Oh, well, thank you for coming and I hope you all came out of love of practice or at least out of an interest in desire to explore practice and to Explore yourselves, of course. And for sure, I hope you came out of a love for yourself. Or at least a deep respect for yourself. A deep respect for yourself as part of this universe. So we have everything we need here.

[01:01]

A rug, a room, It's like really nice people. A translator so I don't look too stupid. And 40 days of rain. Seems like 40 days. Yeah, okay. How many of you, if any, are new here for the first time here?

[02:06]

Oh, okay. I hope you haven't made a mistake. And anybody here not familiar with meditation? We're all not familiar with meditation. That's the nature of meditation. So, as usual, we have some kind of topic. And I don't know what form and freedom mean. But we can have some fun with it, maybe. What is the freedom of form? What is the form of freedom? So in some way this weekend I'll try to Look at that and use that as some way to poke into practice.

[03:26]

I mean, practice isn't really separate from our lives. At least if your practice has any maturity, it's not separate from your life. But our practice is the long experience of thousands of people over many centuries. And although you may not... you know, consciously feel it. When you start to practice and you're practicing with others, you're actually stepping into a stream, a kind of stream that does put you in touch with

[04:27]

those thousands of people who've practiced in the past and even now. Yeah, it's much like if you speak German or English. Whether you know it or not, it puts you in touch with all the people who have written English and spoken English or German. The way we find to express something, its nuances have been explored so many times before. Also diese Art und Weise, wie wir etwas auszudrücken versuchen, diese Nuancen sind schon so oft vorher entdeckt worden. But surprisingly, you can still say something in a way no one has ever said it before.

[05:50]

But surprisingly, you can still say something in a way no one has ever said it before. That's something magical even. That is something magical? Yeah. If you know certain writers, you can spot their writing even from a few sentences. You can say, oh yeah, that must be so and so. You can even have a whole flavor in any sentence of a particular way of feeling the world. And likewise, a lineage in practice is a way of knowing the world. And you can feel the flavor of different lineages. Yeah, but at the same time you can find ways to know yourself through practice, which have never been experienced before.

[07:02]

And that's really when practice is very mature. You're so deeply embedded in the resources of practice that you can start finding your own practice as you go along. Like a way of saying something that no one said before. Or even finding freshness in a cliché. That has something to do with knowing feeling the living form of everything.

[08:30]

The living form that lets us discover deeply, know deeply Discover and know. The unknown territory of our life. The known territory, too. But everything's changing, so it's always also unknown territory. And some practice is also to put you in situations so you really see how you would act in very difficult circumstances.

[09:37]

And part of practice is to show you how you would act in really difficult circumstances. Circumstances which usually bring out the worst in us. Maybe situations you haven't faced yet which could bring out the worst in you. Just sitting down in the midst of our stuff Whatever it is, we can know ourselves in more and more familiar ways. and know ourselves also in ways that are unfamiliar to us.

[10:44]

And the secret is usually the body. Body as a teacher. As a guide. But let me change the topic and speak about the weather. Yeah. And I want to say something this weekend about, I don't know what to call it, junctures. And junctures, places where things are joined. Or where things are joined and communicated. And I like the word too, because it's the same root as yoga. To connect or join.

[12:01]

Yeah, or to bond. So we've had, at least here, lots of rainy weather. I think that's the case in much of Germany, isn't it? Rain is general all over Germany. And it's been very windy sometimes. Yeah. I mean, and here, particularly in this area, the Black Forest, and I guess in Austria, so windy. When is that big storm coming? Wow, you drive through some parts of here, and I took a new road yesterday.

[13:02]

Huge piles of lumber where trees are down. Also hier und auch in Österreich, auch in der Schweiz, Switzerland also actually. Oh, excuse me. Gab es ja diese riesigen Stürme so nach Weihnachten, so am 26. Dezember. Und hier haben riesige Teile vom Schwarzwald flach gemäht. Auch gestern bin ich erstmals in eine neue Straße gefahren und habe ein riesiges... It hasn't been that windy recently, but it's been pretty windy sometimes. Yeah, and sometimes it's been hailing. It bounces off the window and the roof. And each storm is different.

[14:07]

Sometimes there's hail, sometimes it's just pounding rain. And sometimes the leaves of the tree are thrashing so hard against a purplish or greenish sky. And sometimes it's in the middle of the night. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. And each time I think you've all must have had the experience where suddenly you stop and you really hear the rain on the roof or on the window. Or you particularly hear the wind. And it brings some kind of extraordinary, fragrant freshness into the room.

