Only by Truly Eliminating the Self-View Can One Let Go

Some people say: when conditions and circumstances arise, just pick up and put down, be free and unrestrained. But this is not true letting go, nor is it true freedom and ease; it is self-numbing. If you want to truly let go, you must truly eliminate the self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi), cultivate the first dhyāna to eliminate afflictions, and cut off craving and attachment; only then can you let go and be at ease. If you have not cultivated to this stage, it is not true letting go—only foolish clinging without release.

Many people do not wish to be bound and all long for freedom, yet they do not know what bondage is or what freedom is. Consequently, they regard the precepts as bondage and meditative concentration (samādhi) as bondage, feeling that being constrained by the precepts is not free; and so they abandon the precepts entirely, wanting no restraint whatsoever. Little do they know that the very reason the Buddha established the precepts was to enable sentient beings to attain liberation, which is why the precepts are called the precepts of individual liberation (prātimokṣa). Because sentient beings keep the precepts and do not violate them, they incur no evil karmic retribution; keeping the precepts makes it easy to eliminate the self-view, easy to subdue and eliminate afflictions. Only by eliminating afflictions can one attain liberation and true freedom—when the mind does not transgress the bounds, and there is no attachment to people or to affairs. Only this is true liberation. A mind that wishes to be free of all restraint is itself an unfree, unliberated mind.