Well, today with quite a few of you we had what I call a prologue day. And, yeah, we talked here and there about the idea of freedom. And I mentioned that the other day I saw a piece in the newspaper about Jean-Paul Sartre's 100th anniversary in France. And that this article said, and as far as I can remember, that's right, though I haven't read Sartre for 50, 40, 40 years or something, I don't know, something like that. Yeah, but that he was primarily concerned with, yeah, identity and freedom.

[01:02]

Yeah, and I thought, well, Am I not supposed to talk about that in a few days in Hannover? Yeah, I would have liked to ask Sartre to speak this evening, but that's not possible. Well, it's possible to ask, but not possible to get an answer. But, you know, I'm not just joking, because can we bring our experience of practice Ja, aber ich scherze nicht, weil können wir unsere Erfahrung von Praxis Ja, können wir die anwenden auf die Fragen der westlichen Philosophie.

[02:09]

Ich glaube natürlich, dass wir das können. In fact, not only can we, we ought to. Und nicht nur, dass wir es können, sondern wir sollten es auch tun. Because we're part of, as I always say, not only a lineage in Asia which brings us to practice. But even more so, it's Western lineages which have brought us to practice. I think, you know, in various ways there's been not quite as much, but there's been introduction of Japanese and Indian and Chinese thought and Buddhism for, yeah, a couple centuries into the West.

[03:09]

Yeah, in many ways, New England transcendentalism, Emerson, Thoreau and those folks, And in a way, the Transcendentalism of New England with Thoreau and Emerson are responding to what they knew about the Upanishads. So it's not just that there's an influx and a moving together of these two civilizations at this time. You know, because of the shrinking of the planet, etc., But simply also because it's an appropriate time in Western traditions, thinking, culture for this introduction to occur.

[04:16]

So I think we want to examine, study our own thinking and feeling as as the basis for and the source of the questions that lead us to practice. Well, of course, we... Of course we have, in the usual sense of freedom, political, social, economic freedom.

[05:18]

We live in countries in Europe and in the United States which have probably the most social and economic and political freedom in the world. But I don't think that necessarily means we feel free. And the fly in the ointment right now, do you have that expression? Fly in the ointment. It means everything looks good, but there's a fly in the ointment, in the mayonnaise. That's a new version of it. A fly in the soup. In your ear.

[06:21]

In your hair, right? In the soup. Yeah. In the soup. Well, we have an expression of bee in the bonnet, but that's not the same as... Okay, well, anyway, you get the idea. Fliege in der Mayonnaise ist schön für heute. Yeah, that's... Fly in the mayonnaise. Doesn't sound too good. Yes, environmentalism. I mean, this political and economic freedom is destroying our environment. So this freedom needs some kind of boundaries. So anyway, we have a lot of what most people call freedom, but I don't think we always feel free. And, you know, I looked up the word free, what's its etymology, today or yesterday.

[07:23]

The basic word means to love. But it also means, surprisingly, I thought surprisingly, to set free. And the logic of that is that we give freedom to those we love. So could we ask then, playing with that etymology, will love set us free? And when we play with this etymology, will love set us free? Well, when we're in love, we think, hey, finally, I'm set free.

[08:37]

But often it doesn't last. And according to people who study these things, can you imagine studying love sociologically? But they do. You're very lucky if the in-love feelings last two years. And then if you're a mature person and not an addictive person, You find another kind of love that continues in a new way the in-love feelings. But when we love someone, we feel we fit with that person and the whole world starts to feel like it fits with us.

[09:44]

And if we want to look at what freedom means in some larger sense than just political or economic freedom... Yeah, I think it means... Part of its meaning, part of its territory can be, the world is our world, we belong in this world. If you're in prison, you feel, most of us, prison means you don't feel you belong in this world. I mean, some prisoners get to like it and they commit a crime to go back in, actually.

[10:58]

But in general, prison means where we're forced in, we don't feel we fit in. But in general, prison means And the word fit itself means something like to be able to march together. To feel in step with the world. Same root is the German mark. The mark means the boundaries of common value or something like that. So how do we fit in?

[12:12]

Do we feel we can fit in this world? I mean, Sophia, you know, most of you know, I have this four-year-old daughter. And she's trying to figure out how she fits in the world. And someone we know fell in love with somebody at the last seminar in Johanneshof. It wasn't my fault. And Marie-Louise said, you know, we're going to go see her today and she just fell in love with a man. Sofia said, but didn't she fall in love with us first? And she's always falling in love with the kids in school, you know. Yeah. And when we came from... In April, when we came to Germany, her current love was Rosalie in the nursery school in Creston, the kindergarten.

[13:50]

She said, I am not going to speak German because Rosalie speaks English and I will only speak English because that's Rosalie's language. But now she's in love with some little boy, so now she's speaking German. That's okay. Yeah, and one other story about Sophia. I'm sorry, you know, I... And another story about Sophia? She wanted to know what Easter is about. She wanted to know what Easter is about. And since her mother was brought up in Catholic schools, She tried to explain about Christmas and Good Friday and Easter.

[14:57]

Yeah, and so she told Sophia that Easter was when Jesus rose from the dead. Sophia said, What did you say? I said, Jesus rose from the dead. He must have been the only man to do that. And Marie-Louise said, well, that's the story. Mama, is this story true? Marie-Louise said, well, it's the story.

[15:58]

So Sophia said, well, when they come to nail me to the wall, I'm going to Egypt. I mean, I don't know where she got this idea, but when they come to nail me to the wall, I'm going to Egypt. And then she said, which way is Egypt? Which way leads to Egypt? She really wanted to know the escape route. You know, she's trying to fit into this world. And she thinks being nailed to the wall might be one of the ways you fit in. Really, it's a There's these stories, these beliefs, these way a culture is developed.

[17:13]

Can we fit in or can we not fit in? And as I get older, I... I suppose I'm older, I'm more mature, I fit in better than I did when I was younger. By any outside measure, I fit in better, I guess. But when I was younger, I felt like... it's possible for the world to change and then it might be better and then I could fit in better. Now I've given up that kind of hope. So, And the world changes so fast nowadays that even in a decade it can change dramatically.

[18:35]

So none of us can really, I think none of us feel we actually fit in. And if we do, some of us may feel we fit in. You know, I don't know. Some of these teenagers look like they're fitting into something. I don't know quite what. Identify with some culture or subculture. Yes, but still, even if we feel we fit in, we in the end don't feel recognized or, you know, something. So how can we feel free in a world in which we don't feel we fit? How can we feel free in a world we don't feel belongs to us and we don't even know who it belongs to?

[19:43]

It's this kind of question that's at the root of Buddhist teaching. And the four noble truths start with their sufferings. And part of suffering is, you know, not feeling we belong in this world. Or the feeling the world has so much suffering in it. How can we belong to this world? What can we do to make the world something we can fit in?

[21:02]

But of course, nowadays we have the idea of progress, so we imagine the world can become better. But during most of the history of Buddhism and most of the history of Europe, no one had ideas of progress. Change was so slow that even centuries and Especially generations didn't notice much change. So how do you live in a world we can't do much about? Should we just give up? Earlier in our day this morning, in this afternoon, I mentioned, I reminded some of you and mentioned for the first time to some of you this little poem.

[22:25]

That's not what I said. I said, I mentioned to some of you... For the first time, and I reminded others of you. Okay. It's not an important distinction, but it's all right. And which is sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes. Yeah, grass grows by itself. Sitting quietly doing nothing, spring comes. Grass grows by itself. Now, we can take this as a kind of Yeah, a meditation instruction.

[23:35]

If we can sit quietly and do nothing, really, is that possible? Then maybe spring comes. The potentials of the potentialities of life open up. And grass grows by itself. Now, an assumption in this poem is that we're in a world that fits us. Here's a world in which you aren't doing anything but sitting quietly. And everything works. Spring comes, grass grows.

[24:41]

We could say it's a world in which we fit. Yeah, but in what world? How could we... We can feel that poem. But we don't fit in this world that easily. But as I said earlier, if we can have that feeling, maybe our life can be based on that feeling. Now, the assumption in Buddhism is if you can feel something, it's not just, oh, I had this nice little feeling, it's part of poetry.

[25:51]

But the koans and Zen teachings assume that if we can feel something, it can be part of our life. I remember I went through a couple of years of really lots of painful and painful emotional suffering. And it fully took over every moment. And I remember, you know, it's just an anecdote. I lit a cigarette. And like Clinton, I never inhaled.

