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In the ultimate sense, I think this is accurate. Words, ideas, etc. point to truth and can be more or less representative of it, but can never fully reflect it. Language has limits to what it can express, but it can be a good approximation to help us understand, like the finger pointing to the moon. Conventionally, we can speak more authoritatively about truth, e.g., 2 + 2 = 4 is true, 2 + 2 = 5 is false. But to speak of the ultimate truth of numbers and their inherent existence, we begin to run into problems via the limits of language, concepts, etc. Even the likes of Bertrand Russell had difficulty in formulating the logical foundation of mathematics and its ultimate truth. All attempts may point in the right direction, but they are not in themselves Truth. And I think I'd agree that, "Real, lasting Truths seem to me to be linked to being, not thinking," which is why I'm sympathetic to the Buddhist distinction between relative truth and ultimate truth—the former is the realm of human conventions, distinctions, etc., the latter is over and above us and yet we participate within in it (God, Nature, Dhamma, Tao, etc.).

It's true that there are many kinds of freedom. Freedom to. Freedom from. Etc. But much of that is theoretical and linguistic and not necessarily an objective reality. For one, we have start with our metaphysical assumptions about agency. Do we have free will? Is the world causally deterministic? Etc. For true freedom to exist, there must be an agency free to choose. And I think it's difficult to pinpoint such an agency. We are conditioned by a myriad of factors. Biological. Psychological. Cultural. Etc. Often, when we think we are free to make a choice, the decision has been conditioned by a host of factors, and we fill in the reasoning afterwards, as if it was a free choice.

And then for the types of freedom, we are also constrained and conditioned for both good and bad reasons. One can be constrained by morality and social conventions that have been learned to be generous, for example. We are free to be generous, but acts of generosity often have conditions behind them, meaning that are not entirely free. Or we can be free from things like hunger, but that freedom will depend upon whether or not we have access to food, and various internal and external conditions can effect that freedom. We may eat because we are hungry, biological factors triggering the decision. Or we may abstain because of social factors making us feel self-conscious about our appearance. And while we fee that we have made the choice to eat or not eat, it's very difficult to say if we were indeed free to make them.

Besides these philosophical debates, we do tend to want more freedom and dislike being told we are not able to do something we desire, or suffer something we do not wish to suffer. This is the heart of the the first noble truth and the teachings on not-self. The Buddha notes that we cannot say, 'Let my form be thus, let my form be not thus. Let my feeling be thus, let my feeling be not thus. Let my perception be thus, let my perception be not thus. Let my determination be thus, let my determination be not thus. Let my consciousness be thus, let my consciousness be not thus' (SN 22.59), so what type of freedom do we actually have? Perhaps the path helps to decondition us and allows us more freedom. Or perhaps we become free from the idea of freedom and see causality for what it is, and use it to help condition ourselves to the freedom of nonattachment.

I'm not sure which is closer to the truth, but I do think that we often believe we have more freedom than we actually do. The mention of capitalism is one area where we are told we have freedom, freedom to work where we want and buy what we want because the markets are 'free.' As David Harvey notes in Limits to Capital, workers are, in principle, "free to sell their labour under whatever conditions of contract (for whatever length of working day) they please" (30), which highlights the equality, freedom, and individuality characterizing exchange relations, recalling both Aristotle's argument that "exchange cannot take place without equality" and Marx's argument that "the circulation of commodities requires the exchange of equivalents" (19). However, workers must also compete against one another in the labour market, where capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), and who more often than not dictate the duration and conditions of labour workers must accept or else risk privation while seeking something better, putting workers at a disadvantage on an individual level and severely conditioning and restricting their choices.

And an argument can be made that the logic of the economic system itself, which is effectively omnipresent, compels both the capitalist and the worker to do what they do. Even if there is a choice being made to do x or not to do x, that choice is not one free from causes or conditions and both internal and external pressures and we're often unaware of all of them. And I think that to try and uncover objective freedom in this or any other aspect of our lives is like the search for the heartwood of a banana tree. You peel back layer after layer only to discover that it's ultimately "empty, void, without substance" (SN 22.95). We feel like we have freedom, and we feel that we make rational choices. And conventionally, it makes sense to talk in this way about being free to do this or that, or of being free from this or that. But like the self, I think that freedom is a useful fiction.

but there are things we haven’t done before which prove to us that our range is wider than we believe.

Indeed so - one path closes, another opens.

Instead we stay within our comfortable patterns of work, food, exercise, tv and sleep.

