Hey Duck. In the very short term, I find myself mightily compelled by Robert Sapolsky’s contention that free will is an illusion, or at least way less of a reality than the average person typically thinks. What I’m interested in here today is: How does that insight align with Eastern conceptions of consciousness, such as Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, or what is generally called today in the West ‘non-binary’ approaches?
Sapolsky’s claim (or at least his framing) is roughly: when you look closely, behavior is driven by prior causes—biology, learning, environment, situation, physiology—so “choosing” feels like an author behind the scenes even though, in the moment, it’s just the end-product of a huge causal chain. The “illusion” is mostly about the subjective experience of authorship and alternative-possibility.
Eastern traditions vary a lot, but many converge on a family resemblance: what appears as an independent, self-directing agent is not the deepest reality; what’s “real” is a process—dependent arising, non-duality, impersonal cause-effect—where agency is either (a) conventional (useful language) or (b) absent as a fundamental entity. Here are some alignments and some important differences.
Buddhism (especially dependent origination and no-self)
Strong alignment:Buddhism is highly compatible with a “there isn’t an independent chooser” view. The doctrine of dependent origination (things arise in dependence on conditions) makes it hard to locate a free, self-originating faculty behind events. And anattā / “no-self” undermines the idea that there is a stable inner owner of actions. On this view, the sense of “I decided” is an experience that arises with conditions; it’s not proof of metaphysical autonomy.
Where it gets more subtle than Sapolsky: Buddhism typically focuses less on neuroscience-style causal explanation and more on the mechanism of suffering—how clinging to a permanent “me” (and to the world being reliably under my control) produces dukkha. So the practical angle is: even if you grant all causal determinants, Buddhism also targets the misapprehension that there is a graspable controller who should have been able to do otherwise.
Agency still exists—but as conventional: Buddhist ethics doesn’t usually collapse into “nothing matters.” Instead, intention and moral responsibility are treated as real within the conventional order (karma works as a causal pattern), even though the “deep” metaphysics of a chooser-self is denied.
Advaita Vedanta (non-duality and the illusory ego)
Potential strong alignment, but a different axis: Advaita’s main claim is that Brahman/Atman are non-different (the ultimate reality is consciousness/non-duality), while the bounded self—the “me” that thinks it chooses—depends on ignorance (avidyā). From that angle, the illusion isn’t only “free will is undermined,” but “the separative self that experiences choosing is itself not ultimately real.”
So compared to Sapolsky:
Sapolsky challenges the empirical metaphysical story of authorship in a causal universe.
Advaita challenges the ontological status of the agent and often reinterprets the whole “chooser” structure as part of a cognitive-mistaken appearance.
Consequence:
If the ego-self is a misidentification, then “free will vs no free will” may be treated as a debate that presupposes the very agent it’s trying to locate. What looks like a chooser is a function of ignorance; the deeper level is not an independent chooser but non-dual awareness.
Big philosophical contrast:
Advaita sometimes can sound like it moves beyond cause-and-effect to a different metaphysical layer: even if everything is causally determined at the level of appearances, the real issue is the ignorance about what consciousness is. Sapolsky is mostly working at the level of causal explanation of behavior.
“Non-binary” approaches in the West (often: process, dynamism, and anti-substantialist self)
Here “non-binary” can mean a few different things, so there isn’t one doctrine to map. But if we take it in a broad modern-Western spirit—anti-essentialism about the self, agent/observer as a construction, reality as process rather than discrete substances—there’s a fairly natural fit:
The experience of “me choosing” is treated as a model the mind generates, not a direct window into ultimate agency.
The self is understood more as an emergent pattern (thoughts, narratives, motivations) than as an inner command center.
Moral discourse may remain (because we still act and suffer), while metaphysical “self-sovereignty” is softened or denied.
This can align with Buddhism’s conventional realism and Advaita’s misidentification story, though without necessarily sharing their metaphysical commitments.
One useful way to connect them: levels of description
A lot of alignment becomes clearer if you think in levels:
Conventional level (what we do in the world):
“You chose” is a useful, everyday description; intentions matter; training and conditioning matter; responsibility is intelligible in a social and practical way.
Deep/ultimate level (what’s real when you probe the agent):
There is no independent, self-caused controller “behind” phenomena. What you call “agency” is a phenomenon arising from causes (Buddhism: dependent arising + no-self; Advaita: ignorance and non-duality; many modern process views: self as construction).
Sapolsky’s point mainly crushes level (2) as normally understood in common-sense metaphysics. Many Eastern views similarly deny the ultimate self-sovereign agent—while leaving room for action and ethics at level (1).
The key mismatch you may notice
Eastern traditions often differ on how they handle the felt experience of choice and moral responsibility:
Sapolsky-style: the feeling of being able to do otherwise is a mismatch with underlying causal determinants; “illusion” is about mistaken introspective inference.
