I always hope on these prologue days, because we're usually a smaller group, that we can have more discussion. Because, you know, I'm trying to find out with you what makes sense. how to develop our practice. So, just in all, okay. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Janice Choplin.

[01:04]

This is what came up in his mind. Freedom is just another thing to lose. Is that what she said? What did she say? Freedom is just another word for nothing to lose. This is a brother and sister team I see here. Maybe you could sing the whole song to us, the two of you. Okay. Since I was thinking about this song, I started thinking about what is freedom. And it does help me just to take in this word, freedom, and feel it.

[02:07]

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And then I see how many things are sort of bound to that term. And also the question, free from what? Can you tell me the refrain from the song again? Freedom is just another word for having nothing left to lose. It's just another word.

[03:08]

It's nothing if it ain't free. It's nothing if it ain't free. Okay. That's another seminar. It's scheduled up till 2008. Oh, it is? Oh, okay. Janis Joplin next year. Mick Jagger the year after that. We can't always get what we need. We can't always get what we want, but if we try sometimes we get what we need. We can get what we want, but if we try sometimes we get what we want. Okay. Samonatz? Yes. Two things. One, I am concerned with the neuroscientists who have found that the reaction potentials go away from the metal processes.

[04:18]

And this proves that the comments we make in our lives In the end, it is only a fulfillment of the potential for action that has already been decided, and then there is little freedom. Thinking about the world is a fulfillment of what has already been decided. I take care of this question. And then, the second thing is, I experience freedom when the question of freedom is not there. For example, if I am in a total experience, then there is no condemnation. Then it is just an experience. But that is not freedom of something and also not freedom for something.

[05:20]

That is just absence. of duality, of freedom and non-freedom. There is a first part to that and that is considering that the new scientists have found out that the action potential is already something which is before For the action. The mental. The mental, yes. The neurological. Yeah, yeah, I know. Fulfill somehow the protection. And because of that, it seems that everything is already determined. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I understand. Part one. Oh. Okay.

[06:20]

Part two. Part two is different. It's about freedom. The question about he experiences freedom when he doesn't even think about freedom or not freedom. Yeah. it's not really free from something, but it's just... To be fully inexperienced, and there's no dualistic practice, no freedom, so it is what it is. That sounds like freedom to me, too. Yeah, some people have taken, you know, I've spoken about this quite often, the initial work showing this physiologically or neurobiologically. It was shown in the 70s in San Francisco by a man named Benjamin Libet.

[07:26]

And so, and he's always quoted in the literature usually, and so I often call it Libet space. And what interested me about it was actually that I'd noticed it in my own activity before I saw his research. I noticed that what I was going to do next appeared in my consciousness sometimes as I won't do it or I will do it or I think about doing it. But I noticed that I'd already decided to do it, like I'd already decided to shave this morning, even though I... What had decided to shave, but who hadn't agreed yet?

[08:39]

So I discovered that consciousness, the who, is an editor and a publisher but not the decider. But the editor can also decide, too, I'm not going to publish this book. And the vivid example that I... that I can illustrate that with. And the living example with which I can illustrate that? I don't know if I mentioned it last year here, but I went to northern Italy to a friend's house which has a swimming pool, happened to have a swimming pool when I was visiting.

[09:57]

I was in northern Italy and visited a friend who had a swimming pool. That's English. But anyway, so my daughter, who was then three, decided she wanted to go swimming. And I didn't want to because the pool isn't heated. And the pool, in fact, was ice cold. But she said, Papa, come swim. Oh, I said, okay. What are you going to do? She doesn't seem to be affected by hot and cold. And we couldn't let her go swim by herself, so I said, okay, I'll come. Well, we got to the pool and I stuck my toe in and decided, the what decided, uh-uh.

[11:11]

But come on then, Papa. How am I going to say no? Your father is a big, brave man. He can stand a little cold water. So this pool had two level diving boards, so I climbed up to the second one. And I walked out to the edge of the board. And I could see the ice forming on the... Come on, Papa. Well, Mr. Leavitt, he was, you know, saying, uh-uh, no, you know, 500 milliseconds earlier, everything was saying no. But my editor had created the context for the experience.

[12:30]

So our thinking creates the context in which our body, or Mr. What, is making decisions. And the whatness of my body, if my daughter hadn't been there, would have climbed back down the tower. But the wholeness that my daughter was speaking to, He said, come on, Papa, jump. So I jumped and all the way down I was saying no. And it took four laps before I got warm.

[13:34]

So we do create a context for decisions, but the moment-by-moment decisions are mostly involuntary. I wouldn't say involuntary, but not conscious. And I'd also noticed that sometimes my body would know that someone was going to, say, ring the bell before they rang the bell. So in other words, my body, again, what they say is about 500 milliseconds prior to conscious delivery of the decision. Yeah, my body would know that the other person's body had, prior to his or her consciousness, had decided to ring the bell.

[14:52]

And when I mentioned this the other day, someone said, oh, you know, I'm in an orchestra, and when the orchestra really is playing together, All of our bodies are doing something like that. So it's not determinism. Yeah. How does it happen that I feel physically that there is a question that is not yet clear, that there is an impulse, a need for clarification, but I cannot implement it in a question, for example? How is it that physically I can feel that there is a question sort of arising even before I know what the question is?

[16:18]

I feel that and I cannot express the question yet. Oh, I know that feeling. Das kenne ich, dieses Gefühl. How is it, or it's just a fact that that's the case? My problem is, I often have a feeling that something is appearing which is an open question, an open space, felt, bodily felt, felt by mind, but not turned into a conscious, formulated question. So I have the desire to find the words for this question, but I don't find them. Sometimes I find, now I'm trying to find. But often I don't reach to this point. Well, then I decide to let it be and let it be.

[17:20]

stay back and grow by its own. Somehow in moments like today when we meet I think I should find the words for it to be able to share it, to come forth with it. Hi, Femme. notice the same thing. And sometimes you have to wait for it to gather itself.

[18:25]

But already if you have that feeling and you wait, you're creating you are or you can be creating a space for that waiting to be enhanced. That makes sense. Yeah. And what I do to encourage that even further is I tell the editor to go home. And I decide I won't decide whether I'm going to speak or not. I often do that in Sazen. Das mache ich häufig im Zazen.

[19:40]

I'm not encouraging all you to do it in Zazen, because you're supposed to stay quiet when you're in Zazen. Das ermuntere ich nicht, euch das zu tun, weil ihr still bleiben sollt im Zazen. But it's the custom, if you're the teacher, to sometimes speak in Zazen. But I kind of hate to speak in Zazen because I don't want to interrupt anybody's Zazen. So I decided I won't speak unless I speak involuntarily. So I just forget about it, what I thought I should say. And I just continue sitting and then suddenly I notice my mouth is talking. But I also know That there's a point if I sit for too long, I can't speak.

[20:54]

I go past the point where I can speak. But I'm doing the same thing right now, actually. I'm, you know, letting something speak. Yeah. Okay, someone else? Yes? You once said that we are not supposed to calm the mind that we already have, let something new appear, or something like that. But in the sense that we are not working with the mind that we already have. And I'm wondering, usually we are identified or we have more our energy in this conscious mind.

[21:57]

And I wonder what's the relationship between the space that you're talking about and this bodily knowing and talking from bodily space and talking from the conscious space. I mean, is there any, does the conscious or the mental talking right, does it need to do anything before you can actually talk from this physical realm? Yes, I remember that you once said that we don't work with the spirit that we already have, but that we try to put it in the spirit that we already have, that we let something new emerge. I wonder how the relationship is between the state of mind which is conscious and which speaks and which makes the conscious decision. And this room of the physical decision is out of the body. I haven't asked if this conscious mind has to do something before the physical room.