[15:16]

And it stops you and you... I mean, it has to happen to everyone. It stops you and you suddenly, whoa, let's hear that wind. Isn't this... Air delightful. That's a junction. Suddenly you really feel the storm. You feel the natural world coming into you. Maybe you almost feel yourself going out into the natural world. And if you slept through the night and there was a great storm and you woke up the next morning and you only heard about it from friends,

[16:40]

Yeah, you may wish, oh, I wish I hadn't slept so well. I would have liked to have heard that storm. So you missed it. You feel you've missed something. You didn't really feel that storm. But when you do have those moments in which you really feel a storm, the wind, the rain, the color, we can call that a juncture. Now, why do I call it a juncture? Why do I give it a form? It just happens. It's so nice. Yeah, but for the sake of this weekend, let's call it a junction.

[17:43]

For a moment, you really do feel the natural world come into you. And if you're a practicer of mindfulness, if you swim in the knowing of mindfulness, and this is the basic practice of all of Buddhism, is to begin to think through mindfulness. A kind of non-thinking thinking through mindfulness.

[18:56]

A kind of getting a way of knowing things through bringing repeated attention to things. It's a way of getting to know things. Through bringing repeated attention to things. Not thinking about it, but just thinking. repeatedly being aware of it. It's one way we can understand Dogen's to think non-thinking. And we could say almost the main activity of working with the teaching or working with the world is through this activity of mindfulness which brings you into the world and brings the world into you and brings the world into you in a way

[20:00]

That the world begins to inform you. So it's kind of a profound invisible bridge. Between you and the world and other people and so forth. So the more mature your mindfulness practice is, the more you feel these junctures as a real opening. But I'm using the example of weather. And a storm.

[21:20]

Because a storm, a windy, rainy storm, or a hail too, grabs your attention. But the quality of it is that it grabs your attention. Until the storm grabs your attention you might as well have slept through it. So the juncture is attention. And you don't have to wait for a big to have this natural juncture. Anytime you bring your attention to something really, are able to settle your attention on something.

[22:26]

We're not talking about a long period of time, but a real settling on something, if only for a moment. You feel this juncture. So you know when you practice mindfulness, if you know how it feels when a A storm or the other day we had a double rainbow out here. The double rainbow sort of hits us over the head. Boom, boom. But... But... All the ingredients of a double rainbow are right here.

[23:38]

You can give me a hose and I can use my thumb and we can get the light right. We can produce one right here in the room. So don't wait for a double rainbow. Just bring your attention fully in a settled way to each thing. On each thing. I like to watch her translate. I try to say more and more difficult things to see what she does. Maybe I go out there and sit and I speak from there and I can watch you.

[24:44]

Even when you are practicing mindfulness, the secret of practice is to remember to practice. Also das Geheimnis von einer Übung ist ja, dass man sich daran erinnert. We can even say practice is remembering to practice. Wir können sogar sagen, dass praktizieren das Erinnern an das Praktizieren ist. Once you remember you know enough about practice to find something to do. Denn wenn ihr euch mal daran erinnert, dann wisst ihr genug Dinge, die ihr machen könnt, um zu praktizieren. If you've got nothing better to do, be mindful. Wenn ihr nichts Besseres zu tun habt, könnt ihr achtsam sein. So when we are mindful, it's good to be even mindful of our motor activity.

[25:57]

So you're going from one place to another. And you feel your parts going from one place to another. You just don't feel your mind. Oh yeah, like a little flashlight. I'll go over there. That reminds me of a funny story. So I'll take a minute and tell you. When the very early days of Crestone, we had no electricity. But we had a solar power set up, right? It wasn't very powerful, but it worked sort of. And we had a generator, right? Okay, so we'd set up Doxan in a strange little corner room, right?

[27:00]

Next to the generator, isn't that right? Or next to the solar power? Yeah, so I couldn't hear anything in Doksan unless they turned the generator off. So it was early in the morning and Gerald and Gisela would be cooking in the kitchen with miner's lamps. Isn't that true? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I'd go out in the kitchen taking a break from Doge's and I'd say, oh, he's in total darkness, he's mad. Who else is there? Mining the breakfast. So, you know, not so much like that, but some kind of feeling of the fluidity of our body and its activity.

[28:27]

And once you're more familiar with the... Yeah, it's okay. Once you're more familiar, you've got the feeling of these junctures I've mentioned. Where we feel the aliveness or freshness or power of the natural world, of the all-at-onceness of the world. And that's also a kind of feeling a deep respect for ourself. As Mumon Yamada Roshi, my teacher in Japan, used to say, the single most important thing is to have a deep respect for yourself.

[29:29]

knowing that you're here just now, and everything is making this moment possible. The all-at-onceness, the all-encompassing everything at this moment. And somehow we feel that in these junctures. So these small things that mostly we just say, oh, it was a nice storm. Let's give a little form to these small things. Yeah, let's call them junctures. And when we notice them, stop in the midst of it and don't make it happen, but let it happen.

[30:47]

Also wenn ihr die bemerkt, dann haltet mitten in diesen an und bemerkt sie einfach, macht sie nicht. And there are other junctures. Es gibt andere so Verbindungspunkte und Anschlussstellen. I don't have any words for it, but maybe we could say human junctures. Also ich habe dafür kein Wort, aber wir können sie menschliche Verbindungsstellen nennen. Where we really feel another person. Wo wir eine andere Person wirklich spüren. I hope any person you can feel some juncture with occasionally. Maybe they have to be very stormy in waving their arms like in a wind. Yeah, and then you know that, oh, I'm like that sometimes, and you feel something, some juncture with them.

[31:49]

Yeah. Sometimes I just, instead of saying human juncture, I say another juncture. And I feel some, all of you, each of you are at least as extraordinary as any storm. So I find myself feeling, you know, some kind of juncture or possibility of a juncture with each one of you, with all of you. And of course with some people it's much easier to feel junctures. But it's possible with any person. And then there are personal junctures too.

[33:06]

When sometimes you feel suddenly at ease with yourself. At ease with yourself just as you are. Or some ease, ease opening up into clarity and often a kind of preciseness. And these personal junctures are particularly enhanced by learning to sit still. I mean the way practice is guided is through calmness or equanimity. And wisdom or insight.

[34:21]

Now these are the two basic, you know, vipassana and vipassana. But it's also just your own settled feeling. And allowing that open, settled feeling to be open to seeing the world, seeing yourself. And establishing a wisdom view of the world. And that's not just some kind of teaching, it's also finding it in your own practice.

[35:28]

Yeah, and it should be present too in the way we are here together. The way we practice together. And it should be can be here in the building, the way the building is. And this is something we want to study together, which is how to practice together. How to practice with each other and with ourselves. in any circumstance. So we do, of course, work with the body For lots of reasons.

[36:45]

One is, of course, it's very hard to see the mind unless the body is still. It's a lot easier anyway. You really want to observe your thoughts, feelings, emotions. It's remarkable how much it's possible through still sitting. But also your posture is working with your karma. Yeah, we had a little talk here the other day. And I said, your mind is shaped by your karma.

[37:49]

And your body is also shaped by your karma. So if you want to change the way you are affected by karma. Your accumulated intentional acts and how they accumulate and constantly are reified. Karma is conditional, and each moment strengthens or frees you from karmic, from karma. And so the shape of your mind and body either strengthen karma or weaken karma.

[38:51]

So we could say that a Buddha posture is streamlined in the wind of karma. So the karma is always smashing into you, but if you sit a certain way and you've been... Karma wind just blows right by because you're all streamlined. Finally you get so formless the karma says, where is that guy? It's looking for your mind too and it's empty. So we pay a lot of attention to your posture.

[39:57]

And also your legs work with one kind of energy in your body. And the posture of your stomach works with another kind of energy. And this triangle of shoulders down into here and triangle up this way works with another kind of energy in your body. And the posture of your tongue, the form, the posture, the form of your posture of your tongue at the roof of your mouth works with another kind of energy. And the stillness of your eyes with another. And this thorough feeling of verticality in your backbone works also with your another energy.

[41:14]

Because your life isn't just thinking and so forth. It's also how your energy is in your body. Energy isn't quite the right word, but I don't have a word for it. The way there's a play of forces in the physicality of you. You begin to know those through practice. And settle those different energies as well as settling the mind. And junctures open up where you feel windows throughout the body, and windows to other people, even wide open.

[42:25]

into the world. Some fresh Dharma wind is present. So we'll sit tomorrow morning And I think we have a voluntary period first. That's because so many people have such a hard, busy week. Then they drive all the way down here and we try them Ask them to get up at some un-Buddha-like hour. No, Buddha-like hour. What you need here is a little karma vacation.

[43:41]

Yeah. So... So, you know, we want to make the first period voluntary. So, and then we who are sitting earlier, if we, you know, we're, you know, warrior adepts. We have a certain... feeling of pride when we hear the wake-up bell. And the slower part of the world hasn't gotten up yet. Or the braver part who says to heck with it, I'm sleeping. Don't be fooled.

[44:51]

There's courage both ways. Sometimes it takes more, in a place like this, sometimes it takes more courage to say, I'm sleeping. So I respect both kinds of courage. I might not even show up for the first period myself. But anyway, we've talked enough this evening. So thank you for being here. Thank you for translating.

[45:25]

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