How is he to achieve this inner freedom? Should the method include outer acts? Should he make the Herculean gesture of parting with all his possessions? Should he embrace voluntary poverty like a monk and henceforth live without receiving any regular income and consequently without paying any further income tax? This ascetic idea of not being fettered by any external thing is good as far as it goes. But it fails to take note of the fact that one may be just as fettered by an internal thought. The ascetic gives up the vices and allurements of the world in order to become free, renounces earthly desires and futilities in order to become happy, shuns pleasures because he associates them with guilt. But if he has not grasped the truth of mentalism, if he does not comprehend that thought is the next battlefield, he remains as tied as before, albeit by new chains.
-- Notebooks Category 2: Overview of Practices Involved > Chapter 7 : Discipline Desires > # 43
