No other freedom is known.  An Indian would say that a man’s nature is limited by Karma.  Some minds are incapable of the higher forms of virtue and wisdom, just as some bodies are incapable of athletic feats.  But within the limits of his own nature a human being is free.  Indian theology is not much hampered by the mad doctrine that God has predestined some souls to damnation, nor by the idea of Fate, except in so far as Karma is Fate.  It is Fate in the sense that Karma inherited from a previous birth is a store of rewards and punishments which must be enjoyed or endured, but it differs from Fate because we are all the time making our own karma and determining the character of our next birth.

The older Upanishads hint at a doctrine analogous to that of Kant, namely that man is bound and conditioned in so far as he is a part of the world of phenomena but free in so far as the self within him is identical with the divine self which is the creator of all bonds and conditions.  Thus the Kaushitaki Upanishad says, “He it is who causes the man whom he will lead upwards from these worlds to do good works and He it is who causes the man whom he will lead downwards to do evil works.  He is the guardian of the world, He is the ruler of the world, He is the Lord of the world and He is myself.”  Here the last words destroy the apparent determinism of the first part of the sentence.  And similarly the Chandogya Upanishad says, “They who depart hence without having known the Self and those true desires, for them there is no freedom in all worlds.  But they who depart hence after knowing the Self and those true desires, for them there is freedom in all worlds[70].”

Early Buddhist literature asserts uncompromisingly that every state of consciousness has a cause and in one of his earliest discourses the Buddha argues that the Skandhas, including mental states, cannot be the Self because we have not free will to make them exactly what we choose[71].  But throughout his ethical teaching it is I think assumed that, subject to the law of karma, conscious action is equivalent to spontaneous action.  Good mental states can be made to grow and bad mental states to decrease until the stage is reached when the saint knows that he is free.  It may perhaps be thought that the early Buddhists did not realize the consequences of applying their doctrine of causation to psychology and hence never faced the possibility of determinism.  But determinism, fatalism, and the uselessness of effort formed part of the paradoxical teaching of Makkhali Gosala reported in the Pitakas and therefore well known.  If neither the Jains nor the Buddhists allowed themselves to be embarrassed by such denials of free will, the inference is that in some matters at least the Hindus had strong common sense and declined to accept any view which takes away from man the responsibility and lordship of his own soul.

19. The Origin of Evil