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Unraveling Consciousness Through Zen Enfolding
Seminar_Zen_and_Psychotherapy
The talk explores the concept of the self and world through Zen philosophy, emphasizing their emptiness and the impact of such realization on consciousness. It delves into Heidegger's notion of 'dwelling,' comparing it to a surgical process of opening consciousness. The discussion transitions to an analogy involving unseen children in a family, which illustrates the concept of 'enfoldedness' and the idea of our lives being intertwined with the material world and consciousness beyond the five senses. The speaker mentions "constellation work" as a method to explore these interconnections, proposing that real insight comes from engaging with this material stream rather than through introspection alone.
Referenced Works and Concepts:
- Heidegger's Philosophy: Discusses the idea of 'dwelling' and consciousness as a process of conscious opening, akin to surgery.
- Yuanwu's Teachings: Reference to understanding physical existence as observing the Buddha, integrating worldly phenomena with Buddha Dharma.
- Raya Vijnana and Buddha Nature: Possible future discussion on the relationship between consciousness and intrinsic nature in Buddhist philosophy.
- Constellation Work: Cited as a method to physically explore and understand the enfolded nature of relationships and existence beyond conscious understanding.
AI Suggested Title: Unraveling Consciousness Through Zen Enfolding
Well, maybe I could venture a bit. Adventure? No, what? Venture. It's like doing a journey. Yeah, it's to try something. It sounds different, isn't it? We've spoken about the self, first of all, as a function. And as being contextual. And not an entity. OK. And being various.
[01:04]
And now, when we spoke today about self being empty. And the world and its objects and their location as all being empty. Okay, so there's a lot of things that happen from practicing this. And really there's no need for me to try to listen. Because if they're actually going to be of any importance to you, you'll practice these things and find out for yourself. It becomes an adventure. Yeah, what happens can, you know, I don't mean to make it sound like something wonderful, but it is wonderful.
[02:32]
Okay, but let's just say, okay, so the self, present, the world, things are empty. And let's leave the practice of that and the realization of that aside for the moment. And speak of self now as a dwell. Now here we are very close to what Heidegger said. I don't really understand quite how he got there. He gets to a very surgical point in a way. If you think about this as a surgical point, kind of surgical process of opening up consciousness.
[03:45]
And surgical is like? Like surgery, like that. And he somehow comes to such a, what is the word? A surgical point in which he opens the consciousness like a surgeon. And in this sense, we can think again of self as a dwelling. And just because it's empty, we can think of it as a dwelling. But a mutual dwelling for the world is also dwelling. And so the experience of this simultaneous or this mutual dwelling of world and being is some sort of architraught or
[04:48]
that I've been speaking about in some way. By occasion, for sure, and also explicitly. Okay. So then we can think of the experience of The emptiness of self and the world strangely is no longer a mental stream, but a material stream. But the feeling of a mental stream is in contrast to a material world. But when the material world and meditation and the observer and so forth, this neutral emptiness
[06:01]
is more like a material stream than a mental stream. It's a funny reversal. It's not like mental material, but the material you see is in a way mental, and then the whole thing is material. Good. Just the way it is. I'm translatable. No, I see. Not in that shot. Everyone understood. Everyone understood. No. No. Reviewed examples. Yeah. Just let me say again that it feels like a material strain. To live somewhere, to rest somewhere. So again, we can take a look at Yuan Wu for a care of hints.
[07:50]
Whole, essential being appeared before you and nowhere else. This is also, the person down here is in a way the same thing, observing the reality of physical existence. is the same as observing the Buddha. Then worldly phenomena and the Buddha Dharma are fused into one whole. Think of the sencha drops. And the breath now, you can begin to see the breath when it's no longer tied to consciousness and emotion. And thinking and emotions are in some maybe contrapuntal relationship to a slow pace of the breath.
[08:54]
If I use that word. By the way, Yangshan and Guishan are reversed. That's right. OK. So the breath becomes the intonation or the basis for an imperturbable mind. The imperturbable mind is a mind that's not disturbed by things. So this imperturbable mind is imperturbable because it's very, very relaxed. And somehow, and I'm just riffing here, and somehow not separate from, in fact not at all separate from, so-called physical existence.
[10:23]
It just relaxes into things as they are. And the breath is your relationship to things as they are and not your relationship to what you're thinking and your emotion. So somehow if everything is empty and in clutter, And a construct of our senses. And as this colon points out, the senses are just five areas, five pieces of a big pie. Any more pieces of the pie than the five senses. So things are happening outside the senses. Dreams go where senses can't reach. Much of our life is where the five senses can't reach to.
[11:44]
But how do we live this life where senses can't reach? But strangely, it's recognizing that the whole of being is the whole of being, including everything that's around you that, in fact, live in you. And this feels like a material strain that you're carried by the... by the stream of being non-being, or not being being. So let's just take this enfoldedness as the enfoldedness of you and of others and the world are somehow intertwined.
