Kelly Jones wrote:Freedom only has meaning relative to attachment. But if freedom means attachment to attachment, it's not freedom.
Non-attachment isn't detachment from attachment. It's not some other ledge to perch onto. People can talk til they're blue in the face about emptiness, but they don't live it.
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I think i get that now, puzzled over it alittle bit, "attachment to attachment" eh?
A person attaches himself to the attachments(or candidates to affirm his ego) that he thinks will provide him with freedom of death. The belief is the basis of the ego, thus, the ego, attaches itself to particular attachments to sustain such a belief. You can say that you attach yourself to the ego yourself, and this attachment forms the root of desire or particular attachments.
Sure, at best, a person who experiences freedom from death and boredom only does so out of his attachment to his own ego. So in that sense, even freedom is attachment for the egotistical person, even freedom is relative to his slavery. His happiness as great as his unhappiness, his delusion, fueling both the amount of freedom he can suddenly experience, and the amount of suffering and boundedness.
Real 'freedom' then, is not relative, it does not come and go, because that is only relative to the amount of slavery in our lives. It is in a sense not freedom at all, but just 'being' without anything added ontop of it. Being free from samsara then, is not freedom as one might think, but is pure, so calling nirvana freedom wouldn't be right.
Freedom is still a dualistic concept, it is something relative to that which one is free of, though not neccesarily attachment, but anything at all. I think Kelly thinks that freedom from desire is the freedom that stands out the most, though.
edit: in the end, what im getting at is that although ive been writing about the emotional idea of freedom, and slavery, and though the two cause eachother, freedom and slavery need not be based on emotional attachment. Itt doesn't have to be centered on attachment, it could be centered on natural phenomena without such a emotional component. for example, one is a slave to the weather gods wrath one day, and the other day, one is free from the weather gods wrath, even if one isnt egotistically involved either way.
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