Freedom According to a Zen Master

“If you seek for freedom, you cannot find it. Absolute freedon itself is necessary before you can acquire absolute freedom. That is our practice. Our way is not always to go in one direction. Sometimes we go east; sometimes we go west. (…) But if it is possible to go one mile to the east, that means it is possible to go one mile to the west. This is freedom. Without this freedom you cannot be concentrated on what you do. You may think you are concentrated on something, but before you obtain this freedom, you will have some uneasiness in what you are doing. Because you are bound by some idea of going east or west, your activity is in dichotomy or duality. As long as you are caught by duality you cannot attain absolute freedom, and you cannot concentrate.” - Master Shunryu Suzuki

Note: Suzuki is, of course, referring to our “moral compasses” when he speaks of east and west. He is telling us, essentially, that we must not forsake our capacity for doing “bad” when we do “good”, nor for “good” when we do “bad”. It is only when we tell ourselves the lie that we are “good” because we travel east (or do “good”), or that we are “bad” when we go west, that we seperate ourselves from the truth and lose our freedom to choose.
I once knew a very wise old woman who lives in Seattle and advocates for the homeless there. When the investigators for my case in Idaho told her that I had murdered several people, her immediate reaction was a dismissive, “Pfeh! I can kill people...” She understood instinctively what Suzuki is telling us above. She was one of the freest people I ever had the privilege of knowing. She clearly knew that unless you have the freedom to go west (do “bad”) then there is no real freedom to go east (or do “good”).
Admittedly, this is subtle and even impossible to understand, unless you are honest with yourself, which is no easy task either. So if you do not understand please do not merely dismiss it. Keep it in mind, and someday when all your efforts to do “good” are backfiring on you, remember what Suzuki says, and perhaps then you will understand.

P.S.: Laws that attempt to restrict a person's freedom to choose “bad” behavior will inevitably result in more of the “bad” behavior they seek to restrict. Instead of making such laws we should instead allow people to explore the “badlands” to the west, so they can see for themselves the undesirable nature of such choices. If we did that then few would actually “go west”, since there would be little reason to, and even those that did would return soon enough!