Yeah, good morning. There's a Rumi poem maybe I mentioned to you. I think I've changed it a little bit, probably. But it's... Dissolver of sugar. Dissolver. Dissolver. Yeah, I just didn't hear off. Dissolver of sugar. I've already told you that, but I probably changed it a little bit. But dissolver of sugar... dissolve me.

[01:01]

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me. This is the time. It has happened before. Gently with the giving of form. This is the time. It has happened before. Gently with the giving of form. Every morning I wait at dawn It has happened before. How can I start the day? How else can I start the day?

[02:11]

The keeping away calls me in. It sounds like a typical Rumi love poem. But it's much more like I started doing zazen in the morning. And I like the keeping away calls me in. Because, you know, even sitting in zazen, one of the most common complaints is not that it's painful or difficult or et cetera. Or too early in the morning.

[03:32]

But that it's boring. It wasn't worth getting up so early for. Yeah. But that boring is the keeping away. And we call it boring because we know it doesn't have to be boring. It has happened before that sometimes we're dissolved in zazen. Denn es ist ja schon vorher geschehen, dass wir einmal in Sazen uns aufgelöst haben. Vielleicht sollten wir wissen, dass es dieses Fernhalten, das auch in der Tat das ist, was uns hineinruft, wenn wir hinhören.

[04:33]

Now I spoke last night about these junctures like when you really for a moment hear the storm or the rain. And to notice that such a juncture giving it form deepens our experience of the natural world coming into us. And a feeling, too, of our dissolving into the natural world. Here I'm speaking simply about our human experience. which calls us to practice, in fact, I think.

[06:12]

Now, again, I also said last night, we want to step into the stream of the teachings. Yeah, I mean, we can't always start at the beginning. Yeah, I mean, and you've all been practicing enough that we can maybe enter at any old point. Like putting your hand in a stream. In the forest or something. The water immediately goes around your hand. And you can see the flow of the water. So on a seminar, a weekend like this, We can try to put our hand into the flow of the teaching.

[07:32]

Perhaps the flow of our own life. Maybe you look in and there's a reflection of yourself in the stream. And you put your hand in and you break up the reflection. But your hand feels good. So maybe it's worth breaking up our reflection sometimes. And if you really get into the stream, then there's no more reflection. So we're not, you know, when we're not only stepping into the stream ourself, there's a certain coalescence of ourselves together that happens. And this is another word I'd like to work with.

[08:47]

I don't know what it's like in German, coalescence. But it's a rather nice word in English. And it has the sense of growing together. Nourishing together. Maturing. So it comes into one kind of thing, but through growing together. And it means... both high and deep. Or it's related in its roots in Latin to something that meant high and deep.

[09:55]

Yeah, and it's always funny, these words high and deep. We speak about heightened awareness. I mean, if you're asleep at night and you think you hear a burglar, you sit up with a heightened awareness. You don't know whether this is good or bad. Yeah. Yeah. And then deeper, when you look into a lake that's very clear, you can... Sometimes in practice, of course, we do feel something very

[10:58]

clear and deep opens up and sometimes we feel very wide and open and lifted up and maybe we can speak then about you know in some you know metaphorical feeling way about high and deep. But coalesce is somewhere in the middle. It's high and deep kind of growing together. It's like the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra who enters without taking a step So I think as, you know, already in fact there's a kind of coalescing Sangha mind.

[12:22]

These who... These who we are now, this weekend, is also kind of dipping into the stream of practice. And we always have to dip in, step in from where we are. This stream may be the mind of many ancient practitioners. But you have to step in from where you are.

[13:30]

You can't go upstream or downstream and step in. You have to step in here. Just as you are, just as we are. So this entering the stream of practice It has to be wherever you are, not just here at Johanneshof, for sure. But here we try to give more form to the stepping into the stream of practice to remind ourselves you, including the ones of us who live here, to step again into this stream of practice, this stream of our own life, where we feel

[14:33]

Something like dissolver of sugar. Dissolve me. Who are we speaking to when we say dissolver of sugar? And who hears and answers dissolve me? This is our activity of practicing and recognizing our own life, our own unknown and knowing life. our unknown and knowing life, So we can use the word as, since it's the title of the topic of the seminar, form.

