u/Complex_Advisor_6151

I know that this topic tends to make people angry, so please read till the end before making a conclusion. Having read Foundations of Buddhism by Rupert Gethin and What the Buddha Thought by Richard Gombrich, both of which claim to examine Buddhist doctrine through an academic (non-biased) lens, they all say one thing: Buddhism takes a middle way between claiming that you have free will and determinism. Even the Buddha says that the doctrine of determinism, which some ascetics during his lifetime followed, is incorrect because it cannot be verified through experience and therefore leads to learned helplessness.

It’s one thing to claim that determinism is incorrect because it is false, and another to say that determinism is incorrect because it makes you feel bad. A common objection to Buddhism from Western audiences is that it’s pessimistic. Buddhists usually respond by saying that, in order to cure an illness, you first need to admit its presence. Fair enough, but this principle should apply not only to dukkha, but to free will as well. Or, to be more precise, the lack of it.

Just to clarify, I do not believe in free will even outside of Buddhist doctrine. However, I think Buddhist doctrines themselves can only be used to argue against the existence of free will.

Here is my definition of free will. I think free will is an incoherent concept, and attempts to redefine it (as compatibilists do) in order to preserve the notion of personal agency are ridiculous. If you do not agree with my attributes of free will, then you probably will not agree with the rest of my argument:

• Free will cannot exist if all of your actions are already determined before you make a decision.
• If free will exists, then you could have acted otherwise in the past under the exact same conditions.
• If free will exists, then you can be the conscious author of your decisions and thoughts.

If at least one of these attributes is false, then I am ready to reconsider my opinion. Now, let's turn to the Buddhist doctrine.

The doctrine of no-self claims that there is no soul that is the owner or controller of your experience. Instead, if you examine your experience during meditation, you will find that experience is composed of five aggregates:

• Form (your body, everything physical)
• Perceptions (being able to recognize apple as apple)
• Feelings (raw sensation of pleasure or pain)
• Mental formations (Volitions, thoughts, intentions, etc.). Remember that intentions are mental formations, we will need it later.
• Consciousness (subjective awareness. The fact that you are having an experience at all)

That’s all. There is nothing else in your experience that exists outside of these categories. The Buddha then explains why none of these aggregates can be considered a self. He gives two main arguments.

• First, all of these aggregates are impermanent. When people think about the self, they usually imagine something permanent. We tend to imagine that there is some observer sitting somewhere inside the body, a stable "I" that remains the same throughout life. Even though the body changes, thoughts change, emotions change, and memories fade, we still intuitively feel that there must be some unchanging core behind all of it: the self.
• Secondly, you do not actually own any of these aggregates. In other words, you do not truly control them. The Buddha gives the following argument: if your body were truly yours, or if you were identical to your body, then you should be able to say, “Let my body be thus and not thus,” and have it obey your will. But clearly, you cannot stop your body from aging, getting sick, changing, or dying simply because you want it not to. The same applies to the other aggregates. If feelings were truly yours, you should be able to decide to feel pleasure all the time and never feel pain, anxiety, or sadness. If perceptions were truly yours, you should be able to choose how you interpret everything at all times. If mental formations were truly yours, you should be able to decide which thoughts, desires, intentions, and emotions arise in your mind before they appear. But thoughts and urges simply arise on their own. You cannot know what thought will appear next until it appears. And if consciousness were truly yours, you should be able to remain conscious forever, never fall asleep, never lose awareness, and never die. But consciousness, too, changes according to causes and conditions rather than personal control.

Buddhists deny that this doctrine leads to nihilism or to the idea that you are allowed to do whatever you want. Nāgasena in the Milinda Pañha gives the following example: you cannot steal pears from a market just because the pears are not the exact same pears they were in the past. Even though they are constantly changing, they are still connected through cause and effect:

>“If a man should steal another man’s mangoes, would he deserve a thrashing for that?”

>Yes, of course!

>But he would not have stolen the very same mangoes as the other one had planted. Why then should he deserve a thrashing?

