I think Andreas' computer is still stuck in the year 2000. Yeah, it didn't get on. It's not an apple. It's not an apple, I see. Because we had a prologue scheduled only in the first year of 10 to 12 and 2 to 4. So since your computer practices permanence, you should update it tonight. So next year on Friday we start at 8. And the... No? Now, Mr. Who and Mr. What, please, both of you get together on this.

[01:03]

Yeah, and the prologue day, it's good for two and a half hour sessions, 10 to 12.30 and 3 to 5.30. Because he just came and told me, you're all not here now. You left at four. Yeah. But I don't mind speaking to an illusion. Yeah, so... Okay. Well, we'll try to not spend too much time then. So let me come back to this idea of what's the territory of freedom.

[02:13]

Well, one territory would be choice. Do we have choices that are really free or do we have choices that are very narrowly conditioned? Do we have choices which are really just a choice of choice? It's just an addition, like we change our job. That's a choice, but it's just something, an added to our life. It's added. I can have two watches instead of one watch. That's not a real choice. That's just an addition. Can we have a choice which makes a difference, a choice which is not just change but transformation?

[03:15]

So this little poem, again, one, there's the choice of if we sit quietly, if we choose to sit quietly, then maybe there'll be a rebirth or a spring in our life. And this is an extraordinary idea, I think. Is that somehow sitting quietly doing nothing is a choice.

[04:26]

We can choose to do it. And the doing of it itself is a process of choosing. We're letting the what-ness of our life choose instead of the who-ness. And the Heart Sutra is all about the whatness of our life. You think of the Heart Sutra as a menu. It's a menu of what we are, not a menu of who we are. The skandhas, the vijnanas, the perception, so forth. Okay, that's about what we are. And, you know, the Zazen instruction is, you know, Zazen, Zen, an instruction for Zen practice is don't correct your mind or uncorrected mind.

[06:06]

And you know the ten ox-herding pictures, you no longer control the ox. The ox is free to wander around. This implies you're letting something else make the choice. I was thinking about an ox, an ox, an ox. What a great animal. Yeah, and I thought about the oxen. What a fabulous animal. Yeah, and I just... Sophia likes to ride horses, or a horse, one at a time.

[07:08]

Yeah, and Sophia likes to ride a horse. Two or three in the Roncalli Circus, three horses. Yeah, the circus, the two, three... But she wants to get down by herself, so she's, you know, it's a big horse. She kind of hangs the thing and drops down. And here's this huge animal. I mean, huge even for me. So the ox represents, in the ten ox-herding pictures, the hotness of us. So what are the ingredients here? Maybe we have a new word, inner ingredients. Sorry. And the idea of ingredients is different than some kind of acorn theory.

[08:30]

The acorn theory. An acorn, like there's an acorn, and in the acorn is the oak tree. So, I mean, some people think that we have to discover our inner acorn and then we become an oak tree. This is really not thinking. I mean, this is really, yeah, I already got this inner acorn, all I have to do is recognize it. But Zen and Buddhism says there's no permanence and there's no inherence. And you really have to, I mean, most of us don't really think about it and realize this means there's no inner acorn. And to some extent maybe there's an inner elm too.

[09:48]

Yes, you're an elm, I'm an acorn. I'm a palm tree. It feels like there should be palm trees growing out there. It's warm. My inner coconut. You... But that's a quite different idea to look at what are my or these ingredients. And what are our ingredients?

[10:50]

Well, they're perception, our views, and of course our habits. But our habits are only one of the, our habits and our situation are only one or two of the ingredients. And our views we can have, we're not stuck with one view. We don't have to only cook Thai food. We can cook Japanese food, German food, Italian food. Yeah. And the same ingredients can make an Italian dish or a Spanish dish.

[11:53]

Add a little pepper to one, that's all. Okay, so if we think of our life as ingredients, we can think of our life as, yeah, those ingredients can be mixed in many ways. When you think this way, you're quite far from the acorn theory. Of course we're born with certain ingredients. I don't have the same ingredients a horse has. I have some, but not the same. So, you know, ingredients are for each human being not the same as for an insect or a horse.

[12:56]

But that's still a kind of freedom to think of ingredients rather than some kind of inner nature. Now, when Suki Roshi often spoke about we usually know somewhere inside our inner request. Well, that's the word he used. One of the ingredients in my life was my inner request. But my inner request wasn't to be a fireman or a businessman or a pilot or something.

[14:10]

Pilot, yeah. At various times I thought maybe I'd be a pilot. I like it, pilot. To you it sounds normal, to me it sounds quite exotic. But that's really not my innermost request. It's more like, can I be at ease? Can I be a good person or something like that? Yeah, can I... You know, something I can't express, but it's not in terms of a job or something like that.

[15:13]

So in most requests he meant something you feel deeply comfortable with in yourself. So there's a dynamic of working with, talking with what? It makes us feel deeply comfortable. Yeah, and that led me to do what I'm doing here. So we have this inner request in our perceptions and our views. And our views, you know, not just views based on our culture.

[16:14]

If we live in a particular culture, the views of our culture will be part of the ingredients. But what about being free of the cultural views? Sartre, his idea of freedom was pretty complicated. One of the things he said which upset people in France, we were never so free as we were under the German occupation. And for the most French people, that was the opposite of freedom. But for those who found a way to stay out of the way of the military, hey, they had a life they really made for themselves in this occupied city.

[17:40]

So I would say he meant something like there was a strange kind of freedom from culture when the cities occupied. Even with no real political freedom, still there was another kind of freedom. So I'm asking what kind of food Do you want to cook? What kind of karma do you want to cook? What kind of life do you want to cook? And what's the method of cooking? Practicing mindfulness. Die Achtsamkeit zu praktizieren.

[18:50]

Because you can also choose what kind of method with which you want to cook. Ja, weil du kannst auch wählen, auf welche Art du kochen. Because there are the ingredients and the cooking process. Ja, weil da gibt es die Zutaten und auch den Kochprozess. And sitting quietly doing nothing is also part of the cooking process. Und still sitzen und nichts tun ist auch ein Teil des Kochprozesses. Yeah, I don't know, maybe that's enough for today. To get us cooking. So let's sit for a moment and then we'll stop at four o'clock. We have a choice about what we call time. We have a choice. Sitting quietly doing nothing.

[20:31]

Spring comes. Grass grows by itself.

[20:35]

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