[16:21]

Form and freedom. But let's leave and. and freedom aside for a while. And let's just take form. Now, I said last night, rain is general all over England, all over Germany. It comes from actually nearly the last line of a wonderful story by James Joyce called The Dead. Es kommt von einer fast letzten Zeile von einer wunderbaren Geschichte von James Joyce, just dead, also gerade gestorben.

[17:23]

Where he says at the end, that snow is general all over Ireland. Wo er sagt, dass der Schnee general oder überhaupt über ganz Irland ist. But it's the voice. Er kennt es ja, kennt sicher die Übersetzung. It's the voice of a newscaster or a radio announcer or a newspaper. And what's touching about the... and why it stayed in my mind, at a very intimate moment in this story, the voice shifts to a general voice, a kind of newscaster's voice. Snow is general all over Ireland. That's why I said England, because I was halfway to Ireland and I was trying to say Germany.

[18:28]

But that's interesting. It's a kind of the keeping away is calling me in. Because at this most intimate moment in time when his life was absolutely different, he found himself speaking in a newscaster's voice to himself. For the particular, anyway, that's enough. Maybe that can contribute to what I'm trying to touch here. is that we don't want to think of form as something general. There's no form. There's no silence. There's no stillness. There's only coming into stillness.

[19:43]

Or the silencing of movement is stillness. Or we can say the stilling of sound is silence. I'm trying to make it difficult for her. In other words, you know, what do these words mean? They kind of try to take clouds and fold them underneath each other and so forth. Now, if your stomach isn't complaining, it's silent. And its silence speaks of its health. So it joins the voices of voices? The silence of many things that function unannounced. that function unannounced.

[21:23]

There's a kind of sea of silence of the unannounced workings of the world. So silence is an activity. Stillness is an activity. You're alive, your heart is beating, you're breathing. Even in silence there's some kind of activity. And some of you may notice when you get a little accomplished at sitting.

[22:31]

or it may happen anyway, that a black cat just crossed all your paths. Luckily, you're divinely protected by the Buddha. It didn't cross your path, actually. It crossed my path. So you're safe. May, as you become more, you know, may happen to anyone, but often happens when you get more used to sitting.

[23:42]

That you may start hearing a hum or whine in your ears. Wine crying kind of thing? Wine is like the whine of an engine. And it might be like in Indian Hindu and Vedic religions, in the beginning was the sound. So it might be the fundamental sound from which all form arises. In this way of looking at things. It might just be the hum of your own body. But it's very likely also the heating system of Johanneshof.

[24:51]

Which, when it's cold out, goes on and goes... And then you can also hear the whole electrical system wound around each room. It's amazing we don't start glowing like we were in a generator. But in any case, sometimes this sound is bothersome to some people. But it's quite common in sitting practice. And you can enter into it and dissolve it or modulate it. You can enter into it and dissolve it and modulate it.

[25:51]

But usually you just learn to ignore it. So let's go back to the word form. Since we're here and this is Buddhist practice and teaching, we know that everything's changing. So there's no form. There's only forming. Always forming. So for ourselves, let's say giving form. So you're giving form.

[26:53]

You're giving form to the juncture where you hear the storm. And you feel you've had some experience of the storm. You didn't sleep through it. Or as I said, you know, when you walk from here to the door, you feel the motor activity of walking. You feel the actual activity of the body in walking. So you give form. I mean, the activity has form. But in your attention to it, you give mental form to it.

[27:54]

But in your attention, you give him mental form. So why bother with this? It sounds awfully unnatural. And Zen is supposed to be natural. And to heck with Zen anyway, we want to be natural. So what is all this? Can't you just walk to the door? Yeah, but have you ever noticed how you walk? Don't you think you've got a lot of karma walking there? I always think of this blind woman I knew who through much effort got so she could ride in the bus without a stick. But people still treated her as blind.

[29:07]

And she couldn't figure it out. I'm just walking around here with my eyes open and everything. And then she discovered one day when she stooped, they treated her as seeing. You know how blind people are real upright when they walk? And most of us actually put our tails between our legs and stoop a little bit. It's politer and nicer and... shows we're not too strong. You're too powerful if you're really too upright. So she learned to stoop and then everyone treated her as sighted. That's karma. So when we bring

[30:07]

attentive form to our activity. It's a kind of antidote to form. Antidote to karma. It's a kind of blur. Like two pictures, it doesn't happen much anymore. In the old days on television you'd often have two pictures superimposed because one was bouncing off a hill or something and arriving slightly later. So there's a kind of dissonance there. When you bring attentive form to the form that's already there.