[23:01]

Yeah, well, it's a territory that we get familiar with by practicing meditation and mindfulness. And we begin to be able to locate ourself in the non-conscious or non-thinking mind, which can also speak. And it's a transition I think that's familiar to us if we say no a song but we don't know it perfectly or like in our service you know a chant but you don't know it perfectly. Yeah, so let's say that you are chanting and you are chanting from my heart, as we say in English. But then you have to shift because you're not sure you want to read it.

[24:40]

So you shift to reading by mind instead of chanting by heart. And it's a little shift. It's a little really physical shift to reading it. Yeah, by mind, let's say, and then you decide to go back to chanting by heart, and you kind of have to let go a minute, and then you catch the chanting again and can do it by heart. What's interesting here, I shouldn't really say chanting by mind, because mind includes all of this stuff, But we have so few words in English, despite English's huge vocabulary, we have so few words for mental processes.

[25:54]

So what we're really saying is... chanting by mental or thinking processes instead of chanting by body processes. That's kind of awkward to say, so let me say, when you chant by mind, you have very little ability to think about something else. But when you chant by heart, you can start thinking about something else. So it sort of frees the conscious mind to think about something else while you chant by heart.

[27:00]

But you can tell when people are chanting that way because they're not very present. The chanting is kind of bleh. So in the service I give people fierce looks when they're sitting there chanting while they're thinking about something else. Ja, und ich gebe ihnen böse Blicke, wenn die da so chanten und über irgendwas anderes nachdenken. Sometimes I'm on the way to the altar and I just stop and look at them. Manchmal halte ich einfach auf dem Weg zum Altar an und schaue sie an. I looked at the Buddhist statue once. What? Was ist chanten? Ich kenne das nicht. Once I looked fiercely at the Buddha and he started to chant. Muramachi period, but still could do it. He can still do it. But that's interesting in itself because it shows you the mind can observe the mind.

[28:23]

And if you really notice and think about the mind observes the mind, just as the way the mind functions, That's an entry into exploring who's doing this or what's doing this. Okay. For now. Yes? It's already done. Yeah, but we didn't all... We don't know. We didn't go through the process of it already happening. I just wanted to add to what Christoph said about... So anticipating that there is a question arising...

[29:39]

So sometimes in a conversation, I notice that something should be said, and I could say it, but I also realize that it would destroy many things. When I know it, when I notice it, I only say it in my consciousness, in heaven. And from there comes this sacrament. If I feel that it would destroy it, then I do not speak it out, but I keep it within, say it within, and at some point later it appears in the conversation. Yeah, that's right. So there's two conversations going on, two or three or four.

[30:59]

And you do have to, unless you're just a boor. A boor is an insensitive person. Who just pushes in and says what they want. Yeah, you wait until the situation asks you to bring that up. Someone else? Yes. I believe that freedom for me is to learn who I am and to develop a life goal where I think that it is the greatest freedom I have ever had. I believe that freedom for me is to know who I am and what my goal in life is. This is the highest freedom which I can imagine.

[32:07]

I guess You have the courage to touch oneself, to see as possible it could be what the problems are, the fears, and the limitations, and so on. Yeah. Can you also have the freedom not to achieve your goals? But to know. To know what your goals are, whether you can achieve them or not. Yeah. No, I think that's good. I like that. Thank you. Okay. Okay.

[33:15]

So let me go back. Let's see if someone else wants to say something right now. Let me go back to this little poem, Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing, etc. Although these Japanese and Chinese poems, commonly, not all, but most, describe our the content seems to be drawn from the natural world.

[34:18]

Yeah. At the same time, they of course represent, because it's a poet and a poem, They represent the experience of the phenomenal world. So they're about experience. They're not just a description of grass and things like that. They're not biology or botany. So the experience sitting quietly doing nothing comes first. And that's not so easy to do. And that's not so easy to do. I can remember I went and spoke to Sukhiroshi once about breathing.

[35:30]

I wanted to ask him a question about breathing. I remember quite vividly being in his little office and sitting on his couch and he was sitting next to me on the couch we were facing. And I said to him, you know, I asked this question about breathing practice. And he said, you know, some people when they sit still, and they think they're sitting still, but actually inside they're not really still. And he used an example of someone else. And I thought, that's not what I asked you. But I thought, well, this guy's a Zen master, so... I'll listen to what he says.

