There are several Sanskrit words that carry the sense of free will but, if we look at these a little more closely, a pattern quickly emerges.
A voluntary action, ‘acting of one’s own free will’ is kAmakAra. The kAra part is the ‘doing’ and kAma means ‘wish, desire, longing’. Even more specifically, sakAma – ‘acting of one’s own accord or free will’ –literally means ‘with desire’. svachChanda is another variant: sva means ‘one’s own’ and Chanda means ‘pleasure, delight, appetite’. svatantra indicates ‘independence’ or ‘self dependence’. saMkalpa means ‘will’ or ‘volition’ in general and yatna is an ‘activity of will or volition’. Possibly the closest in meaning is svechChA. which means ‘one’s own wish or will, free will’; svechChAra means ‘acting as one like, doing what is right in one’s own eyes’. But here again, breaking up the word svechChA gives us sva ichChA – ‘one’s own wish, desire or inclination’. Basically, what the scriptures seem to tell us is that having ‘free will’ means acting in accordance with our own wishes or desires.
Whether or not our own desire influences an action or not is how Aristotle differentiates actions. If the cause of an action is external and we do not contribute anything to it, then it is ‘involuntary’. If the action is triggered by our personal desire or after appropriate deliberation about whether or not to act, then it is voluntary.