[31:34]

And strangely, we've discovered it makes a difference. These are questions, obvious questions, that are worth examining. What happens when we walk to the door giving attention to all the noticeable aspects of walking? It's interesting also that our noticing penetrates more thoroughly. As we develop our mindfulness practice. As we swim in our mindfulness practice.

[32:51]

So at first you're capable only noticing a few things, like your feet. But pretty soon you can notice how your forearm or upper arm goes from here to the door. Or how the small of your back comes up to standing. Doesn't stand up, but comes up to standing. Does this make you self-conscious? might at first, if you identify your body with yourself, but self is such a small thing compared to the complexity of the body, and this kind of mindfulness actually helps dissolve the self.

[34:05]

Still, I think when we come into a sense that practice is giving form, Getting out of generalizations, generalizations where karma is free to operate, whenever you bring form to the particularities, And dharma practice is to bring attention to the particulars.

[35:11]

It starts getting difficult for karma to take over. Well, karma finds all these little bright shining objects around. And it can't grab hold of them. It says, darken up, darken up. Let you bring bright mindful attention to what you're doing. And your karma actually has a harder time operating in you. You're approaching a karma-free zone. Or maybe a karma-fluid zone. Yeah. in this simple, closely practiced habit of bringing attention to the particulars you can notice.

[36:38]

This closely doesn't work. Closely. Closely practiced. Yeah, thoroughly practice. Attention to the particularities of what appears. So you give form to what you notice. And the giving form to makes more and more form appear. So through giving form you start receiving form. So if a biologist looks into the body, There's all kinds of stuff going on.

[37:42]

I mean, almost infinitely complex activities simultaneously happening. Yeah, and you just take it for granted. My stomach feels good. Yeah, but there's a lot going on down there. Breakfast is kind of... So now we need not just a biological attentiveness, but a dharmalogical attentiveness. That's a good one. What's that? Darm is intestine. If I say Darmalogist, then it's also like intestines.

[38:46]

That's exactly what I meant. I often say, just feel the world as a big stomach. There's no outside, it's all inside. Here we are, all inside. So let's just take southern. Sitting practice. Since probably the largest percentage of your practice time, at least for many of you, so let's come back again and again to sitting practice. And so I don't need to say that again and again is one of the secrets of practice.

[39:47]

Knowing each again is different. So let's imagine you're sitting. Looks like some of you are. But imagine it as well. So you're sitting and you've gotten yourself pretty comfortable. You have this upright lifting, verticality. And you also have accepting your posture as it is. And naturally you're breathing.

[40:49]

So you bring your attention to your breathing. Also bringt ihr eure Aufmerksamkeit auf euren Atem. Also könnt ihr zum Beispiel euren Atem zählen. Also was üblich ist, von 1 bis 10 und wieder von vorne. Oder von 1 zu 0 und wieder von vorne. Was tut ihr dann? You're giving form to your breathing. You're finding the form of your breathing. But you're also giving form to your breathing. When you count it, taking this human-created number system, you're putting it into the category of language, which has a lot of stuff comes with it.

[42:06]

The separation between two things. A sense of here and there. A sense of space. So you bring that to counting one. Two. Two. So what you've got here then, you've got your breath, you're in your exhale, shall we say. You've got an exhale. And you've got attention. Which is a mental activity. And you've got form. So you brought three things together. You added something together, added something to your breathing.

[43:25]

And usually more things are added. You start feeling calmer. And some things are subtracted. You're not so identified with your stream of thought and you're more entering the stream of the body and the stream of breath. So we've given a little form to each breath And we've subtracted thinking. And we've added the body. And we've added a feeling of continuity in the breath instead of in thinking. In other words, by giving form, a lot of form has been given back to us. We've stuck our hand in the stream.

[44:32]

If your fingers are spread, there's suddenly five little rivulets or activity. Anyway, various things happen as soon as some form is given. So giving form is also receiving form. And you often receive form that's unexpected. Like you give a little form to your exhales. And you receive a more fluid self or formless self. Or you receive a sense of immediate continuity rather than in your thinking.

[45:55]

Who would have thought such a magic thing happened? From counting your exhales? Over and over again? How do you explain this to your aunt or uncle? So he's very doubtful about what you're doing. Either it sounds ridiculous or meaningless. But if you do it, the fact of actually being involved

[46:46]

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