Longchenpa - We are free from the start

art Kopp Delaney

"Freedom attends reality:
free at the core, any effort is wasted;
timelessly free, no release is needed;
free in itself, no corrective is possible;
directly free, released in the seeing;
completely free, familiarization is redundant;
and naturally free, freedom cannot be contrived.

"Yet 'freedom' is just a verbal convention,
and who is 'realized' and who is not?
How could anyone be 'liberated'?
How could anyone be lost?...
Reality is free of all delimitation!

"Freedom is timeless, so constantly present;
freedom is natural, so unconditional;
freedom is direct, so pure vision obtains;
freedom is unbounded, so no identity is possible;
freedom is unitary, so multiplicity is consumed.

"Conditions are released as conditions,
and so I am free of all constructs;
objects are released as objects,
so I am free of dualistic perception;
a cause is liberated as the cause itself,
so I am free of the duality of samsara and nirvana;
all events are released as phenomena,
so I am free of all verbal convention...

"Like washing off dirt with dirt,
purity is released by purity,
every poison cured by poison.
Iron bars are cut by iron,
stones smashed by stone,
wood burned by wood--
each is its own nemesis,
or there could be no release in the moment.

"There is no freedom through striving--we are free from the start."
From Old Man Basking in the Sun by Longchenpa, translated by Keith Dowman.