Does anyone have something to say about before and after or the relationship of these seminars to constellation thinking, etc. ? the work before you attended the seminar, or afterwards, or the teaching work? Yes. I find myself having my own inner constellation going on in my head, in my mind. This is like a dialogue between my Zen mind and my everyday mind. And that can happen in all kinds of variations and I feel nourished by what you've been talking about.

[01:01]

Oh, okay. From my heart? Yes? In my work, it just developed that I'm always having a certain focus that I'm concentrated on in a particular way. differentiation between different kinds of minds the way you presented that?

[02:13]

I'm not a systemic therapist and I also don't work with constellations. But I have tried to think these things through as you were talking for my work with individual clients. But I'm imagining that I will put this focus on these different minds, both in myself and in the clients. And that was the way you've been talking about these things was very helpful in that regard. Okay. Yes. Yes. I am noticing in myself that I have a hard time separating these things.

[03:36]

whether my work has changed through a seminar with Eka Rashi like this, or just through my work with transpersonal psychology. But in any case I'm experiencing and have experienced that my way of being in the world keeps changing and is more and more anchored. As I'm exposing myself more and more to this. And I am experiencing it as a weaving together or as a being woven together.

[05:09]

My After psychoanalytic work, I've started with holotropic breathing. And this was a big order. It was a very important turning point or a touchstone for me. And the next turning point was becoming familiar with body-related work, which is called

[06:16]

And in this particular work, intention plays a very important role. And I've discovered many similarities to this in this seminar. And this is my personal focus that I always try to maintain this intent. And the reason I'm here is because I want to take something away from this for myself. And I've noticed that if I'm successful in this, then it also reaches beyond myself.

[07:33]

And that it reaches beyond myself and reaches others. So this is my interest of participating in a field and participating in shaping it. But I don't know if this is a Zen path. I think it's probably not a Zen path. That's good. This is good. We don't want to get stuck in a rut. And it's clear that for you and for many of you, many things come in to influence your development. Someone else want to say something? Yes. Related to constellation work, there were two things that moved me in this particular seminar or in this seminar.

[08:49]

The way you described how you worked with your inner image of your parents. And this is also my experience that we have these inner images, scenes for certain topics. And my experience is that depending on the topic, my parents are in different places. And the other point is what you said about the dowsing rods.

[09:58]

So I have this idea for a concept that when we enter a space for example for a constellation That we carry a particular question, a particular request or concern with us. That we are bringing an inner seeing to the situation. and that this image fills the space in which everyone else is. And that the representatives walk through the space like dousing rods and enter into a resonance with these places of our inner scene.

[11:30]

I found it fruitful to put this kind of relationship to kind of test during these days, right, to investigate. Okay, thank you. Let me comment a little on the two things you said. What struck me about this experience of people being in the space around you was that they were not inner images, they were outer images, but held in my space. I mean, if I spoke about you, I might say, your inner images, but my own experience was they were kind of outer.

[13:14]

And you can test this for yourself with a simple question if you're sitting. You say to yourself, where is my father or mother? Are they on my left side or my right side? And often you'll find you have a feeling they're on one side and not the other. If I ask where are they inside me, then it's a whole complicated question of all kinds of influences. But their separateness as an outer image that accompanies you, But that's what I meant.

[14:37]

No, I know what you meant. I'm not really... I'm trying to clarify what I said, not what you said. And so it became, once I noticed this, that... that because they were in kind of outer space, an outer inner space, I could have a relationship to them. I remember when I came back from Japan, I found quite a lot of Zen Center students were seeing a particular woman psychic. When I came back from Japan to the Zen Center, I noticed that many people there had visited or consulted a certain medium over and over again.

[15:47]

Yeah, and so I thought, students are going to see her, I should see her too, see what's going on. It's not the kind of thing I'm ever inclined to do. It's like I never get a massage. I always think, well, this is good enough. Why should I go to a CSI? This is good enough. But she told me I had 12, I can't remember, 8, 12 guides that were around me all the time. And they took care of me. And I didn't notice them. And I didn't notice them because I always did what they said.

[16:52]

And but they have let me down occasionally. But I think this is interesting. Because we may have a sense of a wider sense of being that we carry with us that's actually at the same time somehow external. Brother David Steindl-Ross told me a joke that his father told him shortly before he died. Never could quite figure out why his father told him this. His father said, I was walking along the street and I stepped in the street and a motorcycle nearly hit me.

[18:08]

But just before the motorcycle hit me, a little voice said, watch out. So I jumped back on the sidewalk. And later in the same day, I must have been a little kind of in a daze because I nearly got hit by a bus. And again, a little boy said, So after two times I said, who said that? He said, it's me, I'm your guardian angel. And he said, well, where are you?

[19:26]

And I'm on your left shoulder. And would you get under my hand? Yes. And you always give me good advice? Where were you when I got married? So I don't know why his father told him this. But, you know, there is a... I think if I... Where were you when I got married?

[20:36]

So if I imagine Andrea sitting here, if I imagine, I mean, just from each person, I find you know a whole lot about the person. If I went to see her house, which I actually have, It wouldn't surprise me at all if by the paintings, the furniture, etc. If I was surprised, I wouldn't be surprised if she said, oh, these are not mine. They were inherited or something like that. Now, how can I have the experience over many years of knowing somebody momentarily and then seeing their house and it fits with...

[21:53]

But if Andrea then said, well, you guessed what my apartment was like. our house. If Andrea then said, Could you guess what my father was like? Was he liberal or strict? What kind of person was he? I don't know. I really wouldn't know much. But if she said, would you pretend you're my father for a little while? I'm old enough, you know. And I'd be proud if you were my daughter. And she was in the room.

[23:12]

I think I could somehow... While I couldn't think it, my body would start dousing the situation and I would begin to have some characteristics of her father. It might make you nervous. And if I went in a direction that wasn't quite right, there would be micro-movements in her body which immediately would tell me it's the wrong direction. I'm not saying that explains... everything about Constellation, but that must be a part.

[24:18]

Okay, someone else? We have to kind of not go on too much longer. You have to leave. It was so nice of you to come. Thank you. And I hope you'll consider coming again. Drive safely. And give my love to the open worship. Guni? you've asked however long time the Zen and the constellation work been woven together at least for me I can say What I don't understand is that the seminars here, they are all about

[25:44]

So what happened for me is that through these seminars I received something like a bigger container for looking at constellation work. A wider sense of getting a grasp on this kind of work. And I think this really continually influences, flows into the work. And another important point was this attention to weaving mind and body together.

[26:58]

It is a continual teaching for me and learning of noticing these micro-movements in the work, in the constellation work. And I'm receiving in these seminars descriptions that are so differentiated that this differentiation re-enters the work community. To give an example, in this particular seminar the description of dreaming mind was particularly fruitful.

[28:21]

A mind that's empty. And then to join this simultaneity of a mind in which images can be present and at the same time And at the same time there is not knowing.

[29:22]

And in previous seminars you have presented instructions that are given in Zen. you've described those in a very differentiated way. For example, just the way a bow is done. And I think you've described it for like an hour or an hour and a half. And that's a kind of subtlety in the description, where I had the feeling that our entire body is moving along with the description. So now what's entering into my daily life is the mindfulness for these subtleties.

[30:52]

But I see it much more clearly in the contact with other people and also in the constellations. Okay. Thanks a lot. Yes? Yes? I would also like to tell about a particular phenomenon that I have observed. It's... indirect and in a sense involuntary and has a connection to this topic of ritual that we are aiming at but I think it's very much connected to constellation work

[32:15]

It's an experience I continue to have in my continuing education in art therapy. where I educate others in how to use different media, where we do group work in relationship to a particular topic, where everyone is working in a particular medium or with a material, and then after that some kind of co-production happens, working together, group production. And what's fascinating is that without intending it, no matter what, a ritual emerges.

[33:36]

This ritual always emerges in a way where it emerges as its own body. And it contains more information than the sum of all the individual bringing information. And the effect is that everyone is very touched by what emerged. Yeah, okay. Oh, I... It's always in relationship to the material.

