Everyone desires freedom. We yearn for it, even if we can’t perfectly describe it in words. Even if we manage to develop an idea of what it is (or isn't), we still might not have the first clue as how to achieve such a state. For milennia, the idea of freedom or liberation has been at the center of the dominant philosophies and religions of the East, but it has also inspired Western thinkers, ancient and modern. So what is this thing we call freedom?
Lets check the dictionary first. Merriam-Webster says: a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous (freedom from care). Our understanding of the word then would indicate either a lack of outside obstruction upon our action, a state of independence from the same, or a state of release from the same. So really, freedom can only be understood in comparison to its opposite – obstruction.
From this we draw our conventional idea of freedom. We think of political freedom as an absence of government interference and equate this with certain rights. Further, we often equate financial independence with real independence, as we are less moved by financial necessity if we’re rich. Money helps us with freedom of movement, buys better justice, shortens waits, and brings desires to sometimes instant satisfaction. Sure, things might go more smoothly with money greasing the wheels, but are rich people significantly happier than poor folks? Science consistently says no (I should qualify this by saying that this only true over a certain basic level of financial security). Philosophy usually agrees. Yoga and the Stoics especially say that this financial freedom is not real freedom, but an illusory independence. Money can vanish, be stolen, be confiscated, and otherwise be lost. In fact, when we equate freedom with money, we become dependent upon it, not much better than a slave. We end up serving it, fearing its loss, working to preserve what we have against the inevitability of its departure. We must spend time managing our wealth, protecting it like a child, and like any parent, we must often sacrifice for its welfare. While those in the highest stratosphere of the upper tax brackets may seem immune to this, we must consider what these rare few had to do to achieve their exalted position. Many had to lie, steal and exploit their way to the top, and these habits of a lifetime are not easily shed once financial success is reached. Why? Because the only way to become that rich is greed, and greed is never satiated. Further, although certain day-to-day frustrations might flee from the super-wealthy, they are necessarily surrounded with sycophantic hanger-ons, all after a piece of the pie. They become an institution rather than a person, unable to really judge the motives of another except through the lens of monetary protectionism. Such a person has about as much a chance of finding real peace as a camel has to pass through the eye of a needle.
What then is real independence, real freedom? Well, based on our definition, freedom is not a positive thing that can be possessed or grasped. Freedom is an absence of obstruction. Based on this idea, freedom is actually our natural state, if we could imagine ourselves entirely independent of all obstruction. Lets begin with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, as they are explicit in terms of what the obstructions to this state are. These are the five Kleshas, or sources of misery, often translated as “obstructions” or “obstacles.” The Kleshas include avidya, ignorance; asmitā, egoism; rāga, desire (attachment); dveṣa, aversion; abhiniveśaḥ, clinging to bodily life (fear of death).
As with most lists that appear in such works, the order in which they appear is significant. Ignorance is considered the cause, and even the ground upon which the others rest. In this context, ignorance is the “beginningless” misapprehension of our true nature. According to the yoga philosophy as presented by Patanjali, our essential being is called Purusha, or the Seer within. We may see this as analogous with the idea of the immortal soul which is separable from the body. This has come to be understood (through the medium of Advaita Vedanta) as Consciousness itself. Patanjali presents this Purusha as a duality in opposition to Prakriti, or matter, which constitutes absolutely everything that is not Prakriti: your computer, the air you breathe, the lungs you breathe with, the brain that regulates breathing, and even the entirety of the mind. Only consciousness, changeless and eternal, is considered separate. The entire study of yoga, according to the Yoga Sutras, is concerned with overcoming our in-born ignorance and attaining the realization of our identity as Purusha. This is different than “thinking” that you’re the Purusha, as in order for the state to mean anything it must be experienced as the true reality. The meditative and mystic elements of yoga provide this, but for now lets concern ourselves only with the philosophy.
From this inborn ignorance of our nature, we come to egoism, which is the identification of Consciousness with the mind-body complex. We begin to believe that we think therefore we are instead of realizing that we are therefore we think. The body experiences pain and we think it is the self that feels it. We identify with our gender, our individual form, our birth (nationality, religion, parents), and all of this comes together to form our point of view. I might say “I’m a male, liberal, half-hispanic yoga teacher from New York, who likes rock & roll.” But this is not really correct, according to the yoga philosophy. The correct way of putting it would be “I think I’m a male , liberal, half-hispanic yoga teacher from New York, who likes rock & roll due to ignorance of my essential nature. In reality I’m pure being, consciousness and bliss, eternal and beginningless, and not distinct from any other consciousness anywhere in the universe.” Clearly this is a radical view.