Chop wood, carry water.

few things as invigorating, liberating, as laying down some burden and constraint.

Or taking them up anew.

@Fosdick said:
Freedom is an illusion. We are always under constraints, and there are always more things we can't do than things we can. When we incur a new restraint, then we notice it and think, oh damn, we are no longer free, whereas we were actually not free in the first place. Yet sometimes a new restraint means at the same time we have acquired a new freedom, no?

Freedom is relative, a conditioned state, always changing.

I’m not so sure about that. Certainly you can notice new constraints in your life, but generally there are few things as invigorating, liberating, as laying down some burden and constraint.

The other day I took off for a place in southern Germany with my father for a few days, this was carefully planned, the trains and the exact seats we would be sitting in were known weeks ahead of time as was the destination, an AirBnB appartment which was to function as our base for a weeks walking in the Schwarzwald. It was liberating in that it was a new style of holiday, a way of realising that it was easy to book a place to stay hundreds of miles away and just go.

Our understanding of our situation is such that we have an inkling of our limits, but there are things we haven’t done before which prove to us that our range is wider than we believe. I could ignore my duty of care to my mother and my stepfather, buy a car and take off for Eastern Europe tomorrow, for instance. All that limits me is my mind and my bank balance. Alternatively I could buy a plane ticket, head to South America to live among the tribespeople and learn about their religions.

Does freedom exist independent of something to be free of?
I see freedom as a destination, meaning discomfort at the current location.
Or freedom as an object is sought, given, taken, lost, purchased, thrown away, taken for granted, savored, traded, temporary, renounced..

What kind of freedom is desired?

"There is worldly freedom and there is unworldly freedom.."
sn36.31

If it's worldly freedom, material freedom, who foots the bill once we're free of it?

When I'm free to word-vomit, it's the poor souls who listen or read what I say that pay my bills for me.
When I'm free of the desire to word-vomit and maybe instead pay someone else's bills, a different freedom is found.

Easier said than done, sheesh..

Is freedom just the degree to which, one is not restricted by something?
Is a Buddha's freedom, just another word for equanimity?

Lately I have been considering the goal of freedom. It seems worthwhile to pursue, to want to be free. But it is hard to be clear on what it means, and I wanted to share a few thoughts.

First of all it is good to have physical freedom, to not be constrained to a given room or house. There are ways one can get physically constrained, when young, when old and dement, when imprisoned for breaking the law, or kept on a mental ward. This is the obvious kind of freedom.

But one can also be emotionally constrained, by duties to look after family or partners. This may take up a certain portion of one’s time or may even be a full-time commitment. This is usually a limitation of freedom that one imposes on onesself.

Lastly there is a freedom of the mind. It is possible to be constrained by ignorance or habit, when it just does not occur to you that you could do something else than you are doing. The hardest walls to break are those you do not see. This can be a lack of imagination, or a lack of education.

“Keep the desire for freedom foremost in your mind. Good things will happen.”
— H. W. L. Poonja

@Jeroen said:

@person said:
Relationship and connection with others are some of the best things life has to offer. I think it also kind of goes back to the distinction between happiness and meaning. I'm pretty sure in happiness studies parents often score lower than people without children, but having children gives people a lot of purpose and meaning in their lives.

How do you feel this fits with Buddhist thought? The Buddhist ideal is a monk who has renounced and left the home, not creating a family or being a householder, all in pursuit of the end of suffering and the underlying happiness. In a way Buddhist goals replace the biological imperative to reproduce.

Sure, the pursuit of enlightenment works best when one is free from such constraints. The monastic life has many of its own constraints though, in the form of precepts or duties to maintain the monastery or serve the public.

Nature itself constrains us in many ways. I'm not free to swim to the bottom of the ocean if I wish. If you want to live in a state of nature you need to spend time gathering food and water, building shelter. In the modern world we engage in the constraint of work to overcome that natural constraint. At least most people do that, some are able to find a way to live off the efforts of others for sustenance (freegans, those on disability, etc.)

The Harvard economist Thomas Sowell had a book a good while back about the conflicting visions of the world that kind of even goes back to Hobbes vs Locke about the state of nature. In practice it isn't a binary and people usually exist somewhere along a spectrum between an unconstrained and a constrained view of human nature and the world.

If I get down to it and try to be honest, I suppose the only place I think we can ever be truly free is in our minds. And at some level I feel disregarding our obligations and duties to pursue or own ends is, to some degree, a selfish pursuit.

The greatest bonds on freedom are in the mind...and freedom itself is all in the mind...an unfettered mind...
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose"