Does free will exist? Yes of course it does. That’s why you get to choose whether to drink tea or coffee while reading this post. Or maybe you choose not to drink either.
One might say though that hey, tea or coffee isn’t significant enough for a heavy topic like free will. Yes, unless coffee messes up one’s system and leads to a few missed days at work?
Anyway, that’s all conjecture.
More importantly, although Lord Krishna himself hints in various places about free will (such as “Arjuna get up and fight!”), does it really truly exist?
Perhaps it does. But we are also victims of our own pasts, and by extension, victims of ourselves. Everything lies squarely on us. If we’ve built up many lives of conditioning towards certain responses, experiences and situations, then can we really use our free will to change? Will we?