Hi. Guni asked me to say something at this point. And because I feel a little funny in the midst of the quality and depth that happens when in our movements together called a constellation, For me to just flap my lips for a while, it seems rather silly, but I'll try. Yeah, so... Yeah, and one of the things that interests me in doing something like this is, as I said this morning, how can it be supported by Zen practice?

[01:12]

But also, how does it overlap with Zen practice? And how does it do things that Zen practice can't do? Because as I always say, Buddhism is not... I mean, the main aim of Buddhism is all the teachings are about potentially realizing enlightenment and lessening suffering. But you can't exactly say any of the teachings are, you know, there are really, the emphasis isn't therapy. Yeah. And I often... Many of you know I often say Buddhism is not a psychology, it's a mindology.

[02:20]

And psychology does something different than... A mindology. Although when you study how we function and how the mind works, there's again a lot of overlap. Now, As you know, in Buddhism there's no dynamic of a creator. Buddhism might say, well, there may be one or two creators, but we don't know anything about it. Okay, but if you're part of a practice in which there's no creator, then there's no starting point.

[03:26]

It's just a process. And the process is always a creative process. Which means that if it's just a process and a creative process of creating, then you are a kind of construct. And then you can participate in that construction. This is maybe a quick assumption. And then you can further develop this construct yourself.

[04:30]

If in the end each thing is a construct, then we can participate in the construction. So from my point of view, if we can construct A therapeutic situation like this that we did this morning and this afternoon, where are the boundaries of this constellation? Can we carry what we learn here into other circumstances? Now the Suram Gama Samadhi Sutra, which I mentioned this morning, It has 100 aspects of Buddhahood.

[06:10]

And it just assumes Buddhahood is something that's not related to some internal, eternal you or something. It's just something you can construct. It's an activity. If you are the activity of a Buddha, you're a Buddha. If you're the activity of a jerk, you're a jerk. Okay, so we have a choice. Okay, so the teachings of Buddhism are just to try to give you a choice. And the first aspect of these 100 aspects is to make the mind like space.

[07:15]

Create a mind like space. Make a mind that's like space. Okay, wrong. Make a mind that has the quality of space. Okay. Now first of all, you know, this is an important sutra, you know, where sutras go. And the very first thing it says is to make your mind like space. Heck, that doesn't sound so hard. Hey, I'm already on the path. This doesn't mean in San Francisco's 60s hippies term to space out.

[08:21]

That usually required some extra help from your friends. Yes, anyway. Now, to make your mind like space doesn't mean it's some kind of blank page, tabula rasa. Okay. It's more like, say, you're in a city. And you're having a café au lait. And you're just the people are going by and stuff like that. That's a mind like space.

[09:23]

That's what happens in space. Things come and go and you know etc. So every time you do that you're on the first step of the path to Buddhahood. So we could drink coffee instead of sitting. Coffee sometimes interferes with the mind like space. Yes, but... Yeah, okay. That's the right question. So what's the difference? Okay. Well, what is the mind you have when you're... sitting having a coffee in a cafe.

[10:28]

You're just letting... They're strangers. They're just coming and going. They're just people or whatever is there. It's not attached to anything. It lets things come in and lets things go. Can you have a mind like that all the time? That's not so easy. So the first aspect here is can you have a mind like that all the time? Or can it somehow be like that transparent trance? It's in the midst of your mind, present simultaneously with your active mind. Now, I would say, I don't know, we'll have to have commentary from my pros over here.

[11:52]

The mind that allows you to have do a constellation when you get through the borders of the ritual that started It is a mind-like space. You just let whatever appears in it. This woman doesn't look like my mother, but today she's my mother. You know, you can only do that with a mind like space. Now I often suggest that people practice generating this mind. Because it's a non-grasping field of mind.

[13:04]

Okay, so I suggest one get in the habit of bringing the mind sensorily to a particular. Bring attention to an object through the senses, not through thinking. And then shift your mind to the field. A kind of all-at-onceness of each of you, all of you.

