It would make it easier for me to continue if we, soon or after the break, we have small groups together and some discussion in your own language. But let me just say a few things about what we've been discussing so far. You know, I think for most of us we take now, by this time, take for granted that the self is some kind of, not an entity, but some kind of functioning. But I don't think we take it so much as so obvious that the present itself is an operant.

[01:07]

I mean I think we can think of the present and the self as sort of companions. Maybe we could say if I sound a little dramatic the present either dances with the The present either dances with the self or dances with the Buddha. Or maybe, you know, there's other partners for this dance. But the present... the manifold aggregate present, is always arriving.

[02:40]

And when it's just arriving and it's passively arising, it's called, in Buddhism, karmic or samsaric consciousness. Early Buddhism had the idea that, you know, self and the present were a kind of river bed. Or a river and a riverbed. The water falls somewhere and starts making a ditch, a gully. And the water making the gully, then the water follows the gully. So the gully is made by the water and the gully makes the water, makes the course of the water.

[03:56]

Yeah, we call it a feedback loop or something like that. And that our actions, especially our intentional actions, form this riverbed. And the word in early Buddhism for a person is something like continuum. Yeah, so mental and mental continuum. And the mental in the larger sense, so including body. Yeah, and this continuum, if you have this image of it being a... Riverbed, flowing in a riverbed, is primarily formed by our actions, as I said, particularly intentional actions.

[05:27]

Intentional actions have the most formative influence on the shape of the riverbed. So it's sort of like at each moment of consciousness consciousness has arrived in this riverbed almost entirely influenced by your previous actions. So that's called samsaric or karmic consciousness. And then when you add to that cognition, And it's in early Buddhism treated as something like passive cognition.

[06:40]

You're just acting in the terms of your karma, in the terms of your habits, in the terms of your culture. im Sinne oder im Rahmenwerk deiner Kultur, deiner Begrifflichkeiten und deines Karmas. It's not an active cognition, it's a kind of passive cognition, but it's a cognition which reinforces and actualizes your karma. Es ist keine aktive Kognition, es ist eine passive Kognition, die aber dein Karma verstärkt und verwirklicht. Now as the image gets more complex in later Buddhism, it doesn't change the basic idea that consciousness as it arrives is mostly karmic consciousness. So we can say the experience of the present is something like the present is arriving and it's arriving and being released.

[08:09]

And it's you're the, in this image, you are the present. And the way the present is is determined by your karma. Of course there's accidents. I mean, there's happenstance. There's things that are predictable. And one of the things that's not predictable. It's of course things that happen in your life, changes of mind, maybe you start practicing, you do meditation. Meditation and mindfulness enter you into this stream in a different way.

[09:10]

It's kind of interesting that the wake of a boat, a boat is going along and it leaves a wake. What do you call it in German? It's behind the boat. It's not where the boat is going. But it's your future. In other words, the way you live your life in the present creates turbulence or a wake. And then you live in that wake. It's like you're on the boat and you decide, I guess I'll go in the future, so you dive off the back of the boat.

[10:24]

Because you're diving into all the effects of your actions and what you've done. So it's just a funny idea that the wake of the boat is your future. The main way one affects the present and the received consciousness is to bring attention into the situate immediacy.

[11:46]

Now, it doesn't really work to do this to say, God, I've got all these problems, etc. I'm just going to concentrate on the leaves along the path. Well, that does help sometimes. As if you're in a bad state of mind, as I've said, you wash the dishes. Somehow it feels good just to wash the dishes. Do the ironing, you know. But it's more if you get in the habit of bringing attention to immediacy. And I give you these phrases like I did in the last seminar, just this.

[13:02]

And it's, you know, it sounds, as I said last weekend, it sounds rather zenny. And if you look at it that way, oh yes, it brings you into the nows. But what it actually does is get in between the mem sign and the percept. It keeps returning you to a mind we could call more like percept only. Now, percept only mind carries mem signs or anticipates mem signs but it doesn't carry karma in the usual way.

