A State of Constant Resolution

Q: How can freedom and responsibility go together? A: You have to think about enlightenment as a state of constant resolution —then you'll understand how these apparent opposites are completely related to one another. If you want to be free, you must aspire to always live in a state of resolution, an orientation to life where nothing important is left unresolved, especially when it comes to being responsible for yourself and the consequences of your actions in the world. Indeed, you discover that your freedom is completely dependent upon that. If you want to be free more than anything else, then responsibility, instead of being perceived as a burden, is now recognized to be the very ground of your own liberation, the door to the experience of lightness of being. —Andrew Cohen