[14:05]

So you go to the particular, to the field, to the particular, to the field, etc. And it requires training. It doesn't happen naturally. Maybe it happened naturally when you were an infant, but it doesn't happen naturally once you learn to speak and think discursively. Well, what happens when you Bring attention to the field of mind. You cut out before and after. If I bring my attention fully from a perceptual object, to the field, you actually are cutting off conceptual thinking.

[15:18]

You're cutting off before and after. And you're cutting off here and there. And if you cut off before and after, you've created a kind of timeless realm. Now, Buddhism says this should be your realm. default mind and computer talk. This is not about, well, I wasn't born with this mind, it is not natural, etc. Hey, you're just a construct, reconstruct. Then you might as well reconstruct wisely.

[16:20]

And you've got 2,500 years of saying, hey, this is a wise move. All right. So... Okay, I think that's clear enough. and the use of rituals that Guni has us do, regular, we can allow, as I said, abandon yourself. Abandon yourself to a mind without before and after. abandon yourself to a timeless realm to a mind like space and in somewhat similar way as you know traditional psychoanalysis you have to create an associative mind

[17:37]

the analyst has got to create an associative mind as well as to help the client. The therapist, let's say, Guni, her job would be, if we were thinking of this as a Buddhist practice, would be when she starts a constellation, she shifts into a mind-like space or into a field of mind. And it's rather important that she not be fully in this mind at the beginning, before she starts.

[19:02]

Because we should intuit or feel her make the shift, and that helps us to precipitate the shift. And the more each of us knows this territory, and practitioners know this territory pretty well, you can go into this Field of mind. Or this mind-like space. Mind-like space. A mind which is like space.

[20:06]

Yes, that's translated right there. Raumhaften Geist. Yeah, that's colloquial English. A mind like space without the which is. Anyway, and my experience when I'm having a café au lait. Meine Erfahrung ist, wenn ich ein... Or a mélange. Mélange oder café au lait habe... I've changed countries quickly here. Is that I feel washed, cleaned by just the people appearing in the space. It's profound. I find it profoundly relaxing. The coffee is just an excuse. Often the cigarette is a little excuse and a boost. I imagine, I don't smoke.

[21:13]

So I think that one of the reasons we do that is not because we need a coffee. Or that's perhaps one of the reasons. But we probably need the purifying experience of a field of mind. And this morning I just loved sitting here while the difficulties that you were expressing in the constellation. And I don't understand a word. Everybody imagines that after I've been here 20 years, half a year, blah, blah, blah, I'm really secretly understanding everything.

[22:22]

But you can testify. Only menus you could read. Yeah, sure. Okay. I know a few words. Gesundheit. Ein paar Wörter kenne ich. Gesundheit. Winterschlaf. I mean, that's about the length of my vocabulary. Anyway. And I can feel the emotions, certainly. But I generate a field of mind and you're just moving in it. And I feel washed, like I was in a kind of washing machine. That's great. Okay. Okay, enough on that for now.

[23:32]

Now let's skip to number 45 in the 100 list. Number 45 is place all bodies in one body. Hey, now that's, we're getting a little advanced now. Okay. But you know when you see some kid, child, I mean, we see them all the time. And suddenly their father appears in the face. And suddenly the father's face appears in the child's face. And then you look away and look back and the mother appears in the face. And this just was happening to me because I was just at her family's where her brother has three little boys. And the grandparents are there too, or her parents are there too.

[24:51]

And then suddenly I see her father appear in the face. Not the father, but the grandfather appear in the face. So in fact we are all many bodies placed in one. And so Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Buddhism in general says, start noticing this. And How can I put it? Start noticing this and think of a body as a mixture of bodies.

[26:00]

And if you look at teenage girls in America, you can see Britney Spears and Madonna. And it depends. But it's not just your parents. You're a compilation of bodies. And it's of course in the style of clothes we wear. We pick that up from our culture. But it's also how we hold our body. How we feel through our body. As a practice, you would start noticing, feeling another person's body as a compilation of bodies.