[35:01]

Because of that, I developed a certain slogan for myself. Yes. So the material is the coach. That's part of it. That's an answer to your question of who does it. Yes. Das ist eine Antwort auf deine Frage, wer tut es? Okay. So, Ravi, do you have some observations on this? Hast du noch ein paar Beobachtungen, Ravi? English or German? Whatever you feel like. I mean, I think in German and he just tells me, you know. Ja. Ja. I have thought about Michael's question about the social order and how important it was to get to know this posture of noticing that others are a part of myself

[36:16]

Not so much as a concept, but as a posture. That when I enter into contact with other people, then I'm practicing this breathing as a conspiracy. I'm locating myself in myself and the other person simultaneously. And then in that sense the space between us is not something separating but something that's connecting. And this offers a social order. The Zen practice is relevant to my therapeutic work because it changes my worldviews and my postures and it's not so much about a method or technique.

[37:49]

That they are not against you. Okay, then the instruction for kinhin is this walking meditation. Oh, you know what kinhin is. I taught you. Or no, one of the people taught you. And so the instruction is that in walking kinhin, to imagine how the ground, the floor, is not meeting the foot. The accomplishment. And I am entering therapeutic sessions with this feeling. So this combination of these postures, that the other person is a part of me and I don't know what's going to happen,

[38:55]

That opens new possibilities in this therapeutic session. Because I'm locating myself simultaneously in the moment. And I still have the richness of my discursive thinking available. These are just small examples and I think there is a little bit of a time pressure. But I can talk about this during the break over lunch more. So, the ritual moment has come. And so I surprise you by calling, let's go ahead once. No, I won't. It's an example of a ritual.

[40:12]

Well, of course, all human cultures have rituals. And animal cultures have ritual. I was just reading the other day about coyotes. There's lots of coyotes around Creston. Like baby crying in the night. Yips. Anyway, if one coyote bites the other coyote in play too severely, the one who makes the mistake supposedly actually kind of bows. And recently somewhere a young tiger tore up all of the whole bunch of trees that had just been planted and when the gamekeeper came and saw him the tiger went

[41:40]

And if you have pets, you know pets do things like this. If a coyote gets too rough in behavior, the whole group shuns him, and the coyote is pushed out of the... So this is ritual behavior. And male animals, when they fight over a woman, I mean, we men are so stupid, but anyway... We don't usually fight to the death. Only to win. Okay. But the question is really, why in Chinese society, for instance, it's rights, R-I-T-E-S.

[43:06]

Given a position in Chinese culture, almost like R-I-G-H-T-S is given in our culture. And what is it in my experience, for instance, starting to practice? Why was I faced with the the necessity to look at what ritual is. And I was somebody who was rather aggressively against ritual as a young person. My photograph is not in my high school yearbook because I refused to wear a tie in the photo.

[44:26]

And when I went to college, they said they wouldn't feed me unless I wore a tie. And I said, fine, I'll eat outside then. And finally we made a compromise. I could have a white scarf. Was there a little vanity there? Anyway. Yeah, now I'm nothing but ties. When Karin last night said, when you're moving a person, concentrate on your feet.

[45:37]

This is a ritual. Putting your hands on your shoulders is a ritual. But again, we do rituals all the time. Most of them are social performances. But we tend to do rituals as an end point in our activity. And Buddhism tends to do rituals as a source point in your activity. I'm trying to explore with you how we can think about ritual usefully in our own life and activity.

[46:48]

When Norbert some years ago told me that he has clients, if I can repeat what you said, he asked the client in some sort of circumstance to take three steps with their eyes open and then take three steps with their eyes closed. And then they're asked to dance a jig. No, he didn't see that. A jig is an Irish dance. I made that up. I'm glad I'm not your guide. You'd lose your clients. Okay. Anyway, and when Angela told me that she spent a week Seven days in a Tibetan practice of being in the dark for seven days.

[47:58]

Well, that's certainly a ritual. Now, if she decided to live her whole life in the dark, this would not be a ritual. This would be stupid. Or being blind is not a ritual. When you do seven days in the dark for a specific context, for a reason, then it's a ritual. Okay, now a lot of the life in Zen practice is ritualized. You know, we have a, we have what's called a, the word for the head monk is shuso.

[49:04]

And it also means something like toilet cleaner. And the head monk has to clean the toilets and take out the garbage and stuff, but they're also the head monk. And there's a very prescribed way of being. He was head monk once. And the abbot is sitting on his or her platform. And the person who's going to be the head monk comes in and does three bows.

