Monday Meme - Another Way To View Freedom

"To be free is to be master of oneself. For many people such mastery involves freedom of action, movement, and opinion, the opportunity to achieve the goals they have set themselves. This conviction locates freedom primarily outside oneself and overlooks the tyranny of thoughts. Indeed it is commonplace in the West that freedom means being able to do whatever we want and to act on any of our impulses. It’s a strange idea, since in so doing we become the plaything of thoughts that disturb our mind, the way a mountaintop wind bends the grass in every direction. Inner freedom is above all freedom from the dictatorship of “me” and “mine,” of the ego that clashes with whatever it dislikes and seeks desperately to appropriate whatever it covets. So being free comes down to breaking the bonds of afflictions that dominate and cloud the mind. It means taking life into one’s own hand, instead of abandoning it to tendencies created by habit and mental confusion."

- Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard