I like this notion of aggressive mindfulness or active mindfulness. And what I like, and this is also my question, is it seems to me that there is kind of intention, intent, or choice involved in that. Yes. Yes. just to make a brief comment, is a word that Dogen likes a lot, is akiramu.

[01:03]

And it means... Three things at once. To discern or notice and to relinquish, to let go of or to choose. And third, to accept. And the word accept I like because it comes from Greek, which means like to put your oar in the water and pull yourself forward. So accept isn't just passive. When you accept something, it moves you forward. So Dogen says at each moment you're noticing, deciding what to let go of and what to emphasize.

[02:19]

And of course he I've said often, a very important phrase for him is to complete that which appears. Okay. Good. Yes. Yes. You mentioned that in constellation work when you touch somebody from behind that actually that is kind of adding mem signs.

[03:39]

Yes, that's what I said. That confuses me, it's confusing for me. So the first reason for my confusion is that as I understand maimed sounds, it's something which I'm adding, it's not something which can be added from outside. And second, if it is brought in from outside, then I would assume, and the utmost is that it could be by language, unspoken. So if I am the person who is touched, in the sense of being touched, nevertheless I have still the choice whether it's a perception or a mensae.

[05:21]

Which part of me is this? If language is used, I don't have this choice. That's my confusion. Okay, thanks for your confusion. That's useful in trying to sort... Again, because, as I said, these are very simple ideas. but because they're not the usual ideas, simple and complex, from which we function. It takes repeated encounters with them and refinement before they... become part of how we see things.

[06:25]

You can think of a mem sign as a tea cozy. You put a tea cozy on everything you look at. Or you put a kind of Frankenstein mask or whatever you want. Of course, the teapot itself is a tea cozy. And the way in which it's a teapot, English or Austrian or... A reaction to it, that's all a tea cozy, sort of. Now, Eric, from the time he was born, has been touched in various ways.

[07:27]

So if I put my hand on him, how I put my hand on him, you know, is... A mem sign. It communicates tremendous to him right away. And I would say that because we, when we, if you're a constellation therapist, put your hands on somebody, or we do it in the zendo, we do it from the back. At least almost always, it seems to me, it's from the back. Same is true in the Zendo when we straighten postures. So I would say that your

[08:51]

bringing a men's sign to the person, that's how I think it, and how you feel as you're putting your hands on the person. And you're doing it in the, let me use the metaphor, you're doing it in the dark. Because one of the ingredients of the present is consciousness, and let's call it light. And another ingredient of the present is darkness. There's much that flows in the present that flows in the dark. So when you're doing a constellation, in my imagination, what you're doing is calling forth the darkness of the present.

[10:19]

Calling forth the past in the darkness of the present. So far does that make Help with your confusion at all. Well, let's hope there's some progress by Sunday. Okay. I mean, any object I look at, let's take my bell. Whether I see it or feel it, it's... perception.

[11:29]

I know it's a bell, not a teacup, because of a mem sign. That's coming from outside. So if I touch him, that's coming from outside. Outside, inside, it's all the same. Now just to add a little Buddhist practice here, for example. There's a teaching called the four Brahma-Viharas. It means the four divine states of being or something like that. And the idea is that you radiate Loving kindness.

[12:41]

Unlimited friendliness. Sometimes it's called the four unlimiteds. And you radiate compassion. Equanimity. And what's the fourth? you will come to me. And the sense of that is feel that on every action. So if I go to somebody's door, for instance, and there's a door knocker, this sounds kind of crazy, but anyway, you don't just go knock, knock, I'm the fuller brush man, or

[13:47]

UPS or something. You kind of hit it as if you were reaching into the house. And it feels you can tell who's at the door. So if I have a feeling of loving kindness, when I put my hand on Eric, he'll like it better probably. So if I know that this is for him a percept and if I know it's inevitably almost inevitably accompanied by a mem sign, then I can make a decision what mem sign accompanies the person.

[15:08]

And the teaching of the Four Brahma Viharas is that you On every action, as it's possible, you accompany it by one of these four mental signs. Oh yeah, the fourth is empathetic joy. Which is in some ways the most interesting. Because it means you take joy in the other person's being, happiness, aliveness. Because it means you take joy And it's sort of in contrast to our habit of hopefully taking joy in ourselves and being a little competitive with others.