>For the reason that the stolen mangoes had grown because of those that were planted.

>Just so, your majesty, it is because of the deeds one does… that one is once again linked with another psycho-physical organism, and is not freed from one’s evil deeds.

This leads us to the doctrine of karma. You reap good fruits of your karma if you perform good actions, and bad fruits if you perform bad actions - we all know that. However, karma is not some magical cosmic justice system. Karma is simply cause and effect applied to intentional actions. The Buddha explicitly says: “It is intention that I call karma.”

But intentions are part of the aggregate of mental formations, and we have already seen that one of the reasons the Buddha denies that mental formations are a self is because you do not control them. Thoughts, desires, urges, intentions, emotions. All of them simply arise due to causes and conditions. You cannot choose your next mental formation before it appears. The intention to act arises first, and only afterwards do you become aware of it. In fact, what you're supposed to do during vipassana meditation, is to observe how these mental formations arise on their own.

You simply cannot combine the doctrines of no-self and karma while still claiming that people possess free will in any meaningful sense. The doctrine of no-self denies the existence of a permanent controller or owner behind experience. There is no independent self standing outside the causal chain and directing it. There are only five aggregates. Mental events arise dependently. In fact, everything arises dependently. This is precisely how Buddhists deny that no-self leads to nihilism: things still exist conventionally because they are connected through cause and effect. Karma itself is explained through causation. Intentions arise because prior causes produced them.

This is why responses such as “karma just means bad things happen to you, but you can choose how to react to them” do not solve the problem. You cannot freely choose how to react either. Your reaction is itself an arising mental formation. And according to the Buddha’s own argument for no-self, mental formations are not self precisely because they are not under your control.

Also, the response like "But actions can still be guided by awareness, reflection, training, mindfulness, and conditioning." also does not solve anything. Remember, there is nothing besides five aggregates. Everything in that list belongs to the aggregate of mental formations, they arise due to causes and conditions. So your awareness and reflection also arise due to causes and conditions.

That’s a really common question when people first get into Buddhism: “Isn’t the desire for nirvana still a desire?” And it’s a fair point. To do anything at all, you need some kind of motivation, some kind of wanting. Even things we consider good, like helping others, clearly involve desire, just described differently (like compassion).

The Buddha doesn’t deny this. What you actually see in the Pali Canon is different words being used in different contexts. For example, taṇhā (craving) is consistently treated as something that leads to suffering, while chanda (intention, desire to act) is sometimes treated as something neutral or even necessary for practice.
So there are two ways of interpreting the Second Noble Truth. Either we should get rid of all desire, but that doesn’t really make sense because you wouldn’t be able to act at all, or we should get rid of the kind of desire that leads to suffering.

Let’s get precise with definitions.

Desire = any kind of wanting.

Craving = the kind of wanting that leads to suffering.

So all craving is desire, but not all desire is craving. How do we tell the difference? To answer that, it helps to look at two connected doctrines: Dependent Origination and the Five Aggregates.

Dependent origination explains how suffering unfolds. The 12 links are listed in the Pali Canon, but they’re not explained there, so different interpretations outside of Pali canon exist. There are even some inconsistencies and contradictions scholars point out, but the overall idea of dependent origination is clear enough.

You come into contact with something, that produces a feeling, and then craving arises in response to that feeling. That’s where suffering starts. A more boring way to say it: you can’t control what happens, but you can influence how you relate to it.

The important part is what comes after craving in the 12 links of dependent origination: grasping.

Grasping means trying to hold onto something, like grabbing it with your hand and not letting go. In the chain, craving leads to grasping, which means that craving isn’t just wanting, it’s wanting plus clinging. So to answer the question above, how we should differentiate between normal desire and craving:

Normal desire doesn’t involve grasping.

Craving involves grasping.

Why is grasping bad? That's where we come to the doctrine of five aggregates.

Buddhism says things are impermanent, so grasping onto them leads to disappointment when they inevitably change. That’s obvious, but it’s also kind of shallow. It goes deeper than that.