[50:08]

And then they stand up. And they say, I'm not ready to be head monk. And then they start to bow three times to say, I'm not ready to be head monk. And each time they try to bow, the abbot says no. And they try to bow a second time, and the abbot says no. And then a third time. And then finally the head monk gives up. And says, these are beautiful days. Let your good health continue. I will help you with this practice.

[51:15]

And then the abbot says, you share my seat and my responsibility. meinen Platz, meinen Sitzplatz und meine Verantwortung. Please help me. Bitte hilf mir. And then I say, please, to everyone, please support our new Shusel. And what's interesting, every shiso says exactly the same thing, and each time it's tremendously moving. And I think if people made up something to say, it wouldn't feel as real or as powerful as when it's ritualized.

[52:25]

Now we eat in As many of you know, there's a way of eating together when you practice together called Oriyoki. And it's a fairly complex ritual that takes quite a few meals to learn. But so does eating at somebody's house where they give you four forks and three spoons and two knives and you don't know what the hell to do. We try to teach Sophia this stuff.

[53:32]

And she likes to eat with her fingers. And we say, don't be with your fingers. And she says, don't tell me what to do with my fingers. It's kind of great. She's really, these are my fingers. You do what you want with your fingers. She's a lot like I was. Okay. So the Oryoki practice. We have these bowls all wrapped up. And they're originally bowls for tying to your chest when you're walking from place to place. Like they're camping bowls.

[54:33]

They really are. And you open them up. And the first one has no base. Because it represents Buddha's skull. So you have to put another little flat bow underneath it, otherwise it falls over. And it's a ritual to think of this as Buddha's skull and you're eating to keep yourself alive for a while out of his skull. And all the bowls are nested together and you put them up. And then you have your utensils in a bag.

[55:35]

And you take them out in relationship to your spine. And you put them down. And then... When you're served, these bowls, once you've opened the bowls, you're trapped. You can't get up easily and you're stuck behind the bowls. So somebody has to serve you. And if you're sitting up on the platform in the zendo and you suddenly have to pee, it's a terrible decision.

[56:36]

You can't get out of there. She's laughing. That's great. Okay. So then somebody has to serve you and you hold your bowl out and you serve. When you bring the bowl back, you bring it into the sphere of your body and put it down. And where you hold the bowls and so forth. It's all related to your chakras. So when you're doing the bowls, doing the eating, you're articulating, enacting,

[57:39]

You're enacting a relationship to the Buddha. And you're articulating the chakras. Not by some inner Kundalini practice. but relating to the external world through the chakras. So it's actually a process, really, of weaving mind and body together. And weaving that relationship together with the person that serves you. And it's quite detailed in how it's articulated. And you have a little, if you have the traditional bowls, you have a little lacquered piece of paper as a table. And it folds up, sits on top of the bowls.

[59:22]

But it's made a little too small for the bowls. So they don't quite fit. And And if you're not really careful, you can have an accident. So they are designed to be... You have to be alert or you have a mess. So the whole thing is designed to... relate you to others, relate you to your body, and relate you to your own mindfulness and attention.

[60:31]

And strangely enough, it makes the most boring food taste good. I mean, if you eat the same food outside of an Oryoki meal, geez, maybe we get salted. Somehow the kind of attention this develops and this feeling of being in a field with others, it becomes a pleasure just to be alive and eat. And people, once you get the hang of it, lots of people really like eating Oryoki. So here we see ritual as a way of articulating relationships with others and articulating your mind-body relationship.

[61:59]

Okay. So what is one of the centers of ritual behavior in Buddhism. You know, when you want to have a cup of coffee in the morning, as well as you want a cup of coffee, it's also a ritual. And if for some reason you don't get the cup of coffee and you have one later, You now have a cup of coffee, but you still kind of miss the ritual.

