ABSTRACT
FREEDOM is freedom from pain; it is the eradication of suffering—actual and possible. Pain is frustrated will. We desire, consciously or otherwise, to acquire and enjoy things; we may have the utmost liberty in desiring things; but objective conditions are not always in consonance with our desires; often they are not. An unfavourable balance on the subjective side results; there is suffering. The root-cause of pain is desire, passion and attachment. Freedom is the achieving of a state of passionlessness. It is essentially a negative process and not the acquisition of merit or other values. Not that the practice of virtue or acquisition of merit (puṇya-sambhāra) is not needed for achieving freedom; but it is a means, not the end. According to the Mādhyamika, attachment is dependent on constructive imagination (vikalpa). We are attracted to things as we invest them, in our imagination, with this or that quality. This is a subjective affair; it is not real. 1 Freedom is the total cessation of imagination (sarva-kalpanā-kṣayo hi nirvāṇam). Summing up the essence of spiritual discipline Ārya Deva characterises it as a "Take away all." "Desisting from vice, freeing oneself from the substance-view and lastly giving up all (standpoints) are the stages of this process." 2
