Moksha (mokṣa)

Moksha is liberation, the release of the self from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, and the fourth and highest of the four aims of human life. The Mahabharata devotes an entire section of the Shanti Parva, the Mokshadharma, to arguing about how it is reached, and gives room to knowledge, devotion, disciplined action and renunciation in turn. Characters who attain it in the epic rarely do so by withdrawal alone: Vyasa's son Shuka flies free while his father calls after him, but Yudhishthira arrives at the same door by refusing heaven for the sake of a dog.