A section from the journey

Moksha, the Final Release

The rites comfort the dying, and a good life earns a good road onward. But the tradition holds out something higher than any reward. It is called moksha: release from the whole wheel of birth and death. Not a better turn of the wheel, but the end of turning. In the temple age, this great goal is offered to everyone, through knowledge, through love of the divine, and through a life lived well.

We have stood at the deathbed and asked what a soul carries forward. We have seen that a good life earns a good road, and a hard life a harder one. But now we lift our eyes higher. Beyond every reward, beyond even the best of rebirths, the tradition holds out one last and greatest hope.

Remember that all we have spoken of so far moves within one great circle. Birth, death, and birth again. The soul travels on, carried by its deeds, round and round. We gave that wheel a name, long ago. We called it .

Now here is the deepest longing of all. What if the soul could step off the wheel entirely? Not earn a better turn upon it, but be free of the turning itself. That freedom has a name, and it is the highest word in this whole tradition. The name is .

We met this word once before, far back in the forest age. There the early sages first sang of release, won by knowing the Self, the deepest "I" that does not die. Hold that memory, for now we see how the great hope has grown and opened wide.

Let us be clear about what moksha is not, for here many go astray. Moksha is not heaven. Heaven, in this telling, is a bright and happy place, but it is still a place on the wheel. It is earned by good deeds, and what is earned can run out. When the merit is spent, the soul returns. So even heaven is a resting-stop, not the journey's end.

Moksha is something else. It is the end of the road, not a better mile of it. It is the still, deathless freedom beyond all coming and going. The drop, the sages said, returns to the sea. The traveller, after countless births, at last comes home, and the long walking is over.

And here is the great gift of this age. In the temple and Purana world, the doors to moksha widen for all. In the forest, it had seemed a treasure for the few who could sit and seek in silence. Now the Puranas sing that it is open to everyone, whoever they are.

There is the door of knowledge, the old path of the sages: to wake to the truth of the deathless Self. There is the door of loving devotion to the divine, which the Puranas hold out to every heart, lettered or not, of any birth. And there is the long, faithful preparing of a well-lived life, with its sacred rites, its duties kept, its kindness practised. These doors do not quarrel. Each, in its way, leads home.

See, then, where the whole chapter has been leading. The rites comfort the dying. The ancestors are kept in love. A good life earns a good road. But above all of these stands moksha, the final release, the one freedom that ends all fear of death, because it ends death itself. It is the highest aim a person can hold, and the tradition says it lies within reach of all.

Think of a freedom deeper than getting what you want, a freedom even from the fear of loss itself. The tradition calls that the greatest freedom of all. What would it feel like to be free, not of one trouble, but of the whole long weight of fear?