Liberation

July 14, 2012

Liberate  - to set free, as from oppression, confinement or foreign control

Liberation – the act of liberating or the state of being liberated.  The action or process of trying to achieve equal rights and status

Buddhism is a religion of self-realization.  It is not a religion that can be taught.  In Buddhism, you must realize the experience of Buddhism entirely by yourself.

If you ask my about the theology of Buddhism, I can teach about the sutras, the discourses, koans.  Fundamentally, you must realize the teachings for yourself.

Liberation means that you disengage yourself from all the bonds that fasten or rope you, visible or invisible.  The ropes of karma and affinity are binding you and taking away all freedom from you.  But by your own endeavor, you unfasten these ropes and free yourself from bondage of all kinds.  The thing that are fastening you and taking your freedom from you are your karma, the results of your previous deeds, our “inheritance” from our parents (authoritarian father, or neglecting mother).

In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra it is said, “To attain nirvana is moksha.”  To attain nirvana means to transcend this phenomenal world, to experience the state of Reality.  This is the meaning of moksha.

There are several kinds of nirvana.  People think after they die they will enter nirvana (heaven), unless the person goes to hell.  This is negative liberation.  Positive liberation is vimoksha – by your own enlightened mind attained by experiencing the state of nirvana, you liberate yourself from this world, but remain in it.

Meditating upon your trouble, not running away from it, but remaining in it, you can fin the solution to what to do.  You must find liberation from your worldly attachments, from your greed, from your selfish love or desire.  You must liberate yourself from your ignorant mind from deluded emotion, and from all superstition.

Wisdom is the cause of both kinds of liberation.  Without our minds, we could not liberate ourselves from emotion or delusion because it is our wisdom that liberates us.   We can attain nirvana with the intellect by meditation, but we will be “caught” in meditation.  This is a very important point in Zen, in Buddhism.  When in meditation we realized the precious mirror.  However this is only partial realization.  As it is said in the Five Ranks …. We must not stop now and think we have attained awakening.  We must continue in order to realize the next stage, absolute liberation ???