Buddhism analyzes reality in terms of the Five Aggregates: form (body), feelings, perceptions, mental formations (volitions), and consciousness. All five are impermanent and have no fixed essence. They arise together and pass away together.

A person, in this framework, is not a stable entity but a chain of events (aggregates) connected through cause and effect. What we call a “person” is just a label for this ongoing process.

The important point is that there is nothing beyond these aggregates. There is no soul, no fixed core, no separate observer. There isn’t a controller that stands outside and experiences them. There are only the aggregates, conditioning each other moment by moment.

So when we say “person,” we’re just naming a pattern. In reality, there isn’t a separate entity there, just processes interacting.

Another important point is control. You don’t actually control these aggregates. You’re not identical to them, but you’re also not separate from them in the sense of being able to direct them freely. You can’t decide to become conscious while you’re asleep. You don’t choose which thought appears next. You can’t stop feelings from arising. You can’t prevent perception from recognizing objects. You can’t stop your body from aging. These processes unfold according to causes and conditions, whether you like it or not.

By extension, what we call physical objects can be understood in a similar way. An “object” is just a continuation of the form aggregate through time, conditioned by causes and effects. There isn’t really an independent “apple,” just a process we label as one.

Once you see that, the idea of grasping changes. You’re not just holding onto things that will change. You’re trying to hold onto processes that are not yours to control in the first place.

There’s an obvious objection here: we know the universe is made of atoms, not five aggregates. But that doesn’t really change the structure of the argument. You can describe reality in terms of atoms instead, and the conclusion is similar:

A person becomes a collection of atoms across time, connected by physical laws. There’s still no fixed essence, no controller, just interactions. What we call a “person” or an “object” is still a label applied to a process. So whether you describe reality in terms of aggregates or atoms, the key point holds: there are only changing processes. No fixed self, no stable objects, just patterns we name.

So even if, at a fundamental level, reality is made of atoms, we can still use the Five Aggregates as a practical framework.

Imagine holding sand in your hand. You can grasp it as tightly as you want, but it will still slip through your fingers. That’s just how it behaves. That sand is a good analogy for reality, whether you describe it as aggregates or atoms. It’s a process, not something stable you can hold onto.

If you expect the sand to stay in your hand, you’ll be disappointed. When a child cries because their sandcastle is destroyed, it looks naive. But that’s exactly what we’re doing with everything else: health, relationships, achievements. We build our own sandcastles and expect them to hold.

Grasping is basically trying to treat these processes as if they were stable and under your control. It’s the assumption that “this is mine,” “I can keep this,” or “this will last.” But that’s not how reality works. You can’t hold sand in your hand, and you can’t make your happiness depend on things that behave like sand. If you do, disappointment is guaranteed.

Going back to craving vs normal desire:

You can have preferences. You can enjoy a hobby. You can work a job. All of that is fine. The problem starts when you shift from engaging with something to depending on it. So desire only becomes a problem when there is grasping behind it.

You can build LEGO as a hobby. That’s normal desire. You sit down, you enjoy the process, you like seeing something come together. If you stop, nothing really collapses internally. It was just something you chose to do. But the moment you need it in order to feel okay, the whole dynamic changes. Now it’s not just “I enjoy building LEGO.” It becomes “I need this to relax,” “I need this to feel in control,” or even “this is part of who I am.”. You're grasping onto your hobby.

From the perspective of the Five Aggregates, what’s happening is that you’re trying to stabilize something that is inherently unstable. Your enjoyment, your mood, your sense of identity, all of these are just changing processes. But instead of letting them change, you’re trying to anchor them, which is impossible, as we've seen above. Ultimately, you're grasping not onto the process of building LEGO, but to the aggregates that arise while you're doing it: good feeling aggregate, mental volitions (thoughts, idea of self), etc. You want to prolong those aggregates, you want to control them. And we've seen why grasping onto aggregates is a bad idea.

Normal desire says: “I like this. I’ll do it while it’s there.”

Craving says: “I need this. Without it, something is wrong.”