In all Buddhism, freedom is freedom from pain and suffering. (Scheepers)

In the Madhyamaka, as in all Buddhism, freedom, identified with Nirvana, is not freedom of action, but freedom from pain and suffering. Since suffering is ultimately due to ignorance, it also consists in a being free from all illusion. This means for the Madhyamika: being free from all perspectival viewpoints, doctrines, and categories of thought, being free from all ideas, imagination, and thought-constructions (vikalpa, kalpana). It is thought and imagination (which forms the basis of all thought and language), that projects worlds in consonance with our desires, or worlds that threaten our comfort. It leaves us with the hopes and fears, desires and aversions, that blind us to the truth of the world that is really before our eyes, and within the reach of our touch. It makes that we really see our own projections, and reality only as subservient to these. The world, not willing to submit to our desires, causes that we suffer from them. If we do not accept the presence, but always want something else, live with our thought in something else, life must always be unfulfilled, and this is painful. Do away with your imagined projections, then you will be freed from your desires. Freed from your desires you will be free from suffering. You live no longer with a frustrated will. Freedom is the total cessation of imagination (sarva-kalpana-ksayo hi nirvanam). Aryadeva says: "Take away all." One should desist from vice, free oneself from the substance-view, and lastly give up all standpoints. These are the stages of progress. Freedom is a process of negation of ignorance and passions (klesa). The state of freedom, also called 'samata' (equality) does not admit of degrees. It is Buddhahood itself. All beings carry it in themselves as a potential (tathagatagarbha), all living beings are endowed with the essence of the Buddha, but only by the path of the 'Arya' is it realized. The immaculate, which is of spiritual nature, pervades all that exists. Beings are in various stages of purification, but are one as Buddha. In the process of freeing oneself from ignorance and defilements, wisdom (prajna), which is one with the absolute, gradually becomes manifest. (from A Survey of Buddhist Thought, by Alfred R. Scheepers, Amsterdam 1994.)