A man and a woman stand on a misty cliff, the man full of barely suppressed frustration and the woman stoic and self-contained. The man urges her to free herself from a difficult situation. He is met with this reply: 

“If freedom is all you ever live for, you will never be free of yourself.” 

I’m not sure what it says about me that I get much of my dharma instruction from television, but this quote from “Shogun” pulled me up short. What would it mean, to be free of myself? 

Of course we all want freedom— from pain, restriction, the demands of others. But I could see that pursuit of that kind of freedom could become a kind of servitude, in which we become subject to the power of our need to avoid pain and gain safety and success. In the process, the self can become a performance we strive to perfect, a fortress we must defend. A kind of prison.

There are escape routes. The ancient Greeks had Dionysos and his ecstatic rituals to provide group transcendence and release. Today, we can dance at a rave, cheer a sports victory or chant in a protest march, tapping into that same vibe. Losing ourselves not only in sound and movement, but in the energy of the crowd, we can be swept up into the collective will.

Or we may be lucky enough to experience awe—witnessing great beauty or vastness—and be lifted out of ordinary self-involvement into a sense of expansion. Less exalting is the path of duty and discipline, deliberately giving oneself over to something bigger, whether family, clan or higher purpose. All these approaches bring us in contact with things that feel outside the self, outside of “personal” experience. 

Strange but true, I realize that meditation has the potential to do the same thing for me, but in a subtle and unexpected way. In meditation everything, including what is usually termed “internal” experience, is treated as “outside”. So I try to observe my breath, sensations, thoughts as impersonal phenomena that flow through me but that do not define me. Seeing this flow without judgment, as part of the wider world of cause and effect, de-escalates my reactions to it, providing space and freedom from the anxious craving of my smaller self. 

If there is no separation between me and the world, inside and outside, my experience carries less of a charge and my defences seem less necessary. I can see past them to appreciate the tragedy and beauty of the world, and respond to it with more wisdom and compassion. Lightening up on the struggle for freedom for the self, I can taste that paradoxical freedom from the self that is, perhaps, worth even more.