[27:10]

You know the story. Clinton claims he never inhaled. Well, somebody said, we saw you before he was president smoking marijuana at a party. He said, well, it looked like I was smoking, but I never inhaled, he said. A lot of people didn't believe it. But I actually never did... I've never inhaled a cigarette. It was so harsh. But, you know, you're supposed to smoke, so I blew it out my nose, you know. Anyway, I... with this cigarette and somehow it burned my finger I mean just slightly you know and for that moment I felt good strangely enough and it occurred to me

[28:34]

If I can feel good for one moment, I may feel 365 times 12 times 60 times 59 moments or minutes a year horrible. But for a part of a minute I can feel good, I can reverse it and I can feel good all the time and lousy only for one moment. And I guess because I was practicing, I had faith that we can change. I didn't think we had some fixed inner nature.

[30:08]

Or as I said earlier, I didn't have any acorn idea. Some little acorn I'm going to grow into an oak tree and I have no choice about it. Yeah, I'd grown up in New England and I thought I was a pine tree, but I went to California and I decided to become a palm tree. Here I come, California. Well, anyway, joking aside, I had this faith, and within a year, I felt good all the time. And part of it was this faith. So if this poem gives you some good feeling, sitting quietly, etc., isn't it possible that this feeling can be more of our life even if we don't fit in the world?

[31:52]

How do we start to fit in? Well, traditionally in Buddhism, we take the precepts. It's always the beginning in all Buddhist schools of feeling that we fit somehow as a human being on this planet. So as I always say, the so-called Buddhist precepts have nothing to do with Buddhism. We don't kill, don't steal. Is that Buddhist? That's just common sense.

[33:08]

Of course, we don't say don't steal. We say don't take that which is not given. That's a little different than don't steal, but it's nearly the same. So what are the precepts? The precepts are those... measures those dimensions of life, those ways of thinking and behaving, make us feel comfortable with ourselves and comfortable in our feelings with others.

[34:11]

So that's a beginning of feeling, of fitting in. Yeah. And... And we can look in ourself, you know, what I called earlier, our inner... most request. What makes us feel comfortable with ourselves? This would be our own inner precepts. So we could say that taking the precepts is a practice of bringing one's inner precepts and these so-called Buddhist precepts

[35:25]

into dialogue with each other. And often the decision to practice, which the decision to practice Dogen calls initial enlightenment, This process of opening ourselves up to practice, to imagine the possibility not just to change but of transformation, and to decide to take responsibility for our own life not just in practical matters but in the deepest sense it's actually an enlightenment experience.

[36:29]

and by entering the path of practice we keep opening up this enlightenment experience so often we decide to practice when through examining our inner How do we really want to live? How do we want to live with others? We discover those fit somehow with the so-called Buddhist precepts. It's a kind of human common sense without belief or anything, just human common sense. So we make that decision.

[37:55]

Yeah, decision to take the precepts, to practice, perhaps, Buddhism. And it's a process of opening up. And... And what makes the precepts Buddhist is the sense of taking them and holding them. And what is the difference between holding them and following them? Because really we don't talk about, I mean, except in a superficial sense or a kind of just using English in a traditional way, we don't really talk about following the precepts.

[39:32]

We talk about holding the precepts. One reason they're so simple is because you can hold them then in your mind and in your background mind. And holding them means you're letting them talk to you, be present to you in your activity and in your thinking. And... Yeah, and you... And the world starts talking to you through the precepts.

[40:45]

Yeah, you start noticing the world through the precepts. So this dynamic and dialogue of the precepts is the first step in, yeah, fitting in. It's the first step in feeling a real taste of freedom in this world. Yeah, I wanted to go other places, but we have tomorrow, don't we? And, you know, we've taken the precepts now, or started, and I think maybe your legs need a break.

[41:50]

And we scheduled so early, now you can all go to dinner. And it's going to be light for another few hours. But I think this is enough to get started on what do we mean by freedom. And what do we want to be free from? Well in Buddhism you want to be free from suffering and ignorance. And what does ignorance mean? It means wrong views. Unwissen bedeutet falsche Ansichten.

[42:59]

Ansichten von der Welt, wie sie nicht ist. So, you know, yeah, we can't fit in a world which we have wrong views about. But how do we fit in, even if we've got so-called right views, how do we fit in a world full of wrong views? And how do we accept that there's so much suffering? Well, we can't answer these questions tonight. Maybe we can't ever answer them. But we can certainly explore them from the point of view of practice more tomorrow.

[44:02]

Okay, thank you very much.

[44:05]

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