[63:05]

It didn't feel right. You didn't get up on the right side of the bed. So rituals are part of our life. What's the difference in Buddhism? Again, I think rituals are considered to be scenes. like a seam and clothes. It's how you sew things together. It's something like that. It's also how you, again, initiate an activity. Now if everything is an activity, if the self is an activity, if who is doing this is an activity, then

[64:10]

the activity becomes part of who is doing it. And the more you feel the activity is part of who's doing it, And we see self as a function and not an entity. Then self sort of becomes a kind of negotiator or editor. It's a part of a process of initiating certain decisions. But once you're in the situation, you let the situation do most of the work. You don't think you're doing it so much, you think you're letting the situation do it.

[65:34]

And the more you consciously have this feeling, the more self is an aggrandizing dynamic. The more self is an aggrandizing dynamic. Grandizing is to bring and make your own, to possess. For, you know, I'm wearing this, right? And when I give a lecture in a more traditional setting, I actually bow three times to the Buddha or something. And then I sit down. And the whole process and why I wear this is because this is not... It's me speaking, but I'm speaking within a tradition.

[66:47]

What I'm saying belongs to the tradition and belongs to you. So when I wear this, it's a kind of way of disappearing. So I mean that's to say a little bit about a rather different dynamic of self as function than self as entity. And the more you have this feeling the less you ask who's doing it. The situation is doing it.

[67:53]

But as I always give the example of, you know, we say, it rains. And I tell the sort of jokey story of asking my daughter, what's the weather like? And she says, it's raining. Of course, I know it already. And so I say, would you go outside and find it? And she says, Dad, don't be so zen. But we say, it rains as if somebody's doing the rain, and the whole situation is doing the rain. Rain is raining. Rain is raining. And the more you feel the whole situation is doing the rain, doing the living, you develop a different kind of self.

[69:05]

And the most simple thing I can say about this social place Is everyone, I mean all Buddhist cultures, assume you have to learn how to have a social identity within the context of your society. And Buddhism would say it's essential to see it as a role, not an identity. A role which you learn the skills of. And to your social role, you add the attitude of a bodhisattva. Now how you sneak the bodhisattva into your consulting work, I leave up to you, but I bet you could do it.

[70:31]

Okay. So the basic concept in, as I said, this is a ritual in Buddhism is rooted in a particular worldview. Okay. So the worldview of Buddhism is that there's four ingredients.

[71:33]

Excuse me, I've got a charley horse. What do you call it in German? A muscle that's cramped? Charlie horse, we call it. I don't know why. I have to find out. Google will know. Anyway, so the four ingredients are a mind, body, situation, and emptiness. And emptiness. And since we don't in Buddhism and in yoga culture... And since in Buddhism and yogic culture we don't assume that we're created or there's a creator or we're natural.

[72:38]

Everything in Buddhism is artificial. or this artifice is made by art. So you're creating yourself. At each moment you're creating yourself. Well, you can't create yourself unless you have some idea of what the ingredients are. You're a cook, you need to know your ingredients. So your ingredients in Buddhism are, the basic ingredients are mind, body, situation and emptiness. And you pause for these four things to come together.

[73:39]

And you act to initiate them. And in a body culture, the body is always acting. when we're seeing the world as entities not seeing the world as entities but we see the world as activities everything is an activity as I say the tree is an activity and I don't have time now but if you really over the rest of your lifetime, see trees as activities. And you embalm that, no, no, I mean incubate that. I'm sorry, couldn't receive it.

[74:54]

Lots flows from that. Okay, so you're viewing things as activities. The body is an activity. The mind is an activity. The situation is an activity. How do you locate yourself in that? You locate yourself by acts. I often say, when you come into a room, step into the room and feel the room. Don't think the room. Feel it and then walk into it with whatever thinking you want.

[76:04]

That's an invisible ritual act. At every entrance, to perform an invisible ritual of a mental posture, And if you don't make it a kind of invisible ritual, you just are always in your mind stream. How to step out. So in this sense, The pause is a ritual. In diesem Sinne ist das Pausieren ein Ritual. Okay, so the basic... What?

[77:15]

The basic relationship we have to things is to, the first relationship is to accept. The second relationship is to ask, what is it? And the third relationship is no harm. And the dynamic of no harm is to feel you belong, to feel you belong in the world, things belong in and with you, and then you don't harm them. So this all flows from seeing the world as activity.