[27:18]

And you take that a leap further and you'd say, all bodies are somehow in this body. Now that becomes an idea, of course, at some point. You can have a relationship to it when it's a person you know in a context you know of family and friends. But I see it in Europe all the time. I mean, you Europeans, you don't stick to your borders. Yeah. In fact, you came to America, a lot of you. I mean, that's what America is, a lot of Europeans. But still, if I see a Dutch person, for instance, And then I see another Dutch person.

[28:35]

There's a genet, obviously. The genes are all shared there in some way. It's different than the genes in Germany. Of course it's not just genes. Two or three times in Japan. I lived in Japan continuously for four years and off and on for 30. Two or three times, two I remember very clearly, I walked straight up to somebody who was completely genetically Japanese and spoke English to them. I do speak Japanese, you know, with a German accent, but... And he says, how do you know to speak English to me?

[29:36]

He said, I'm Japanese. I was born in Japan. Ich bin doch Japaner. Ich bin in Japan geboren. Where do you live now? Wo wohnen Sie denn jetzt? Canada. Canada. How long have you lived in Canada? Wie lang haben Sie in Canada gelebt? Since I was five. Seitdem ich fünf Jahre alt bin. His face is sculpted by English. Sein Gesicht ist durch das Englische geformt. English makes a certain face. Englisch macht einfach ein gewisses Gesicht. Japanese makes a different face. Das Japanische macht ein anderes Gesicht. Even buttocks are different from one European country to the other. You want to go in details?

[30:37]

No. I need a little editing now and then. Okay. So you can play around with this idea of many bodies in one. So you can play around with this idea of many bodies in one. And this ought to be fruitful because that's what happens in a constellation. We have enough bodies in us already. So many, it's almost all. That we can call forth bodies from another person. Now I want to not take too much more time, so let me tell you, talk a little bit about the overlap between Buddhist practice and Constellation.

[31:55]

But let me start with saying what, you know, a difference. No, if I had Tara's experience, I certainly had similar experience. And I or framed it to myself, if I framed it, told it, said it to myself, I've lost the joy of life. Is that what you said? Now, I'd have to work with it in English. I don't know what it sounds like in German. So I would work with lost the joy of life.

[32:57]

I'd start with probably joy of life. All three words. And lost, of course, too. And I would, because our body already knows what these words mean. As a bodily, if I even gesture with certain words, my hands will gesture differently according to the word I'm using. So I would start with, well, I haven't lost life, I'm still alive. And I would probably, in English, I would probably pursue the word. And life actually in English means literally life body.

[34:18]

And a life body which perseveres, continues. And of means down, below, off, away. And joy means to rejoice in the possession of something. But whatever the etymology suggests, which is sometimes useful to expand it, I would first go to what my body knows about these words. And I'd also go to the word lost, of course.

[35:22]

When was it lost? Was there a before and after, lost? And what triggered loss? And what was that trigger like? Is it like something else that happened at some other point in my life? Now, this is a kind of psychological approach to meditation. But as a technique, it's related to working through previous lives, past lives, if you believe in reincarnation. So it requires as a process, and I'm just telling you the process, which could relate to, for instance, Tara could extend what happened this morning by working with these words. So I would myself start with the word life.

[36:57]

I haven't lost that yet. And so I just stay. What is my experience of being alive? I take that as my intention for hours, days, months or even longer. Sitting, having a coffee or something, I would Yeah, what is it? I'm alive. And I feel, I look, I see, I see the table, I'm breathing. I would just notice all these things which are called being alive. When are there moments of joy in this, or relaxation or something? I sort of take the territory of my experience, which is usually compressed by consciousness, and kind of spread it out as a field of mind, a mind-like space.

[38:05]

Okay. Now, a kind of anecdote. Okay. I asked myself the question years ago Did my mother love me? Or how did she love me? It was just part of my exploration of each of my key relationships. And what came up And what came out of it, with the most power, I may have mentioned this once or twice before, what came up with the most power was, you'll never understand how much a mother loves her children.

