It ain’t no act of God!

With Donald Trump indicating he could run for President again, and all the pink slips Elon Musk is handing out at Twitter, the unpredictability of life and the strangeness of fate may be on your mind. It’s certainly on mine. Fate, and God’s will, figure repeatedly in Indian philosophical thought. Given how often we blame everything on karma, we all have wondered: Do we have free will? If yes, how is God omnipotent? If not, what is the point of human action? The dangers of lapsing into inertia were recognised by Sanskrit philosophers. Krishna advises Arjuna in the Gita to avoid falling into the trap of inaction. In fact, if you think about it, the whole Gita is taught to Arjuna precisely because he wants to escape from his duty – admittedly, in his case, the unpleasant duty of killing his own kin.

As always, let’s start with the Mahabharata, which boldly makes the claim that there is nothing in this world that is not in the epic. When the Pandavas are in the forest due to Yudhishtira losing the game of dice, Draupadi has some wise words of counsel for Yudhishtira, who is content with his lot in the forest. She instructs him on his favourite topic -- dharma!

Draupadi advises Yudhishtira to accept that he had been cheated by the Kauravas in the game of dice and to start planning for what he could do about it, rather than passively accepting that fate is unavoidable. In other words, one cannot blame fate for one’s own bad decisions, or worse, for one’s own inaction.

“The cow has milk, but it needs milking; fire is concealed in the stones, but it only emerges from the friction of being rubbed; and sesame has oil, but it needs to be milled,” she tells Yudhishtira. She gives him an example: The farmer should plow his land and sow the seeds. Once he has done his job, he can rest and wait for the rains. If it doesn’t rain after all this work, then he can justifiably say that fate was unfavourable to him, and no one would blame him. But one should not resign oneself to fate without putting in one’s own effort.

The three schools of Vedanta that originated in South India have different ways of thinking about fate and free will, but all three agree on one thing – don’t blame fate or God for anything. Thinkers of the Advaita school emphasise that the world as we perceive it is not ultimately real – that it is a result of ignorance. You would think they would be sympathetic to the idea of leaving things to fate; after all, if the world is not real, why bother working so hard? But they are far from it. Performing one’s duties, and performing them well, is essential to purifying the mind, which, in turn, is essential for knowledge, which, in turn, brings about liberation. No scope here for laziness or playing the blame game then.

The Vishishtadvaita school believes that the world is real, and so our actions are, too. Their take on free will is that individuals have the power to think freely, and God initially allows them to act without interfering with their action. God may then give them the will to perform good or bad actions based on their initial intentions. In other words, the onus for carrying out your work well is on your shoulders, don’t pin it on God!

The Dvaita school believes that individuals have an essential nature, which predisposes them to act in certain ways. God simply facilitates these actions, rather than choosing how we act or how we think. Therefore, God cannot be held responsible for our bad actions -- it’s our own fault. So, here is the rare unanimous verdict from Vedanta philosophers of yore -- when a bridge collapses, own up! It’s NOT an act of God!