Destiny, Freedom & Narrative

Speeking informally to a councelor recently I asked him what his view on destiny was. His answer was very satisfying.

We have a life goal, a reason why we are here. We have complete freedom, but if we make choices which contradict that life goal the going gets very tough.

This fits very well with karma. We chose a rebirth to satisfy our deep desires. Fighting those desires as I have been apt to do makes life very hard and difficult. It is also futile because these desires originate deeper than "my" superficial self.

That there is no complete freedom is frustrating at first glance, but then it makes total sense. If we did have complete freedom then what reason is there to do anything? The causation of our existence is the reason we do what we do, it is what gives life its meaning. It is that meaning I have been lacking.

It occured are all destinies good. Hitler clearly had a massive destiny and he followed it, but he shouldn't have and should have struggled against it. So it seems that we do need to check where we are going and be prepared for the hard work of struggling against bad destinies.

The difficulties in life arise because we are going against karmas - some good , some bad - and we need to work on the difference. The councellor flavoured his view with the sense that karmas are what bring meaning to life, rather than just being mechanical causations from past actions. Further our lifes goal might even be encouraged and enforced by "spiritual entities" (left undefined). In many way what he said answered the key loss that I am writing this blog to discover - just what are we supposed to do with our "life".

From another perspective what this gives me is a narrative on life - a story with which to tie the events of the world together, a "raft" on which to sail the flow of existence as Buddha called his narratives in the Diamond Sutra.

Indeed this whole blog is one massive search for narratives, for stories with which to satisfy myself about the events of the world. Most recently the utterly shocking, meaningless and painful loss of my closest friend and only true love. It helps so much to narrativise it, to give me a raft with which to fight back against the great horrible demon Death. I need to add of course (but feel very bad for this piercing honesty) that even the idea that she was these wonderful things is another narrative to help me mediate the attractions and powerful life altering experience of knowing her.

I understand that in its purer phases Buddha's many teachings, his many raft to help beings struggling with the unfolding of life events - the ocean of suffering - become useless, that there comes a time when we no loger require stories to get through life.

I began reading a book the Kathasaritsagara soon after meeting this girl. She was Indian, the whole world was Indian for me after loving Indian food all my life (I'm English ;-) and having been stunned by Hindu and Buddhism teachings. That book name means "ocean of stories". I began to become a story teller for her in many letters, the story teller was Riswey. The ocean of stories made little sense at first. I read about Vidyadharas and thought that is what she must be - a narrative to help explain why she was so special. There was a beautiful passage which altered my thinking just as the text itself says - he gazed upon her and his mind was disturbed as the moons reflection on water. It reminds me in passing of something she once wrote of her back garden - the blades of grass struggling upward to be part of the expanse of green. One of the most perceptive and eye opening things I ever read. The stories are so fast paced, people lives sometimes coming and going in just a few sentences. The destinies and driving force behind the lives of the many people in the book is to meet and share their stories and so lives are intertwined ever more complexly as the endless stories unfold. I have begun to appreciate the vast scope of this book - the way our lives are short and briefly intertwined for no greater purpose that to make and share a story. That our endless journey of writing stories to remember the past, the lost, and to make sense of the present and the future is what makes life and time.

Maybe as "outcast" has been trying to say in the comments the time might come to stop narrativising and just let things be. On the other hand, if life and death is about stories then there can be no harm in telling some more. Maybe in future stories I might have something different to say.

And I want to add a problem I have had before. If life and death is a story, what is the difference between a true story and a fictional story?

As Robert Pirsig says in "Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle maintenance" - do the planets go around the sun because of the Laws of Physics, or are the Laws of Physics the way they are because the planets go around the sun. Well Maths is an extremely unusual story with many inner qualities quite unlike written stories - but in so far as they are telling a story that story has been molded to the planets - not the other way around. A true story is molded or plays a great part in the interaction of humans with the world. A fictional story plays a smaller role, but clearly a role. We can learn from myths and legends and much of what we believe helps us interact very successfully with the psychological level without it needing to be "true". The obvious question arises what is the "world" then, but that is another story ;-) (See Wittgenstein's later work for more on that.)