[14:05]

So a phrase I've discovered, I never used it in the United States, but started using it in Europe, It's almost the most common phrase I suggest that people use now. Which is to pause for the particular. So this not only brings you into immediacy brings your attention out of thoughts into percepts. But it also begins to make distinct dharmas. Yeah, I mean, it makes the present moment Now, again, if you develop the habit... Now, this is not to... It's not done...

[15:48]

as a remedy. It's just done because it's another way of being in the present. Of swimming or floating in the present. And as you begin to notice dharmas, Notice momentariness. Notice it as the usual content of your experience. It gives you a certain kind of freedom. It actually is freeing you from the karma of the riverbed. Yeah.

[17:03]

Now, to go back to Memsigns, and this idea of Memsigns, that everything that's not this, that everything that's not this object, this percept, is memory. Okay. And so, as memory, it's associations. Mem signs are associations. And they carry the whole of stored experience. And different thoughts if your sense of self and continuity is carried in thoughts then the thoughts are calling forth all of that

[18:22]

stored experience that occurred through thoughts was stored as concepts as thoughts. And it's all twisted into your narratives. The narratives you live publicly, the narrative you want everyone to understand you through, your secret narratives and narratives that you don't even know anything about sometimes and again going back to constellation work it's interesting that it often brings up narratives that you can see in the constellation but are not known to the client at least that's what I've seen

[19:45]

Now, there's a very simple, catalytic, transformative way to change this flow of the past through thoughts into your present. It's just simply to bring attention to immediate percepts. To the percepts as much as possible without the mem signs gluing themselves on. And when you do that, you start creating pools of awareness within consciousness.

[20:47]

Pools of non-dual awareness within the lake of consciousness. And this changes the flow of the past into the present. And your mind begins to establish itself not so much in samsaric consciousness. In a way you're educating consciousness through the through immediacy.

[21:57]

Now what I'm getting at is that if you can have this attitude And you can do something like make a moment an ever-present habit to bring attention to the particular. It just becomes the habit you inhabit. And, you know, you do it a little, you know, and you do it a little more, and pretty soon it's, you know, what you're doing most of the time.

[23:06]

It changes the way you're constituted. Das verändert die Art und Weise, wie du zusammengesetzt bist. When you understand the present as a manifold aggregate. Wenn du die Gegenwart als ein mannigfaltiges Aggregat verstehst. That you're resembling, you're generating. If you change the way it's generated, so it's not generated through karmic regurgitation. Regurgitation? Something like repetition? No, it's like when a cow brings its food back up to re-chew it.

[24:13]

Oh, okay. To re... Yeah. You... you begin to create your future afresh the way a child creates their future afresh. And it also, because you're no longer a child, It calls forth memories that aren't called forth in the usual way.

[25:23]

It's like I used the other day, it's not a simple continuity, it's a continuity with hyperlinks. It's like your accumulated history is there. A kind of stream flowing in your narrative self. But some things are highlighted in blue. And when you click on them, hey, it goes off to a hypertext. Another text, a complete story you've forgotten about. So more and more if you are identifying yourself through the assembling present you not only are in the present in its uniqueness, you call forth a much more complex

[26:36]

stored experience than you would otherwise. And this sense of, this sense of the, way in which stored experience can be present in the present is closer to how the Yogacara developed the Alaya Vijnana. Maybe that's enough. I just wanted to say a few things I'm sorry.

[28:02]

Okay, so maybe now we could have, unless you have something you want to talk about. Yes? Oh, you just... I thought you were... Not just shooing a fly away. Should we just take a break or does someone want to speak about something? Okay, I guess it's a break. Oh, of course, I'm sorry. I didn't understand the meaning of the name. Throughout those last days I dealt with my understanding of myself and I wanted to check in whether I have a good understanding.

