However, when reading the Gita it becomes unclear as to whether Arjuna DOES actually have a choice when it comes to fighting or not. If all our actions are caused, then how can Arjuna have any free will? If God knows the future, and if God is omniscient, then how can Arjuna have any choice as whether to fight? If this is true then why does Krishna have to bother trying to persuade Arjuna at all? This would imply that he DOES have some free will.

However the text, along with some other Hindu texts provides us with some answers to this. If we follow this system of belief, then I believe that Arjuna has no free will as regards his physical action

The philosophy says that action should be taken with not a view to the consequences, but for the sake of duty, or for the glory of God. The results of the action are irrelevant, the only motivation should be "surrendering in thought all actions to Me (God)" vi. In this way, the theory is not entirely non-consequentialist, it simply moves the moral worth of an action from the results to some other motivation. At first in the Gita, Krishna stresses the importance of doing your duty, but the vast majority of the rest is concerned with pleasing God, or trying to achieve union with God though bhakti-yoga. So this is the choice that Arjuna has, HOW to perform the action - whether in respect to the consequences, for the sake of duty, or for the attainment of God.

However if we go further back into the causes of nature, we find that this is not entirely true. There are two fundamental things in the world - purusa and prakrti, which are the subject and the object respectively; the knowing object and the known. In the beginning, the three gunas were in perfect balance (three gunas make up prakrti or nature, the physical part of the world), and there was no action. However the presence of conscious persua brings about activity in prakrti and starts evolution. The one of the products of this is buddhi or the intellect, which is followed by manas, the mind and then senses and so on... But "buddhi (intellect) and manas (the mind) are the instruments of consciousness and are not themselves conscious" viii . Gunas are subject to change in the presence of perusa, of which the self (atman) is also a part. From this it does not seem illogical that if you are conscious of the difference between purusa and praktri then you may have some control over the buddhi and the manas, in other words the empirical ego. This would not be acting in the phyical sense, more influencing.

The Gita is not clear about whether Arjuna has a choice or not in my opinion. This may be because the Gita is not a philosophical text, but a religious one and so is not based on defensible metaphysical propositions. But since the whole concept of the text is Arjuna being persuaded to fight, we must assume free will of some sort on his part. Since the wealth of powers that are bestowed on the deity in the Gita is so large, it leaves little room for any sort of free will. In fact there seems no way of denying that the physical world is completely deterministic. However, the presence of atman, perusa, God himself within us, as our "self", confuses the issue and makes us not wholly physical and perhaps allows for while not the cosmic free will to do what we please, enough leeway to have influence over our own motives and our own minds. Arjuna has no free choice in what is going to happen, but he has a choice in how he reacts to it, how he sets his mind whether as a practitioner of yoga or not.

1) "An Indian Sourcebook in Philosophy" ed. Radhakrishnan and Moore 1989 - i - 3.5 Gita , iii - P101, iv - 18.61 Gita, v - 18.63 Gita, vi - 18.57, vii - P49 Upanisads, xiii and ix - P425, x - 9.30 Gita, xi - 9.29 Gita.

2) "Fate and Freewill in the Bhagavadgita" Arvind Sharma, Religious Studies 1979 - ii.

s, but as to HOW he does something, his motivation behind his actions, he has a choice; and this is what Krishna is trying to influence.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Gita Krishna, Throughout Krishna, Gita Arjuna, Gita Yoga, Surely Supreme, Gita None, Gita Lord, Krishna Arjuna, Radhakrishnan Moore, Bhagavadgita Gita, arjuna free, arjuna choice, free god, self ego, according gita, free choice, persuade arjuna, arjuna free choice, physical world, philosophy ed, fight true, arjuna free gita, consequences sake duty,
Approximate Word count = 2280
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)