Freedom

The practice of vipassana meditation, leading to realization and eventually actualization in daily life, is a path toward freedom. The practice offers us the opportunity over and over again to learn how to release attachment (to thoughts), abandon aversion (toward unwanted experiences), and then move our attention back to a present-moment sensory reality (the breath). This practice/realization process then gives us the training to begin to actualize these strategies in our day-to-day life.

As Jack Kornfield once said:

It is the truth of what is, the Dharma, that sets us free; that lets us loose from our cage of old beliefs and habit patterns. To know what is, and to experience the knowing of it, is truly liberating.

The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Blessings and Happy Independence Day,
Roger