[13:20]
and the site of your life the location of your being of your love is not somehow inside yourself but is most fully felt when it is the situation which is also the dwelling of the material world and it feels It is almost like a kind of shamanism. Okay. Now I want to switch the topic. I think I'm switching the topic. Maybe I'm not.
[14:36]
Imagine a family in which one of the parents has one or three children that the family doesn't know of. So one parent knows about, one parent of course knows because he has referred children. But they're not known to the pregnant spouse. And they're not known to the children beneath them. Now, I imagine that I'm not thinking of this project, I'm just talking in a way that to me has something to do with maybe constellation work and so forth.
[15:48]
I would say that those children are always present in the immediate family. even though no one knows about it. Now, how are they present? Well, at present, in some obvious ways. Yeah, we could say the parent of the unseen children. is to some extent hiding the sexuality that resulted in the unseen children. And of course, it's hiding the children, the fact of the children.
[16:53]
But I don't think the children are hidden from the consciousness of the parent. So the parent of the unseen child is probably to some extent always occupied with the unseen child. Now he or she is five years old. Now he or she must be in school. And then if such a parent has their own new children in the new family, own children in the immediate family, in some funny way they're probably giving substitute love to the child in the family. you're giving the love to your present child that you wish you could give to the unseen child.
[17:57]
So the seen child feels there's something inappropriate or artificial about the love because it's from the unseen child. Yeah, and then also, you're probably the parent of the unseen child. feels they have to push the unseen child away because the pain of the presence of the unseen child is too great to bear, so if you push that child, I'm not gonna think about it. And probably then you push the child, the seen child away too, because in some way, you're gonna push this one away too.
[19:07]
So you're both giving the seen child artificial love, the least-placed love, and you're pushing it away at the same time. Now, you could say that this is, you know, then... I suppose you could easily say, and maybe accurately say, this is carried in the unconsciousness of the seen child. But I would prefer to say it's carried in the enfoldedness of the unseen child. Because also probably carried in the way the parent of the unseen child put their hand on their arm. It's probably carried in the material stream of their mutual existence more than in thinking.
[20:26]
So this material stream becomes in full which the child, the seen child, finds himself living but has no access to what's going on. And they feel their mother, her father, never really loved them. When the parents are actually protecting themselves from loving the unseen child. So I think this, what I find useful about thinking about enfoldedness, because it's not carried as an unconsciousness.
[21:47]
something that could be conscious but isn't. It's carried more as an enfoldedness with the parent, but also with the world and with the trees, because it becomes enfolded with everything. Okay. Now, as we assume, now I'm going to take a big jump here. I think all of us have some experience with what the Mormon thought. He phoned someone and they just were phoning me. Or the uncanny parallels, identical twins separate births. They're all familiar with that.
[23:22]
Well, from this American Indian idea, the twins have a long book. You can understand that there's some kind of simultaneous communication. So they both married wives with the same name and had a dog named Poo-Poo. Yeah, they have pictures of green cotton in his walls. Or there's some kind of parallel, paratactic simultaneity. I don't know. It's outside my range. But I think parents...
[24:24]
And children also have this long body relationship. And I think there's probably a very disturbed long body relationship between the parent and the unseen child. And that gets all in full. And perhaps constellation work can be understood as a material stream in which you enact the unfoldment or the enfoldedness. Because I would say that you can't think this through and discover it through free association and so forth. You have to enter the physical stream with others. to begin to have it appear.
[25:56]
So I would say that maybe constellation work is a discovery of the physical stream, material stream, in which our life can be formed. Okay. That's my brief. Now, I can perhaps speak about that relationship between the Raya Vijnana and Buddha nature and so forth. And what is assumed by such terms as the Bhagavad Gita, But why don't we leave this for now, this point? Yes, ma'am. This material stream that you are talking about, it has a texture.
[27:20]
You could say it's a text that reads us. We could say it is a text that reads us. And there is also a physical through this adventure, which we perhaps see as a physical reality, as a physical activity. And for me, very often, we all talk about this. The piece that I've been playing around with is the word I have absolutely no doubt about it. The point I am asking myself is, is it paratactical?
[28:21]
Parataktik only means, none of this is in Deutsch. Yes. You've been going along, huh? I'm waiting for my chance. I thought the orangutan had translated. . I don't know. Paratactic. Paratactic just means that you let things lie together beside each other without supplying syntax or connectivity.
[29:32]
Could you say that in the understanding of this world, that in physics, the elementary part is also a way to practice without connection? Don't try to understand, please. Maybe it's more like particles and molecules side by side. Nope. Okay. So let's sit for a moment. We're not going to let you go.
[30:36]
They let the air out of their tires by accident. Backpack. I know we couldn't pull it. Backpack.
[30:51]
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