[78:20]

And that you're making the world and yourself at each moment. How can you make yourself and the world at each moment without... initiating it. That initiation is called a ritual, right? I mean, we can call it that. I don't think of it as ritual. I don't think of it as ritual. Exactly. What I think of it as is... acting in the world as it exists. So if my basic relationship to the world is acceptance, what is it? And no harm. I have to initiate that in each moment, which requires a kind of pause.

[79:48]

So for a yogic practitioner, in each moment there's an invisible pause. And also I've said it's a kind of spatial pause, it's not a temporal pause. It's a pause in time, but it's a pause which feels spatial, creates space. So something appears, and you accept it. That actually takes a kind of micro moment. And then you say, what is it? And there it takes some practice till you can really feel what is it before you name it. And if you can feel this moment before it becomes thinking and naming, it's also a kind of emptiness.

[81:02]

So you're... letting things appear and you're deciding you're going to have a certain relationship to that appearance it's in that relationship which is happening at each moment you have the acceptance of whatever it is, the openness of what is it, and your deep acceptance decision not to harm anything. So there's a kind of invisible pause in each moment. Now, we can also look at it as the sort of classic ritual.

[82:13]

It's a gathering, an arranging, and a sharing. And you can understand the orgy ritual ceremony in that way. But we have this seminar as a kind of ritual. We gather. We arrange ourselves in a certain way. And that arrangement can also be to make sacred. To make sacred. The arrangement can be to make sacred. Sacred means in English dedicated to a single purpose.

[83:23]

So we arrange We gather, we arrange, make sacred. Yeah, have a purpose. And within that purpose we share. So if you look at rituals in Buddhism, they happen along these lines. And these are all mental postures or attitudes, mind-body attitudes, which take a moment to, a micro-moment to, And just to think it is not, in a yogic culture, just to think it is not enough.

[84:54]

Unless it's an embodied thought, you feel in your breath, you feel in your body. So you're going from moment to moment as an embodied moment. An embodied moment from moment to moment gives you a whole different relationship to the world as nourishment, health, etc. And within that embodied moment, there's a certain content. And the content is emphasized more or less depending on the situation and the particular, you know, etc. The content is emphasized more or less depending on the situation. But if your whole life can flash before you in a moment in the middle of a crisis, a few of these attitudes can all be present without any problem.

[86:04]

So in this spatial pause, In this embodied moment, what's embodied is mind and body. The situation you're in, and the fact that it's all temporary, empty, interrelated, etc. So at each moment there's this kind of ritual of mind and body woven together within the situation in a context of emptiness. at each moment there's a feeling of mind and body woven together within a situation in a context of emptiness.

[87:04]

And the feeling is to accept to accept without first of all what is it? Yeah. and to intend to do no harm. And to know, as Dogen says, to complete that which appears. Which is a kind of gathering, arranging, and sharing. So that, I would say, is the dynamic of ritual in yogic Buddhist practice.

[88:05]

Okay? Okay? I hope I kept my promise. Frank? Was it okay? He's the one who asked me this. Okay. So let's, I mean, we have to go to lunch and heat our food and blah, blah, blah, but let's have at least a bell ring. So as I said, the Budapest group sangha in Budapest went through the ritual process of making this, finding the cloth, cutting it into pieces,

[89:46]

sewing it together with individual threads in a particular way. And having a little chant, you say, on each stitch. And then they gave it to me. as a way to give me permission to teach in their sangha. So it's an enactment of a whole situation. which we all do in many ways, getting married and so forth.

[91:08]

The difference is how it's understood as a fundamental act within the flow of activity. It's to recognize that everything's an activity, and what we do are acts within activity. And some of those acts appear as rituals to emphasize sharing, like Krishna and I both bow when we sit down on the cushion. Locating ourselves in this location. But most of them are invisible acts.

[92:14]

Or visible only to resonant minds and bodies. And those resonant acts visible only to the body which knows more than the mind. I would think that in constellation work the background of the visible rituals, putting your hands on the shoulders and concentrating on the feet and things like that, are a visible ritual to make us aware of the subtle, invisible resonances that are occurring all the time.

[93:31]

These are visible rituals that allow us to become aware of these invisible resonances that are constantly occurring. So we can develop rituals in the context of knowing that every moment, each moment, is an activity.

[94:01]

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