[29:06]

to associate this term with therapeutic activity. And what was important to me was to connect this term to the therapeutic. He did not think about himself, but memscience. I wanted to connect that term to my therapeutic work. And I came up with this image that there's something like a continuum of MemScience for the therapist as well as for the client. And that the poles are that on the one end there are supportive and what's the word?

[30:39]

Helpful, okay. Helpful MemScience. And on the other hand, there are afflicting and stressful MemScience. Also, die Befindlichkeit des Klientens, aber auch des Therapeuten, positiv oder negativ beeinflussen können. Stimmung, geht auch Stimmung? That can... Sensitivity is not a state of mind, vielleicht am ehesten. That can influence the state of mind of the client either positively or negatively. Und ich denke, dass diese beiden Pole... And I think that these two poles are an essential part in therapy, which means that in therapy you're supposed to reinforce and support the helpful mem signs.

[32:02]

And that those stressful mem signs you'd have to change or look at from a different perspective or deconstruct. That's the picture. And then the idea came to me, what our behavior patterns are, whether that is also my being, So that was this image that came up, and then I also had the question what our behavioral patterns are, whether they might also be some kind of mem signs, maybe very complex mem signs. Okay.

[33:22]

Since you're going to have a discussion, and that's rather complex what you brought up, so maybe I'll respond to it. I think to think about this, we ought to make a distinction between mem signs and associations. A mem sign is just the simplest thing that you know this is a bell. That's for the sake of trying to make this clear. Say that as soon as I say it's my bell, that's no longer a mem sign. That's an association. It's an association, it's mine or I like it or whatever. So most of what you're speaking about are associations. Okay, so where do mem signs come in then in this? First of all, it's an idea that the present without... As I said, you couldn't function in the present without MemScience.

[34:42]

Mm-hmm. As I said, if I walked through the room, I wouldn't know the difference between a leg or foot and a cushion. So I'd step on the foot instead of the cushion or something. Okay. So then a mem sign you can think of when it's necessary for us to function that way. but noting that every percept in most circumstances is accompanied by associations accompanied by memory it just makes extremely clear how the past is totally present in the present.

[36:08]

Okay, so that's just good to know. All right. Second, making this distinction of a mem sign, which is more technically called the classification of a percept, It allows you to practice at the point, at the junction. It allows you to feel the difference between a percept, when you emphasize percept more or memsign more. Now, it's not a question really in our practical life of eliminating men signs. And from what I've read, that does seem to occur in some brain damaged people. They perceive everything completely normally, but there's no meaning, they can't make any sense of anything.

[37:30]

Okay. So it's really a question of whether you emphasize one side or the other side more. So I can feel a state of mind where I mostly just know the percepts here and don't have much association at all. And to have that, and what happens when you have that emphasis you think less. Because mem signs call for thinking.

[38:38]

So you can begin to see when something is... In other words, a mem sign can take over the percept, or the percept can push the mem sign aside. So that's probably enough for the seminar. So we can go home. In other words, if you get that, at least from a Buddhist point of view, you've gotten a lot. Now, I see two hands at least. Amazing, I couldn't make one of those. Look at him, he's unbelievable.

[39:49]

This thing just sits there and this one walks. Excuse me, I'm pausing for the particular. Okay. If I were a constellation periodist, I would see if I could get a feeling for this percept-only mind. And sort of putting them aside. And then I would see if I bring that mind into forming a constellation, what happens. And then sometimes at some point I'd take the little dam away and let the mem signs flow in. And to see what point you want to do that. Okay. Now another way to look at this distinction between percept and mem sign.

[41:12]

You have a percept, a sound, whatever, smell, taste. And either instantly or moment to moment with a tiny gap, a mem sign appears. And that sign is also a little tube. A little tiny tube. And it goes right down into your stored experience. Now usually, Your actions, you know, you've got these big tubes of stored experience that flow up and you're like, you know, overflowing toilets. It happened recently at our... log house in Crestone.

