Chinese perspectives on free will by Marchal and Wenzel and free will and freedom in Indian philosophies (by Chakrabarti provide good short essays on free will in Eastern philosophical traditions. Interestingly, the problem of free will is absent in ancient Chinese thought. Only after Chinese scholars began translating modern Western philosophers in the late 19th century did free will emerge as a philosophical problem. Problems of fate, predetermination, agency, moral responsibility, choice, and chance are discussed in Confucian, Daoist, and
Buddhist thought. However, events are not seen as being linearly connected, as cause and effect, but as reciprocal dependencies and interrelations.
In the early Upanishads and the Mahābhārata of ancient India, there is no synonym for free will; nor is there a phrase or word for it in Sanskrit, Pali, or Prakrit. A libertarianism-like view arose in the eighth century as a rejection of the more fatalistic interpretation of karma.
The Buddha too, rejected the fatalism of karma thought. Karma in Jainism means “dirt accumulating on the soul”, which must be washed off by the practice of self-control
and non-violence. Gandhi was deeply influenced by this concept. However, Gandhi was also profoundly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who appealed strongly to the human capacity of freely choosing between violence and non-violence. Finally, in 1896, Swami
Vivekananda, a Hindu monk known for introducing Adviata Vedanta and yoga to the Western world, said in a lecture in New York that “free will is a misnomer. It means nothing, sheer nonsense.”
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