Vedic astrology is "better than" western?
Oh. That's nice.
Who told you so?
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Fate vs "Free Will".....
Watch horoscopes as they become manifest through a life.
And what you see is a person living out a script.
Gaze beyond Earth to the Cosmos and what you see is that things are born, live, grow, evolve, die..... and seem to have nothing to say about it. (stars for example, or mountains or fruit flies.)
Human beings evolved from, and in fact are still composed of one-celled organisms. We are nothing more than colonies of one-celled organisms. Humanity is nothing more than a continuation of what came before and we are the seed of what will be (in our particular line). We did not will ourselves into being -- the Cosmos did. We live between the two unseens of pre-birth and post-birth and have no say in either. Why, in the vast expanse of the eons should we, alone among all the creatures of Creation, suddenly and uniquely have "free will"?
A long time ago I was walking in the woods, thinking about astrology. And suddenly I realized that I am a puppet on cosmic strings...a slave if you will, with no control over my destiny. And in that moment I became Free.
I have no control over the stock market, the weather, the fact that I live on Earth, that I am male, American, a lousy singer..... All these things have a powerful, dominant influence on my life, how I live it, the choices I make.
I am often driven by emotions, passions...not under my control.
Most of what I do in life is driven by unconscious forces (I was raised to believe certain things -- many of them not true -- ) and these beliefs control me and my life.
My bet: The list of things over which you have control or power -- over which your Free Will reigns supreme -- will be far shorter than my list of things beyond my control.
This does not negate the fact that we constantly make choices, important choices. We can't do otherwise. But if we look deeply within, we might find that those choices in themselves are predetermined by our very nature.
Jesus (and others) said..."Not my will but thine be done". And then he walked down the hill, willingly, to meet his fate. If we look at this not as history but as symbol and guide for living wisely.... (P.S. I'm not a Christian. But I look for and accept wisdom wherever I can find it.)