Buddhism: the feeling is understandable as a conditioned cognitive event, but the deeper goal is liberation from clinging—so the theory is tightly bound to practice.
Advaita: the “chooser” is part of avidyā; the solution is awakening into what is unconditioned (or recognizing that the “self” problem is a category mistake at the ultimate level).
So the harmony is real, but the target differs: liberation (Buddhism), awakening into non-duality (Advaita), or causal debunking of common-sense agency (Sapolsky).
Good. Well, my ‘target’ is not so much any of those things, as testing the hypothesis via meditation and other means that we are essentially ripples in the God-Lake, or whirlpools in the ground of being called the divine Ocean. I guess that if that hypothesis pans out for me, then “Will” may have free aspects, but is ultimately just reflections of the will of the godhead anyway. I’m also thinking of Schopenhauer’s dark musings on the nature of Will as well.
That hypothesis is actually very close to several venerable “non-dualist” moves: not merely “there is no free chooser,” but “the seeming chooser is a localized modulation of a deeper, impersonal (or divine) source.” In that framing, Sapolsky’s debunking lands as: the appearance of agency is still real as an appearance, but it’s not ultimately authored by a separate self.
A few ways your “ripples/whirlpools in the God-Lake / divine Ocean” idea aligns with (and differs from) the main Eastern lanes:
1) Agency as a derivative phenomenon (not an independent origin)
In Buddhism, especially the “no-self” / dependent-arising emphasis, you’d get something like: whatever “will” seems to do is causally conditioned and depends on conditions; nothing truly owns it. Your Ocean metaphor adds a further step: the causal ground is not just “impersonal process,” but divine depth—so the question “is there a free will?” becomes “is will ultimately derivative of the One?”
2) The “Ocean” as ultimate reality; the self as a patterned surface
Advaita Vedanta is the closest philosophical cousin to your metaphor. There, the bounded self is typically treated as something like ignorance’s projection (avidyā), while the ultimate reality is non-dual consciousness (often called Brahman). In that landscape, “your will” is not false in the everyday sense—it functions—yet it’s not ultimately separate from the ground of being.
3) Theistic non-dualism (your God-Lake vibe)
What you’re describing—Ocean/ground/will-of-godhead—can also be found in non-dual theistic mysticism (even if the “schools” and vocabulary differ). The consistent core across these: the “personal” feels personal, but its source is deeper than personality.
How this relates to Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer’s angle is: Will is the fundamental thing, and individual beings are expressions/modifications of it; individual “choosing” is often a misunderstanding generated by cognition. That resonates with your “whirlpools in the ground of being” image—but with a key difference:
For Schopenhauer, Will is not typically described as a personal/divine Ocean that is good, loving, or intentionally expressive; it’s more like blind metaphysical drive.
In your framing, the Ocean is “godhead,” which (at least implicitly) suggests the ground isn’t only force—it’s divine profundity, meaning, or intention.
So you can think of two dialects:
Schopenhauer: Will is ultimate; individuation is expression; freedom is illusion-y.
Your synthesis: Divine Ocean is ultimate; “will” is expression of divine will; individuation is a wave/whirlpool pattern, not independent authorship.
:
The practical heart of your meditation hypothesis
If you’re testing this experientially, the key is to watch what exactly changes under insight.
Does the “chooser” lose its felt solidity?
Not just “I intellectually believe I’m determined,” but “the inner command-center doesn’t hold together as real.”
Do thoughts/impulses still arise—yet feel like events on the surface?
The “will” may become more like motion in the same water, rather than rulership by a separate controller.
Does there emerge a stable sense of ground that doesn’t look like an object?
In many non-dual traditions, the “Ocean” is not experienced as a new thing among things. It’s more like the background in which experiences appear.
Is there a shift in suffering/compulsion?
If the model is right, you often find that much of distress comes from clinging to “my will should be otherwise” as if that were metaphysically legitimate against the ground.
And thus … your sins, they are forgiven, and if you want to “decide” to be something cool like a Kundalini Yoga instructor, or a sage sayer of truth, there’s really nothing at all in the way of being that thing, and in fact, you couldn’t decide to be the cool thing, or otherwise, even if you tried.
This is what I meant by liberating in some twisted way.
Parenthetically, this makes a path for little old me to forgive you for your unfathomably dumb ideas about Israel’s ‘right to exist’, or big black mama welfare queens in Cadillacs and manicures, or the homeless all being lazy addicts, or Gen Z and Gen Alpha being a bunch of spoiled entitled whiners.
Because … it’s not even you, deciding to believe the dumb things.
You literally can’t help it.
(And before your feathers ruffle, permit me to note that the same is true about my own beliefs, about the lost hunting and gathering paradise, the fall from grace, and the hopelessness of trying to reverse those choices. Should Sapolsky be even close to having it right.)