Pseudobabble wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:49 pm
I don't quite understand - could you expand on this please.
Yes, sorry - I should have been clearer.
In his references to kamma, or action, the Buddha says that we are responsible for what we do, and its results. Our actions are what cause us to have certain experiences; were we to act differently, then our experiences would be different. This would be incompatible with a form of strict determinism which would write our actions out of the picture, and focus on causes completely outside of ourselves.
In saying (in the formulation of right view) that there is something
given, he is highlighting the agency involved. It's more than something - the gift - merely moving around in space; there is a giver, someone who acts. It's not behaviour, which is conditioned. Actions have agency, such that the actor is free to do otherwise. Without that agency, there could be no morality, and no human activity could be more meritorious than any other.
The questions that the Buddha left unanswered might well feature in lists of metaphysical questions that we, today, find difficult, and such a list might also feature the problem of free will. But it's possible that the Buddha didn't include the free will question in those imponderable questions because the answer was already implicit in other aspects of his teaching.