Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
19th March 2017
Has and Got
“Choice”
A woman loves to choose and so too a man. Everyone believes that they can choose and also believe that they do have a choice if they have to choose. Man and woman like what they choose, including a partner, apart from liking what they like.
Therefore a man’s liking for a woman or a woman’s liking for a man is not a choice for him or her. Man and woman spontaneously like. This implies that liking is an inherent characteristic of every individual, implying that choice is not an inherent characteristic of man or woman.
So what could choice be when choice is not an inherent characteristic of an individual, just as liking is? It appears to be when he or she inherently likes anything. This implies that man or woman chooses what is liked and likes what is chosen.
When man or woman do not like, alternatives and logical advice are given, which influence man or woman to choose. Choice is therefore influenced by the inherent characteristic to like based on logic and reason.
Man has come empty-handed in the moment in life. A child does not know what it has or what it has got in the moment. It is remarkable that an adult knows in any moment in life that he or she has many things and has got many things.
An adult also believes that he or she is trying every moment in life to get in order to have. An adult further believes that he or she can choose to get what he or she wants to have.
Man firmly believes that he can choose anything in life. The ability to make a choice is deeply engrained in man’s mind and this has given rise to the belief that he or she has willpower to choose, to have or to get.
Does man or woman really choose in the moment or have willpower to choose is the question? It is obvious that choice happens spontaneously in the moment or needs a moment to happen.
You can neither choose in the moment nor could you have willpower in the moment, because you cannot choose to make a moment; you need the moment for the choice to be present. Therefore, a moment happens without choice or willpower.
This fact of life with regards to a moment implies that not only does a moment happen spontaneously, uncontrollably and unpredictably, so too does choice and willpower. Human beings neither make choice nor have willpower. They merely appear to have them.
Similarly, whatever a human being has, he or she has got it from life. This implies that: what everyone has or got is gifted to them by life. This implies that the empty hand of an adult or a child is filled by life as it is meant to be filled.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2017
Editor’s Note:
We are in no doubt at all that we have what we want and that we wish to keep what we have. Except, of course, on those occasions when we do not want what we have or are disappointed if we fail to get what we wish to have. Even with such reverses, we are nevertheless in no doubt that we have the willpower not merely to choose but also to have what we have set out to get. So it appears.
The understanding of the enlightened, however, as revealed in this article, is that life provides fully for the empty-handed what is to be provided, especially the understanding that it is so.
Julian Capper, UK.