Moksha

Moksha, from a root meaning to release, is the fourth and final of the classical aims of life, after pleasure, prosperity, and duty. The sequence is generous: the tradition does not despise the first three, it simply insists they are not the end of the story.

What is one released from? The texts say samsara, the wheel of becoming. Read inwardly, that wheel turns daily: craving, getting, tiring, craving again. Liberation is the falling away of compulsion - not of life, but of being driven.

The schools argue whether moksha arrives at death or can be lived - the jivanmukta, freed while alive. For practice the argument matters less than the direction: every small release from a compulsion rehearses the large one.

From the Editors' Desk, Shastra Digest.