Date: 01/18/2025 01/19/2025
Location: Star Ocean Meditation Center
Teacher: Sara
Dharma Knowledge
Causality and Free Will
The relationship between causality and free will is one of the most frequently misunderstood issues in the study of the Dharma. The confusion does not arise from the Dharma itself, but from a binary mode of thinking: either everything is determined by causality and freedom is impossible, or human beings possess absolute free will and causality loses its force. The Dharma accepts neither position and instead analyzes both causality and will with greater precision.
In the Dharma, causality is not fatalism. Causality means that phenomena arise dependent on conditions. When conditions are present, results occur; when conditions change, results change accordingly. Causality describes structural relationships, not a predetermined script. It explains how events occur, not that they must occur in only one way.
Likewise, the Dharma does not posit an independent, autonomous, and permanent agent called “free will.” What it observes is a sequence of mental and physical processes: sensations, perceptions, emotions, impulses, judgments, and actions. These processes arise in dependence upon conditions. What is commonly called “will” is not outside causality, but one factor within the causal network.
The crucial point is this: although will itself is conditioned, it is not entirely passive. Differences in understanding directly alter causal trajectories. Choices made under ignorance reinforce existing patterns; choices made with awareness introduce new conditions. This is the meaning of the Dharma’s claim that suffering can be reduced, transformed, and ended.
From the Buddhist perspective, the sense of being bound by causality does not come from causality itself, but from ignorance of it. When actions are driven automatically by craving, aversion, and confusion, responses are largely mechanical, and the sense of agency is retrospective rationalization. In such a state, freedom is indeed minimal.
Practice does not aim to negate causality, but to make it visible. When one clearly observes how motivations arise, how emotions drive action, and how consequences shape future reactions, a space for choice emerges. Freedom, in this framework, is not freedom from causality, but the capacity to regulate it through understanding.
Accordingly, freedom in the Dharma is not the ability to do whatever one wants. It is the absence of compulsive reaction. It is a negative freedom—the freedom from being driven by blind necessity—rather than a positive freedom of absolute control. This freedom develops gradually and depends on the depth of awareness and wisdom.
Causality and free will are therefore not opposed in the Dharma. Causality provides the structure; freedom consists in the ability to introduce different conditions within that structure. To deny causality reduces freedom to fantasy; to deny freedom turns causality into destiny. The Dharma rejects both extremes.
Ultimately, when ignorance ceases and attachment no longer drives behavior, causality still operates, but it no longer produces suffering. This is not transcendence of causality, but causality functioning under clear understanding. It is not the realization of an all-powerful will, but the functioning of life no longer compelled by suffering.