[39:42]

And I mean, as a philosophical statement, maybe that's true. I don't know. But it never felt like a philosophical statement. There was a lot of power. It was the most powerful way she ever spoke to me about love. So I stayed with that phrase. And I allowed myself to come back to it periodically in meditation. And after a while I could visualize situations in which she'd said it to me. It was like I could take the territory, a Google map, the territory of my childhood and pull up certain parts of it into relief.

[41:03]

Yeah, it's almost like I pulled him up into an inner constellation. Anyway. And I know that every time she said it to me, it pushed me away. Und ich wusste, dass jedes Mal, wenn sie dies gesagt hat, dass das mich weggestoßen hat. It never felt she was talking about me. Es hat sich nie angefühlt, als ob sie dabei über mich sprach. Plus it was an implicit instruction, you'll never understand. Außerdem war das auch eine implizite Anweisung, du wirst nie verstehen können. Well, she kept telling me I'll never understand, so I decided, you're probably right, Mom. So finally I adjusted to the fact that my mother loved me in some women's magazine sort of way. Yeah, so I that became clear and I kind of settled

[42:06]

the relationship with my mother. But that's as far as I could take it with meditative Zen practice. Now, if I'd done a consolation before I was 45 or so, I might have found out what my mother was really saying. Because when I was 45 and again when I was 55, I found my mother had two children I didn't know about. And they'd both been put up for adoption. And she was from a New England family and you simply did not have babies out of wedlock. in America and the Midwest in those days, a high school girl could be pregnant, everyone in the town would know it, no one would admit it, and the baby would be buried in the backyard.

[43:53]

If you asked about was so-and-so pregnant, no, no, she was never pregnant. So my mother had to leave home and go to Connecticut, I think, and where she had these babies. One was put up for adoption in a good way. The one I think was actually sold. and the other one, I think, was sold. And I think in those days there was this nice looking couple who came to a town and had some fun there. They were looking for a child for adoption.

[44:58]

And in almost every town there'd be a few, as you can imagine. They'd adopt one, and then take it and sell it. And then they'd go to another town and adopt one. So he was adopted by these people, taken to California, and ended up with a rather abusive farm family. Now, my point is, I probably could have gotten to realize that's what she was saying, maybe if I'd done a constellation. Maybe if I pursued it more, more things would have come up which would have made me guess. But anyway, I only carried it. I didn't carry it as far as Constellation carried it. And one of these guys, named originally Peter, this is the end of the story.

[46:24]

His name was Peter Radcliffe. He's Peter Radcliffe. And he changed his name to Sterling Radcliffe. And when he came to see my mother, he found her after years and years. He literally said to her when he first came in the room, I know there's only one like you. There couldn't be anybody else like you. My mother was astonished. She thought, how could he feel all this love for me when I haven't seen him for, I don't know, 65 or 70 years.

[47:24]

And he said to me on the phone a number of times, he just died a year ago or so, I'm going to love your mother, our mother, until the day I die. She's my first, she's my last, she's everything to me. Well, he's actually a songwriter. He wrote the song, Barry White Made Famous. And I first, you're my last, you're my everything. You're my sun, my moon, my guiding star. That's what you are.

[48:26]

I know there's only one like you. There's no way they could have made two. You're all I'm living for. I see so many ways that I can love you till the day I die. You're my reality. Yet I'm lost in a dream. You're the first, the last, my everyone. I mean, everything he said to me on the phone makes it clear that somehow this song was also to his mother. Okay. And that is all hidden in this statement.

[49:34]

My mother would say, you'll never know how much a mother loves her children, meaning the ones I've given up. And this is all included in this statement by my mother. You will never understand how a mother loves her child. And so she meant these two children that she had to give. Okay, that's my little anecdote. Nothing but silence on hard. Anyway, my point is that consolation work does things practice can't, but practice can extend consolation work, I think. So, my point is to say that performance work can do something that practice cannot do, but practice can also expand performance work further.

[50:40]

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