Without ignorance there is no bondage; without it, there is no liberation

Ajñāna — ignorance, not-knowing — is not an active force but an absence. It does not obscure truth the way a curtain obscures a window; it is the window that has not been opened. When it opens, it does not “destroy” darkness; darkness turns out to have been the absence of light. Bondage does not exist without the ignorance that sustains it; liberation does not exist as the opposite of bondage but as its absence.