Karma, Liberation, Freedom & Free Will

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POST/MODERN mind

Karma, Freedom, Liberation & Free Will

Karma constructs Reality out of formless emptiness. The Universe and the Mind mutually reveal each other. Individual selves appear. Once there is a self there is the self’s free will, freedom to choose, to self-determine. The self needs external freedom to exercise its free will. It needs a free society, a society of individuals free to exercise their free wills.

Yet in Buddhism we seek liberation from the confines of the self, from the shackles of the “I” or “Me”. Personal freedom is obviously different from personal liberation. Freedom is about a society of free individuals. Liberation is about transcending the self. There is no “picking and choosing” in liberation, even if we still choose and pick in freely.

There has to be a self to exercise one’s free will. Yet a self manifests the absence of liberation. One is back in shackles of the “I”, but one is free to exercise one’s free will. This going back and forth between liberation and freedom continues endlessly, moment after moment.

Freedom of individual free will is necessary to initiate a search for personal liberation, yet, if not transcended, it becomes a hindrance

Is it freedom to exercise one’s free will, or is it freedom FROM “me”, from the "self", the "I" which exercise free will?

What is TRUE freedom that goes BEYOND being a free individual, in a free society, free to exercise one's “selfish” free will? What is that true freedom that goes BEYOND the "I" and the "Me"? Isn't it liberation from and transcendence of the "self" and its "free will"?

Maybe there is no free will in liberation? Or maybe true liberation lies beyond the question of free will and personal freedom?

But just knowing it does not liberate. It is not knowing it that is a mark of true liberation .

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