[36:42]

So I, you know, and he seemed, he said he was talking about someone else, but I assumed I was probably talking about me. So I began to notice Yeah, and he was so sensitive and nice to me to not tell me I was not still inside. So he didn't get an ego reaction from me. What do you mean I'm not still inside? Because he said he was talking about someone else. But so. Anyway, so then I noticed that when I did become still inside, my breathing changed and solved the breathing question problem.

[37:47]

Und das hat die Frage auch aufgelöst. So it really takes time before you can really sit quietly and actually do nothing. And what do we occupy our mind with? Yeah, I came up on the other day. I came up from Munich, from München to Hamburg on the train for six hours. And I didn't want to read. And the seats are quite uncomfortable, particularly for a long... I had a long back, for a long backache.

[38:54]

And I didn't want to exactly do zazen because I know people find it peculiar to see somebody sitting straight up in the train without leaning back. And I've done that sometimes on long flights from across the Atlantic. And I've sometimes had stewardesses, often had stewardesses come up to me and say, how do you do that? Or, are you all right? And once I was in a barber chair and I fell asleep, you know, you learn how to fall asleep and sit straight too, you know, in sashims. And I was having my haircut and I was tired and this barber cut my hair and I was sitting straight up sound asleep.

[40:09]

Still trying to look natural, you know. And when he finished, he put this mirror in front of me and these dead eyes looked out into the mirror, you know. I think he felt he might have perished. He was cutting the hair of a corpse. Yeah, I was about to complain about the pigeons. You know, in a statue of the pigeons. But anyway, he put this mirror in front of me and he said... So I was sitting there, oh it looks very nice. So now I get one of those airplane pillows you blow up and put it around my neck and a mask and then I look like I'm sleeping.

[41:16]

So people see this pillow on my neck and they think, but actually I'm not leaning back at all. Okay. So what do we occupy our mind with? Because the mind, if it's, you know, it wants to read or think about things or notice things. But you can occupy, in a sense, occupy your mind with your breathing or with your posture. So on the train from München I'm occupying my mind with my posture. And you can again also occupy in a way take your mind away from its need to be distracted by bringing it into the breath.

[42:33]

The other day somebody said to me, but I can't bring my attention to my breath because my breath is so boring. And I said, well, yeah. How do you make your breath less boring? And they said, oh, I smoke. This is a special breathing practice to make the breath interesting. Oh, that's the wrong kind of smoking, isn't it? Yeah, that's the way of making the breath exciting. John Carpenter was asked the same question, what can I do about my breath, which is so boring, and he said, close your mouth, close your nostrils, and within seconds you find the breath really interesting.

[44:03]

Yeah, that's true. That's true too. Of course it's not a question of interesting, it's a question of what's satisfying. The breath can be more satisfying. It can be satisfying, not interesting. So this poem, if we look at it as practice, assumes that when you can sit quietly and do nothing perhaps the mind or the consciousness now absorbed in the doing nothing

[45:15]

in the sitting quietly, when that is the case, then spring comes. And spring comes, we can understand as something like when things appear fresh or new or unique. Or full of potential. Now, I'm not speaking about spring as a symbol for something, but that we feel in the spring, or in certain days, at any time of year, a spring-like feeling. Even in this mid-summer time. And then grass grows by itself. And grass usually in Buddhist Zen talk means the 10,000 things.

[46:59]

And so we can understand the 10,000 things begin to do themselves, which includes you. So at this time you feel some freedom. Freedom of being at one with the world. I don't mean oneness, I just mean at one with the world or fitting the world. We feel the freedom of fitting, the world fitting us and us fitting the world.

[48:02]

And this would be again, like you said, when there's no duality. So this poem in its language even in its English translation can give us a taste of a feeling that we can realize through practice And even if we take this poem as a small, as a form of meditation instruction. Okay, so let's have a break.

[48:58]

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