Fate

In life, things are bound to happen to us. Sometimes they are caused by our actions or inaction but, more often than not, things just happen for no apparent reason. I believe that how we think about the latter affects our well-being tremendously.

Given that seemingly random events play such a big part in our lives, we have developed a number of approaches to explain this randomness. In many world religions unexplainable events are attributed to the will of a higher power. Often this is nonsensical since many things that happen are in stark contrast to what is otherwise thought of the celestial being. Who would believe in a god which causes children dying from cancer?

We may also believe we have some kind of personal fate or destiny. We build a narrative that we are lucky with money, unlucky in love, destined to be happy, or destined to be unlucky in any of our endeavours. Any pattern of such interpretations which arise from our life are either random or a result of our own character and actions. There is absolutely no evidence that something like identifiable personal destiny exists.

We may also think that everything is random. We can do one thing or another but, at the end, the inevitable force of epic Randomness will overrule any of our actions.

Finally we may think that everything is predetermined; that whatever we do is already written and that none of our actions will be able to change anything.

Scientifically speaking, this last view is probably the one closest to the truth. It is theorised that, if we were to be able to know the exact state of the universe in one moment, we should be able to infer all future states from that. However, spiritually speaking, this view is barren - it provides us with no nourishment and strength for our soul to be the best we can be.

Instead, I prefer a view which I came across in a book about Buddhism: "The Way Things Are" from Ole Nydahl. Lama Ole Nydal said that those which are advanced in their study of the teachings of the Buddha will see what happens to them in two ways:

They understand good things which happen to them as blessings. A blessing is something which is good for us and which is given to us by a higher power and there is very little question that whatever makes the world go round - be it the will of sentient power or the natural interaction of elementary particles - is far more powerful than us.

Bad things which happen, in contrasts, are understood as trials and challenges. I think we should go even further and understand them as opportunities. In a world without challenge, without suffering and friction, there can only be greyness. In order to taste the sweetness of understanding, balance and enlightenment, we need to sample the ordeals of ignorance, chaos and misguided principles; and the engine of events around us is willing to supply us plenty of these.

Our world - or at least how we experience it - is unquestionably a very complex system. Our only way to understand complex systems is to divide them into layers; from a layer grounded in physical reality to layers which become more and more abstract. Think of the stock market. On one layer, there are individual stocks changing hands at specific prices. For a person to know of each individual transaction is impossible. Instead, we aggregate the transactions into a particular price at which the stock is trading at. On a more abstract level, we speak of market sentiment; we differentiate if there is a bull or bear market; if investors in general are eager to invest or try to sell their stocks. On an even more abstract level, we may ask what the spiritual value of the stock market is. Does this bring good or bad for us and humanity?

The same layering applies for all the big and small events which happen in our lives. As said, on a physical, natural level, everything may be predetermined and our fate sealed forever. However, this level is of the same importance to us as is the ledger of all transactions for a stock is for a stock broker; that is of virtually no importance at all. What is very important for us though is the spiritual question what the point of all these seemingly random events is.

Thankfully looking at this question from the spiritual level allows us some degree of freedom how to interpret what is happening to us. We can decide to adopt the most wholesome and nourishing interpretation which does not conflict with the theories currently most favoured by science. In my view, that is the dual view expressed above. Embrace everything good happening as blessing; and embrace everything bad happening as an opportunity to bring us further along on the path to enlightenment.