From egoism, this identification with what we might call the “small self,” comes rāga and dveṣa, attachment (desire) and aversion, which are really just two sides of the same coin. Through egoism, we identify with pleasure and pain, and thus relate everything in the world back to ourselves. We appear to experience pleasure, and we wish to repeat the experience, becoming attached to it, and through it, the various and innumerable sources of pleasure. Similarly, we become averse to those things which are uncomfortable, challenging, and painful. The last Klesha, abhiniveśaḥ, “clinging to bodily life” or fear of death, is really about the desire for the continuation of the experiences of attachment and aversion. We fear death because it represents an uncertain change in circumstance, in which we fear we may not continue to enjoy those things we’re attached to or avoid those things we are averse to.
According to this philosophy, all of the Kleshas are obstacles to be eliminated, starting with this fear of change, and including the rest. The method is primarily non-attachment (although this is elaborated a great deal into various parts and methods). The theory is, by the removal of these obstacles, we become independent and free. “…the Seer dwells in its own nature,” independent of association with Prakriti (all objects of consciousness – the Seer). A common metaphor is that when the sluice gate is lifted, water naturally flows into the cultivated fields.
This is a demanding philosophy. In its final analysis it requires us to let go of not only our attachments and aversions, but even our very identification with our personality, etc. Clearly many people will balk at this idea, and I think that’s completely understandable. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel that this approach is philosophically sound. Whether it is practical for most is another matter entirely.
It is the difficulty of method that has led me to consider whether the ideas of the Stoics could be a supplement to, or perhaps a stepping stone to the achievement of the philosophy of yoga. Stoicism drew a lot of inspiration from the Cynics, a school of extreme asceticism much like yoga, at least superficially. The exemplar of Cynicism was Diogenes, famous for having no possessions, and living in a tub in the marketplace. Stoics tended not to go so far, and practiced a more moderate asceticism. For the Stoics, freedom was also a lack of constraint, an independence of being, which involved deep consideration of the natural human faculties of desire and aversion.
To the Stoic, freedom meant essentially only having only experiences that you desire, and not experiencing anything you are averse to. Sounds wonderful, but there’s a big catch. The reason why we’re not already at peace is that our attachments and aversions are out of whack. We desire those things we should avoid (because now or later they will make us miserable), and we avoid those things we should desire (those which will make us happy). Desire/Aversion is ultimately a matter of judgment, and if our judgment is faulty, we tend to become frustrated, and frustration is the feeling most associated with obstruction. To re-quote from last week’s post, “It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them... So when we are frustrated, angry or unhappy, never hold anyone except ourselves – that is, our judgments – accountable. An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.” (Epictetus, Enchiridion.) The idea here is that a wise man, whose judgment is sound, never experiences anything he is averse to and always experiences what he desires. He has purified and refined his faculties of attachment and aversion, rather than doing away with them entirely as yoga would have us do.
“The faculty of desire purports to aim at securing what you want, while aversion purports to shield you from what you don’t. If you fail in your desire, you are unfortunate, if you experience what you would rather avoid you are unhappy. So direct aversion only towards things that are under your control and alien to your nature, and you will not fall victim to any of the things that you dislike. But if your resentment is directed at illness, death or poverty, you are headed for disappointment.
Remove it from anything not in our power to control and direct it instead towards things contrary to our nature that we do control. As for desire, suspend it completely for now. Because if you desire something outside your control you are bound to be disappointed; and even things we do control, which are under other circumstances would be deserving of our desire, are not yet within our power to attain. Restrict yourself to choice and refusal; and exercise them carefully, with discipline and detachment.”
- Epictetus, Enchiridon, Chapter 2.
The idea here is that we should desire only those things which are under our control, and be averse to the same. We should desire that which is “good,” ie, that which upraises us – virtue; and we should be averse to the “evil,” ie, that which degrades us towards the animal state. Epictetus here clearly recognizes the difficulty in doing this. We all start the process full of attachments to outside things, and this is where our misery lies. So he tells us, try to get rid of desire completely, because chances are our judgment is not so wise or strong as of yet to resist the pull of some desires and not others. It is my opinion that this is the same reason that Patanjali is so adamant against desire, not even suggesting that we cultivate a desire for God, such as other yogic books like the Bhagavad Gita might say.
