point for intentionality.)

Among other things, cultivating the dharma seems to increase the number of modes of awareness available for navigating experience. 'Free will' may be a useful construct within some of these modes of awareness but not others.

Actually, I thought that Florian addressed the question pretty well early on, like in post #4.

I like both of these defintions from wikipedia.

Determinism is the view that every event, including human cognition, behavior, decision, and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

The religious character of predestination distinguishes it from other ideas about determinism and free will. Those who believe in predestination, such as John Calvin, believe that before the creation God determined the fate of the universe throughout all of time and space.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination

A problem with the concepts of determinism and predestination is that they have assumed the notion of time and that something "real" is happening. Then with freewill there is the notion of a separate entity that can choose. So the context in which the idea are dicussed is important, these concepts do not exist in an absolute sense.

Freewill is a valid concept because there are functions the mind that evaluate beyond the instincts that respond to stimulus largely from the senses. For example ones instinct maybe to eat but freewill can bring other functions to call causing another outcome. If another person believes there to be freewill in an absolute sense and that it is not a higher function of mind this okay because there is less suffering when beings recognise the "freewill" of another being. However freewill like the self is an idea or thought.

Predestination seems to me to be largely a concept religious folk came up with to get themselves out of an idealogical dilemma.

With so much mystery in what makes up Reality I think it would be foolish to make a call on determinism.

thanks for the precise definitions--
phenomenolgically, "making a decision" involves there being unknown factors. In other words, there is something hidden and mysterious, and therefore some kind of leap is required.
Otherwise, there is simply a stimulus and a response, however complex or high-level-- e.g., dirty dishes/washing dishes. Then throw in inauthenticity, which is dirty dishes+some seemingly hidden neurotic process=rationalizing not washing the dishes.
So there's (at least) real decision, real response, and inauthentic "there seems to be something to decide" which blocks a real response where no decision is necessary, a simple response would be enough.
The latter particularly applies in my own life to "moral decisions" so called, which with rare exceptions seem to be symptoms of inauthenticity. Freedom as a topic also seems over simplified or intellectualized when mushed into these kinds of dichotomies; in practice it seems to me that freedom is freedom from the compulsion to act/experience in habitual ways.
in other words, awareness is intrinsically free in that it introduces a disruption in the momentum of conditioning; this is very compatible with the experience of surrender in which the conditioning is seen with deep acceptance, whether our own or that of a being to whom we surrender, such as in devotional practice.

"I'm hard pressed to deal well with surrender part as I'm struggling with that in my practice right now and I'm not sure it's as much about determinism as it is about the habits of a lifetime. Of course those two things may not be separate. I've been so convinced for years that I acted as an independent person/decisoin maker with free will. It's hard to drop that real quick.

What do yo thiink?"


Chris, your struggle is mine, but I think I made some progress by remembering to put surrender in the context of determinism. Sometimes I approach surrendering as an act that requires my will and I find myself tensing up trying to surrender!

But when I approach surrendering as a recognition of what is already the case, it becomes easier. I remind myself that the very thought of surrendering is fundamentally not in my control, whether I can successfully surrender or not is fundamentally not in my control; this very recognition I just mentioned is fundamentally not in my control. Recognizing this becomes the act of surrender.

Determinism is based on few assumptions that are not necessarily true. One of them is the assumption of causality. But to deny causality is to introduce randomness which could serve as well as causality for the purpose of surrendering. The second assumption is that time moves in one direction (Gary already alluded to that). But I don't see how a bidirectional time will reintroduce free will.

Amr