How I yearn for Freedom, how I love my slavery

On one hand we keep saying that we want to be free. On the other hand, we say that ‘we’ want to be free. We say, “I want freedom.” Now ostensibly it looks as if ‘freedom’ is the most important word in this statement. We are looking at that statement in a poster which says, “How I yearn for freedom, and how I love my slavery.” So when we say, “I want freedom,” apparently the most important word here is freedom.

It looks as if freedom is the most important thing that we want. But you know really, among these three words, ‘I’, ‘want’ and ‘freedom’, if you are asked to leave one, which is the one you would most readily leave? Quite prepared to leave? It would be freedom.

You would find leaving your wants a little more difficult. And which is the entity that you would find absolutely difficult to leave? ‘I’. So really the most important word in the statement, ‘I want freedom’, is ‘I’.

Now this ‘I’ and freedom are contradictory. ‘I’ is the slavery. Why? Because only slavery can say that it wants freedom. So this ‘I’ stands for slavery. And in the statement, ‘I want freedom’, we hold the ‘I’ to be most important. Thereby holding slavery to be most important. So even when I am saying, “I want freedom,” what is it that I am actually saying? I am actually saying, “I will protect my slavery.”