Only True Eradication of the View of Self Enables Letting Go

Some people say: When facing conditions of causes and conditions, pick up and put down, be free and unrestrained. But this is not true letting go, nor can it bring freedom and ease; this is self-numbing. If you want to truly let go, you must truly eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa), cultivate the first dhyāna to sever afflictions, and cut off craving and attachment; only then can you let go and be unrestrained. Without cultivating to this stage, it is not true letting go—only foolishness without release.

Many people do not wish to be bound and all want freedom, yet they do not know what bondage is or what freedom is. Thus they regard the precepts as bondage and meditative concentration (samādhi) as bondage, feeling that being constrained by the precepts is not free; and so they abandon the precepts, wanting to be without restraint. Little do they know that the reason the Buddha established the precepts was precisely to enable sentient beings to attain liberation, which is why the precepts are called the precepts of individual liberation (prātimokṣa). Because sentient beings keep the precepts and do not violate them, there is no evil karmic retribution of cause and effect; keeping the precepts makes it easy to eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa), easy to subdue and sever afflictions; only by severing afflictions can one attain liberation and freedom. When the mind does not transgress the rules, and there is no attachment to people or to affairs, that is true liberation. A mind that wishes to be free from restraint is itself an unfree, unliberated mind.