In Repetition, I Discover Freedom

Another thing I’ve learned over the years is the richness and freedom of experimentation. There’s no limit.

I used to think of this in terms of travel, books, cooking. Then I truly understood it through repetition.
I do many things in a cyclical, almost ritual way. I wake up early, prepare the same porridge, ride more or less the same roads, sit zazen on the same cushion. The days look alike. But I don’t.

In repeating, I discover that nothing is ever truly the same.
The form repeats, but the attitude changes.
My gaze changes. My body changes. My breath changes.

So it’s no longer monotony. It’s practice.

Even the simplest gesture can become a mirror.
Every climb on the bike, every slow morning, every silence in zazen becomes a way to observe myself from a different point of view.
It’s as if repetition carves a groove — not to confine, but to open. To open the space of presence.

Freedom isn’t in always doing new things.
It’s in seeing the new within what repeats.

That’s why Zen, to me, isn’t about being still.
It’s about being there, while doing.
Even when climbing, heart pounding, legs burning.

I usually return from my bike rides at the same time — nine o’clock.
I put the bike away, take off my helmet, have breakfast.
From there, a routine begins again — always the same, always different.

Replying to emails, tidying the house, listening to a familiar voice on the radio, doing laundry, hanging clothes.

A bit like the movement of the sun, the moon, the Earth itself.
Always the same on the surface, but never identical.
No two sunrises or sunsets are ever the same.

And so I notice that in repetition, life renews itself.
Same road every day. New step every day.

Sometimes, though, I also feel the need to get lost.
To be swept away by something completely new.
To travel.
To walk through a city I don’t know, observe faces, smell the air, listen to languages I don’t understand.
Without thinking about anything.
Just being there, whole, with everything that arrives.

That too, in the end, is practice.
Not the depth of the groove etched every day, but the raw openness, with no handholds.
Another way of being.

Traveling and discovering entirely new things, or repeating the same routine every day — both make me reflect on the idea of home.
Where is home, really?
Is it the physical place where I wake up every morning, eat, work, and go to bed?
Is it the one I grew up in as a child?
Is it the country I come from?
Or is home something subtler, something that moves with me?

When I’m on the road riding my bike — am I not at home there?
When I walk through the streets of Dubai or New York — how far from home am I, really?

To me, home is that sense of presence I can carry anywhere.
The place where I inhabit myself, no matter where in the world I am.

The kind of home I mean doesn’t need a big garden or mahogany furniture.
It needs a clear mind and an open heart.
And yes, care for what I eat, how I prepare it, how I nourish myself.
What’s the use of a decorated facade, if you don’t know how to be inside?

In the end, home is where you stop searching.
And simply begin to stay.
Inside and outside of ourselves, without separation.
Whatever it is, wherever we find ourselves — that is home.
Not a fixed place, but a state of being.