[42:29]

Did you know that? The whole bathtub filled with shit in about three seconds. And it took us about Six weeks to unfreeze the pipes and start functioning again. But, you know, it's not just excrement that flows up through the pipes. All kinds of things flows up through the pipes. But the usual pipes are there and there are usual associations. Sometimes the pipes are so big and the percept is so little. The percepts are kind of overwhelmed.

[43:43]

I'm just a little sound. I didn't mean to be a comedian. Anyway, this is serious business. This is serious business here. But the fact that every percept carries this little tube into stored experience, The more attention is brought... I mean, I'm saying this rather mechanically, but it's the only way language allows me to speak about it.

[44:45]

The more that your attention is carried by percepts, you activate these little tubes Newly and differently. And the present which is non-repeatable. And each moment is unique. You not only enter into the uniqueness and freshness of each moment. But you activate your past in a way that's unique and refreshing. Okay. It's startling to me that such a small change in emphasis and in attention can be so transformative.

[45:49]

But what else could be transformative? What are the main ingredients of your life? Yeah, other than you're alive. It's the present moment and attention. That's the ingredient. That's all you've got. And this idea of MemScience gives you a chance to alter how you bring attention to the assembling present. the assemblage of the present, the men signs, as a concept and a teaching, and a performative teaching, in other words, you can perform it, allows you to

[47:15]

Transform, change, alter how you bring attention to your own mind, body and circumstance. If you change your habits, you change how you inhabit the world. Okay, now, along the same line, I would say one more thing, sort of. Intersubjective mind. Something like that. I think that if when you meet someone, your emphasis is, I don't know, I feel a little reluctant to say this because again it sounds too mechanical.

[48:34]

If when you meet somebody, your initial mind, we all, one of the yogic skills is to develop an initial mind. That is what precipitates appearance. Okay, when a person appears, you just are there with the person perceptually. I said this in another way this morning. You feel just there with... You know, an animal, a smell, a live being.

[49:40]

Like I told you the story of when I found myself in a herd of deer in the dark. The deer, as she knows, they usually, as soon as you come out of the zendo or something, they all start bounding away. If you get too close to them, they're pretty tame, but if you get too close to them, they... But I find if you become an animal, you're just in a perceptual realm, they don't get disturbed when you come up close to them. The stories of Christian saints and animals and Zen teachers who live in a cave and the animals, it's probably true.

[50:50]

And I'm saying this because I'm relating this to constellation practice and my imagination of it. My basic idea is If you can create as perceptual a realm as possible, with the people forming the, persons forming the constellation, you're trying to be in a percept-only realm. then at the moment you create a configuration that holds, then you can allow memory to flow up through the situation. That's how I think of it. I just wanted to try to get the terms to bring them together to one word.

[52:29]

Maybe we could say that memsign means to label or to name, and association means to judge. Well, I would say associations are just connections. Maybe the Mem sign is a name and the connection is a word. It calls for sentences. Something like that. Hiltu? I had a beat and it was a Impressionistic is the name. And when I share my experience with you, I am very close to the medium, I only see the form.

[53:54]

And then I am completely in my perceptions. And when I step back further, I see a form. And this metaphor came to me at Bamsals. I used to have, or I have an image where I have an impressionist painting. And what used to happen is that when I step up very close to the painting, I would just see the colors. And when I step back, I would see shapes and forms. And that's an association that came to me in relation to MemScience. It's like that. That's a good image. Okay. And also perhaps it's not so bad. I thought it's a bad habit of mine. If I meet people and I'm introduced to them and hear the name, I can't remember it. Because I'm so busy with something else that I can't remember the name.

[54:58]

Or I don't even get it sometimes. You'd make a terrible politician. You'll have to remember names if you're... Anyway, yeah, I understand that. I have the same problem. It's not a bad habit. Okay. Okay.

[55:14]

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