Questioner: What is the price of freedom? What is it that convinces someone to pay that price? What is the reason for someone wanting freedom in the first place?
Acharya Prashant: Certain things do not even require a reason to validate them, because they are . What is need not be backed by a reason.
Let me elaborate please. Now that we are conversating, when you say something, you want a response. When I say something, I too want a response. And when we say something to each other, we want the other to listen and to be attentive. Now, why is that so? We may ascribe a reason but actually it is because of our nature, svabhāva , rather than reason. That’s the way we are; that’s the essence of consciousness.
Freedom is the very nature of consciousness. We do not want bondages. And that’s why when you want to punish someone, you throw him into a jail. And that’s the reason why bondages have to be pushed aside whatever be the cost. In that context I have said that one has to be ready to pay the price, because freedom is invaluable, it is who you are, and you won’t get any kind of rest or peace without freedom. If you are not free, nothing in the world is going to assuage you; something within you would keep bleeding, wailing, crying for liberation.
And that’s the human condition. As we are born, you see, we are already born with a lot of inner bondages. If you look at a newborn baby, one month, two months, six months old kid—maybe even a two-three-year-old kid—till this point he has not been taught much by the family or society. Still there is a lot of ignorance; still you would find fear, greed, temptation. Some kids start lying from a very early age, in fact all of them do. Even if they don’t actively lie, there is a tendency to lie. Now, nobody taught them to lie and cheat; we are born with that tendency, and that is bondage, and that won’t allow us any kind of joy or peace. And we can’t live without that, and there is no reason why we can’t live without that; it just