[16:27]

So I take empathetic joy in all of this marvelous language that can appear from his mouth and not from mine. These many words that come from his mouth and not from mine. That's a dear idea. expect pine needles to come out of his mouth, because that's what comes out of my mouth, but palm leaves come out of his mouth. Yeah, okay, good.

[17:52]

I love the way he translates okay into good. Yes, Michael. I am still occupied with the question whether this memsign, which you are adding by touching his shoulder, then also the same memsign in the court, the foreword, the backword. whether this calls for the same name sign as ,, whether it has the same quality. No, of course. I don't know. But it's very clear that it's different if I do it hard or I do it soft.

[19:07]

And I remember last year when I was translating, every now and then I'd give him a slap because I liked to do that. He didn't want to offend. But I remember very clearly last year when I always slapped him on the shoulder. He didn't want that. That's called for the name sign in me, which made me laugh. Yeah. I mean, if you've been abused as a child, you know, then you can't, you know, etc. But my own opinion is that the thoroughness of your intention is communicated a lot to the other person.

[20:30]

And even with an abused child, with enough time, some days, the child might begin to accept that the way you're putting your hand on his shoulder is different. Aber sogar bei einem misshandelten Kind wird es so sein, dass es nach ein paar Tagen das annehmen kann oder anders fühlen kann, wenn du seine Schulter berührst. Yes. As I understood it, and which makes sense for me, this notion of in the dark. So that you are somehow, you don't know quite what you do, You don't know exactly what you are doing, but somehow you make yourself as empty as possible and to help to appear what appears.

[21:35]

So that you try to make yourself as empty as possible and thereby help to make what appears or can appear. So this notion of not knowing and dark and also let's see what happens seems to be for me the key. And also this of surprise. I mean that's what is... My experience of the few constellations I did was it's always somehow surprising what's happening as a participant. Also this notion of being in the dark, surprise, also amazed. [...]

[22:37]

Also this notion of being in the dark, surprise, also amazed. You know, we feel safer in the light. If there's a strange noise at night and you know, we'd like to turn the light on or have a flashlight or something, we just feel better. I was mentioning to Eric the other day when he was driving me here, in Belgium, in Brussels, there's this huge forest I don't remember exactly, but inside the city or outside the city, I went for a walk in this big forest, and there was a rather large group of wild boars right near me going... I remember wishing I had a flashlight.

[23:52]

But can we find a flashlight to illuminate the darkness that's in the present? Or can we find some kind of flashlight that we can look back into the past with? Now your car lights illuminate where you're going, but not into tomorrow. Now, you know, again, my sense of, say, psychoanalysis is you're looking for in the past for something that illuminates the present.

[25:21]

Maybe you're trying to find evidence in the past or the present which illuminates or you can analyze and illuminates the present, or you can analyze a narrative. Now, but maybe it doesn't illuminate much. Maybe it just, you know, you can... Yeah, I don't want to get... Yeah, but maybe if you take... Sometimes I think of constellation work. It's something like a mirror. And you sort of put this mirror together in the present.

[26:26]

It's like when you shine attention on the mirror, it reflects light into the past. Or maybe... Maybe it's like a window. And when the group of people get just right, suddenly a window appears between them or among them. They don't know quite how they're making the window, but at some point they feel a window has come in place. And if you cock your head the right way, you can sort of see through the window into the past.

[27:37]

And maybe you can't see everything. Maybe it only illuminates a corner. But again, in my imagination of constellation work, what strikes me is sometimes what's illuminated in the past is brought in an operative way into the darkness of the present. What really hits me about the exhibition work is how a part of this past brings the present to work. Now my sense of the constituents of the present of course include

[28:48]

what I call the structure of the present, or excuse me, of course include consciousness, and consciousness then the ingredients The consciousness brings to it is the job or structure consciousness. Which I've mentioned many times. Which is to make the world predictable. cognizable chronological and coherent so consciousness has a certain job to do in the present but we know in many ways the present is not entirely conscious.

[30:08]

So what's also present in the present? I would say that there are The present also has the pairings of pairings, not pairings like that, but pairings like two birds or a couple. The present includes the pairings of the implicit pairs. And the explicit. And it includes the pairings of the conscious and the unconscious. We all know there's unconscious factors in this situation and conscious factors. And there's things that are explicit, things that are implicit.

[31:13]

I would like to say is an ingredient of the present is the conscious and the non-conscious. Now, the non-conscious is pretty much what I mean by the dark. Okay. Now, not developing that any further at this point. One of the things that allows us to make sense of the world are narratives, are stories. Maybe I should at this point go back to Zen, Zazen and Zen experience.

[32:38]

I said in the last seminar, I've done three seminars. This is the third seminar I've done in the last little bit. In the beginning of May, I did a seminar in Boulder on memory. And then I did a seminar last weekend here on... I had the title, which people say... Now, in order to tell you again how important you are, both those two seminars I thought of, how are they going to flow into this seminar? So anyway, last weekend I spoke about how the first, I would say, two to four years

[33:57]

Zazen is if you do regular Zazen it's primarily about memory. Sometimes traditionally it would be called going through your past lives. But for me it means going through. the past lives of your present life. Maybe we can say It's like a card game or something. Let's try some various metaphors. Imagine your life is a deck of cards. You've been dealt some of the cards in the past. And in the present you're dealt Another hand.

[35:27]

And in the future there still will be cards you're not yet dealt. And so you look at the deck you have it's interesting one of the words for it The hand you have is called a meld in English. M-E-L-D. M-E-L-D. M-E-L-D. Yes. And it's a combination probably of melt and to weld. Okay. M-E-L-D. And it's also used to just merge things. It's a meld of two things, ten things.

[36:33]

So I think, and I'm not a card player, but I think when you have all your cards for the end of the game, that's called a meld. These are the cards I have. Okay, so what do you experience in meditation during the first couple of years or so? start meditation and you have this deck, the deck, the hand that's, do you say hand in German? Your hand of cards? We say the leaf. This is the splatter, right? Yeah, of the hand. Okay. You have a certain hand of cards, you went to college or you didn't and you, you know, have, etc.

[37:39]

No, no, no. Those are my cards. And you do zazen and you find out actually you've been dealt a number of hands in the past that you haven't, that you've forgotten. And you see there's even the hand of the... leaf or hand of the present, there's some cards missing and they're back there in the past. Yeah, and you sit down and in your imagination you're doing zazen and actually you're find yourself in a game of cards. And your grandfather is sitting across the table from you. And he's got a different hand. And then he sort of disappears, he turns into your mother.

[38:42]

And your mother now has the same hand your grandfather had. And then your grandfather suddenly is sitting beside you on this side of the table. And he's playing your hand against your mother. Well, you go through permutations like this for two or three years, it's very much like a constellation. And you become more and more familiar with the cards in your deck. And who gave you which card? So somehow, you find yourself engaged in the complexity of memory that could have led to several presences.

[40:18]

Now, always in In all of what I will be saying, probably anyway, during these four days, is if we can illuminate the past, What if we lived the past more thoroughly, if at the time of the past, we lived it thoroughly and consciously? And then implied in that question is, Can you live the present thoroughly and consciously in a way that leads to a different future?

[41:34]

No, I suppose in all psychotherapies some such questions are always present. Now, I imagine then, how do we live in the present with our lights on? Awake. Buddha is one who's awake. So how do we live in the present with our lights on? Then I imagine, well, If you live in the, why didn't we have our lights on in the past? Well, I think a lot of family life is, the condition for family life is turn the lights off.

[42:36]

Everyone's bumping around in the dark. And nobody knows exactly what the narratives are. And some of the narratives are hidden. And what it seems to me, both meditation and consolation work in different ways though, bring the hidden narratives sometimes into the present. As I've said, one of the practices that's similar to this, in meditation you... these early stages, you imagine the space around you populated with people during Zaza.

[43:50]

And one of the most interesting things is There's the people have a particular location around you. Say if your father's on your right, Your mother's not there. She might be on the left. And if you try to shift it, okay, mom, you go over there and pop over there. They don't. They snap back into their place. You can try to move them, but they have a place. And you can start a dialogue. Why the hell are you over there, mother? Why are you not settling? And if you work at this, I found when I did it, it was quite scary at first.

[45:03]

But after a while the space clears up and the figures in this, who are friends and relatives and so forth, can begin to move freely in space. Well, it seems to me that this experience in meditation, which is a practice in Zen, is at least a cousin to constellations. And I would guess that the reason why the rule in a lot of families is in the family situation, turn the lights out. You can turn them on at school, but turn them off when you're home. And that's certainly partly because not all the family narratives are true.

