What Is Liberation and Freedom?

The purpose of cultivating all dharmas is to see through the emptiness, illusory nature, and middle-way nature of all dharmas, thereby allowing one's own mind to gain wisdom, so that toward all states and realms the mind is empty and unobstructed, obtaining the beneficial fruition of merit, and thus becoming liberated from worldly afflictions.

Someone may ask: What is liberation for? Liberation has no purpose; liberation is simply freedom from bondage. Liberation is without suffering—like a bird freed from its cage, soaring at ease; like a fierce tiger released from a trap, hunting freely on the mountains and in the valleys; like a wild horse loosed from its reins, galloping at will across the vast open land. Again someone may ask: What is freedom for? Freedom also has no purpose; it is merely a feeling of being free from the bondage of self—indeed, even beyond feeling, for if there is feeling, one is not truly free. So having no purpose is best. What would you use it for? What is the use of being useful? Everything useful is a burden and a bondage, and all of it is suffering.

If you wish to be liberated from the suffering self, you should ask yourself every day: What do I eat for? Then answer: Eating is for the existence of this physical body. Ask again: What is the existence of the physical body for? Answer: The physical body exists in order to stay alive. Ask again: What is staying alive for?... Keep digging to the root, questioning all the way to the very bottom, never letting yourself off easily. After that, the wise will see wisdom and the benevolent will see benevolence—each states their own view; the states of realization unfold in rich variety, thoughts leap vividly onto the page, and the differences naturally become apparent. By looking inward and reflecting, you will gradually enter upon the cultivation of the path. Ask yourself like this every day, and one day you will awaken—no longer craving, no longer clinging—comfortable, at ease, and liberated, without vexation or affliction; in the end you will transcend the world of things, detached and free.