According to Epictetus, we should practice non-attachment, and start by purifying our aversions. This is the same order implicitly suggested in the sutras (eliminating the Kleshas in the backwards order): first we eliminate resistance to change (we can’t do anything until we decide to change ourselves), then comes aversion, then attachment, egoism, and lastly (at the very end), the basic underlying ignorance of the Self. In Stoicism, the attention is mainly on attachment and aversion only.
Stoicism very explicitly teaches what should fall under the auspices of our aversions and desire – only those things we are able to control, which really isn’t very much. We can’t control our family, friends, finances, or even our body, which will age and die despite our willing it otherwise. Further, the body can be imprisoned, injured or killed by those who are physically stronger, regardless of our desire or aversion. All of these things are lumped under the idea of “externals.” The attitude cultivated towards them should be neither attachment or aversion, but complete indifference.
What Stoicism calls “internal” essentially means the mind and soul, which since Plato have been consistently linked, and seem to be to be considered roughly interchangeable. Therefore, what we should desire are mental states independent of external stimuli, and what we should be averse to are different mental states. We should desire virtue, wisdom, discernment, and character; we should be averse to those degrading mental habits that take us away from these. This ultimately leads to peace and serenity, at least in theory. This is the idea of independence: you can be forced into a jail cell, have your possessions (including the body) taken from you, but no one can change your character or your mind unless you assent. If you're indifferent towards the things that can be taken, then the peace you’ve achieved is theoretically untouchable by the outside world.
The main difference between Stoicism and Yoga regarding all this seems to me not a matter of a different understanding of whether or not aversion and attachment are entirely bad, or have beneficial uses, but in the difference in understanding the mind. Stoicism, unlike Platonism which holds that mind and ideas are immaterial, postulates a material of mind (and, I should note, a material God). Despite this important distinction, the Stoics nonetheless treated the mind as immaterial in that they seemed to link it with the soul (which they also called material, but seemed to treat as immaterial), and thought that the mind could be independent of the world around it. Like Plato, the Stoics held the soul to be immortal, but it seems to me that when we connect the idea of an immortal soul to a finite mind, we confuse the issue a great deal. Mind is clearly related to the body (injure the brain, injure the mind), and therefore should really be classed, by Stoic logic as an external, not an internal. Just as the body can die, the mind of the most brilliant philosopher can suffer dementia. By this logic, only the soul is truly internal, and this is the basic yogic distinction between Purusha (the Seer) and Prakriti (the Seen.) In yoga, the mind is considered material, although far more subtle in constitution than gross matter as we know it through the outer senses. It is considered external, and separable from the Self, or soul. In fact, it is this basic separability that is the metaphysical basis of the deepest goals of yogic practice.
Liberation, as it is understood in yogic philosophy, is about achieving a deep and abiding recognition of the identity with the immortal Soul, independent of the accidents of (or karma-caused) birth. If the soul is immortal, and perhaps transmigrates (as the yogis and Plato believed), then if we identify not just with this mind/body, but with the common nature of all of our soul’s incarnations, desire and aversion particular to an individual life in this world no longer have the potential for obstructing the freedom of the soul.
I should point out an important point before ending this already too lengthy post. In the yogic conception, the soul was never really bound, but it only appeared so to the mind. When we transcend the mind and identify with the soul, “we” are free, but who is the “we,” if not the soul? It is the mind which is bound, and it is the mind that is Liberated, and nothing else. The soul, immortal and unchanging, can only be the impassive witness to the vicissitudes of life, and as it neither desires nor is averse, it is never frustrated, but is always partaking in its essential nature: being, consciousness, and bliss.
While I think this concept is philosophically sounder than the Stoic conception, in practice it is probably more difficult, at least to one who is determined to live in the world. I think that Stoicism could be a useful philosophy to consider for a yogi whose interest is perhaps not all-abiding, or someone with children or other responsibilities. If we practice non-attachment, and can make ourselves desirous only of virtue, and averse only to vice, at the very least we are on the road to greater happiness, contentment and serenity than otherwise. I seems certain that if someone who was successful in this found that it was imperfect (as it seems to me it would be), then the virtue thereby gained would be more than enough to take the far greater leap to the loft goal of the yoga philosophy of Patanjali. In my next post, I hope to conclude my discussion of Stoicism in relation to yoga with some practical suggestions from the ancients towards the practice of non-attachment and the achievement of true independence.
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