[46:28]

visible or known to everyone. Well, that darkness continues in the present. There are narratives within this group that not everyone knows. It doesn't mean they're bad or anything. It's just that they're narratives, connections between people that give power to this, any group of people. Yeah, but the question is not how do you bring all those into the light, but how do you let yourself function in the dark? Okay. Yes. During the last minutes you talked, and also before, I thought of a sentence you said in the last seminar, which was about shame.

[48:25]

You said we couldn't practice Buddhism without shame. And in some way it seems it is connected to this flow of thoughts, but I don't know how it comes into it. Deutsch bitte. Well, shame in Buddhism means you acknowledge to yourself and as appropriate acknowledged to others something you made a mistake something you don't feel good about etc. and you say intend within yourself and intend within the people involved not to do it again.

[49:39]

So it's to be conscious of and acknowledge what you've done and to be consciously intend not to do it again. And unless you're capable of doing that, you say you can't. really your Zen practice will not develop. And it's different than guilt, because you don't feel you're bad, it doesn't stick to you, you just say, oh, I won't do that again. It's not like guilt, where you say, you're bad, but it doesn't stick to you, but you say, no, I won't do that again. Maybe I should say at this point that darkness refers to as a pretty wide idea in Buddhism.

[51:05]

As I've said, one of the often daily chant we do, which is also, as I've said, a Transmission document in teaching. Und wie ich bereits gesagt habe, in dem anderen Seminar eine der täglichen Chants, die wir machen, die gleichzeitig auch eine Art von, die gleichzeitig auch ein Übertragungsdokument sind. You chant that the branching streams flow in darkness. So memory, experience, narratives, much of our life is outside of consciousness. And so then from the point of view of practice consciousness has a job to do.

[52:13]

So not everything can be made conscious. Okay, so then we can somehow be aware but not conscious. aware in the sense that you participate but don't grasp but also just you know at a perceptual level Much of the world flows in, let's say, darkness. Okay. Oscar Knopf. You know that story. Okay. Supposedly OK comes from some German guy in Chicago with the initials OK, Oskar Knopf or something.

[53:35]

He ran a shipping business and warehouse business or something and whenever he approved of something he wrote OK at the bottom. So when I say, okay, I feel I'm making a kind of subtle German reference, and he says, gut. And I think he should say okay. Good is all right. Good is good. Good is okay. Ha ha ha! You've often heard me use the phrase, hearing is hearing.

[55:04]

Hearing your own hearing. Yeah, so let me come back. Like you hear a bird, you hear only what your ears can hear of the bird. Okay. You do not hear the bird the way other birds hear that bird, or its mate hears it. So you're only hearing a portion of what's going on. So there's a lot going on that's flowing outside your own hearing. And when you start getting used to Not just the idea that you're hearing your own hearing.

[56:20]

But you have an experience of hearing your own hearing. and it's really your it belongs to you not to the bird it's the singing of your instrument which the bird resonantly And your attention isn't going out to the bird, but your attention is fully in yourself through the resonance of your own instrument. So ist also eure Aufmerksamkeit dann nicht beim Vogel, sondern bei euch selbst beim Vogel.

[57:22]

And that's often also often a blissful experience. And it's accompanied by knowing and feeling the boundaries of your own experience. And when you feel the boundaries of your own experience, you feel the mystery beyond the boundaries. So, in in my five physical senses, or six plus mind. When in experiencing each sense, I feel the boundaries of the sense, I also am well aware and sense

[58:25]

much of the world is outside these five categories or six categories. So what I experience is six regions. Those six regions are the senses. But the whole world doesn't fit into those six regions. So by fully occupying the six regions, which which certainly gives me a feeling of centeredness and completeness and even bliss. At the same time, I realize much of the world is flowing outside these six regions.

[59:48]

And much of the present is flowing outside. of perception and consciousness. Now how do we tip the mirror of the present so it reflects the past and reflects into the future? Maybe that's a time we could stop. So would you mind if we sit for a few moments? Now I'm going to say lots of... I think they're at peace now.

[61:01]

So again, how do we live in the present? So it most fully includes the past. and enhances the present? And how do we most fully enhance the present, or live in the present? So it anticipates or makes the way for the most appropriate future.

[64:05]

So such questions are in the background of various practices of Zen Buddhism. I mean, all practices are in the context of, does it lead to enlightenment? Does it lessen suffering? Now, all these exercises are in a context of leading to enlightenment, reducing suffering,

[64:59]

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