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Inner Vioce
Young Bites. Dated: 6/2/2020 10:52:05 AM
USE THE LAW OF FREEDOM
Buddha says freedom is the very law of life. What he means by it is that there is nothing higher than freedom. But by the word law, please dont misunderstand him. In fact for dhamma, the word law is only approximately right. In the English language there is not exactly the right word for dhamma. In Chinese there is a word tao that exactly means dhamma. The closest word in English is logos, but that has gone out of use. Hence the law is used, but law has other associations: the ordinary law of the state, of governments, of societies. That is not the meaning of Buddha. Of course, these laws are inhibitions; they prohibit you, they hinder you from freedom. Buddha is saying freedom is the only real law and anything that hinders your freedom is against the law of life. Be free. All those laws have to be broken, sabotaged. You have to take your life in your own hands and you are responsible for it. No fate is responsible, no destiny is responsible. You have to create yourself by your own effort. You are just a tabula rasa. You can write beautiful poems on it, beautiful calligraphy, you can do beautiful paintings on it; or you can leave it as it is. Or you can simply throw colors on it, meaninglessly, in an insane way, like a small child. You can destroy the whole thing. And there is nobody else who is responsible except you; the total responsibility is yours. That is the most emphatic thing that Buddha wants you to remember: dont shirk your responsibility. Whatsoever you are is your own work and whatsoever you want to be you can be. But you can be that only if freedom is the law of life. If everything is destined, if there is something like fate, if there is something which has been preprogramed in you, then you are not a man at all, then you are just a biocomputer. You are simply going to repeat the program, you are a gramophone record. You dont have any freedom, you cant change anything. You are just play-things in the hands of unknown forces.