Yeah, although I spoke last evening of refinement, I actually feel rather something like a primitive. Did you add something? No. I have to trust my translator. That's hard. Usually it's easy. And At least I find that to feel, think something through, I need to go about it in a very primitive way.

[01:10]

So, For example, I would like to use just the two words stored experience instead of unconscious, the unconscious or the alaya-vijnana or something like that. Because such terms come with a lot of ideas along with them, concepts. So it's clear we have stored experience.

[02:21]

And I think I should bring up what I did in the last seminar. this watch. And I ask you to... forget about any definitions you have of memory. So I'm now working with, trying to work with how Buddhism works with the idea of memory. Memory is a recollected It's a sign that classifies

[03:33]

So, let's take this watch. If I give this watch to an infant. Oh, yes. the infant will not know what it is. For the infant it will be a shape and perhaps a sound It's quite silent. But it won't be a watch. It won't be something that keeps time or loses time. Nor will it have any meaning. as a particular kind of watch, stopwatch or something.

[04:50]

It'll be just a shape and perhaps a sound. Now, everything in addition to it being a shape And a sound, or everything in addition to it being a percept, is in Buddhism called memory. So, everything I'm seeing in front of me is memory. Yeah, I mean if... isn't memory, I have no idea. I couldn't walk through the room. I mean, I can walk through the room as an obstacle course. But it requires a certain kind of memory to know there's a difference between stepping on the cushion and stepping on your leg.

[06:10]

So in order not to step on your leg, I have to function with... memory. That's a leg, not a cushion. So I've created a term which I call MemSigns. Obviously, memory plus sign. So for the infant, so-called watch, is just a percept.

[07:16]

It is empty. We could even say it's empty of mem signs, empty of associations. And if the infant lets go of it onto its mattress, shall we say, and hopefully not the floor. It's no longer even a shape, if a shape is a human intervention. So it's even empty of percepts. Now if you kind of explore those two very simple ideas, you will know something about what Buddhism means by antics. Okay. So, in other words, when I'm functioning with you guys and with Eric and so forth.

[08:32]

I'm functioning in a territory of mem signs, of memory. Okay, so what I'm trying to do here is, in my primitive way, is try to... look at together what constitutes the present. What are the ingredients of the present? And of course, in my mind, there's always... Perhaps the straw man of constellation work. Do you have the term straw man?

[09:35]

Straw man is somebody who is stealing on behalf of somebody. No. That's what we call a straw man. Really? Yes. Somebody who steals for someone else? not really the proprietor, but legally access if it would be the proprietor. Oh, yeah. A straw man is a substitute person, but not necessarily a thief. Well, if you are strong, it's a bad connotation. Oh, really? Like being strong. Well, I didn't mean to have any bad connotations. That was never implied. Oh. Ignore a scarecrow. It's not scaring me off. Scarecrow? No. Vogelschleich, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let's put it this way then. My imagination of what constellation systemic therapy is about, of course, I really don't know what it's about. But I love my imagination of what it's about.

[10:45]

I mean, I don't know what it's about, certainly in comparison to what I know about Buddhism. But since it's not my craft, I don't really... I think it has to be your craft to really understand it. But I have a wonderful imagination of what it's about. And some experience with many of you. So if I do refer to constellations, I would like you to...

[11:50]

Yeah, let me know when I'm off base or whatever. Because, I mean, I care whether I'm off base or not. Because I want to understand it better. But But at the same time, I don't care if I'm off base because it helps me think. And as long as I don't have to make any official presentations about what is systemic therapy, I can be as off-base as I want. Yeah, but I'm trying to be more on base, on target with what is Buddhist practice.

[13:00]

Even though my reference point is not scripture or text, but experience. Okay, so Again, what constitutes the present? So far, what I've suggested is percept and mem signs. Then we can ask how are these mem signs connected, organized, present, and so forth. But let's just imagine for the moment at least that you could that I could experience this situation free of memsigns.

[14:10]

Or I could experience this situation relatively free of memsigns. Or let's say I could experience this present moment with a gap between the mem signs and the percept. I could feel the mem signs joining the percept. And I could notice if the honey of self was stuck to the percepts.

[15:11]

Memsines would cluster around it like flies. he's great, you know. So in other words you could begin to feel What's added to the percept? What's a memsign? Some makes you feel not so good or whatever. So with this simple concept of the joining of the memsign and the percept, It gives you an experiential, at least a mindful attention perhaps, access to the topography

[16:27]

one of the topographies of the present. And perhaps it allows you to identify less with the present as memsign. And perhaps you can notice, I mean, in Buddhism, a precept Perception or a percept is understood to be a kind of power. And sometimes the power of the percept is simply power. Subjugated by the mem sign.

[17:44]

For example. So if I just see you as a number of people, number of persons, then the mem sign has taken over the perception. But if I'm able to have a kind of awareness that feels ideally or really each of you separately as a separate real kind of event. But if I have the power to perceive each of you separately as a kind of own, in reality, a kind of own...

[18:47]

Then I would say that the percept, the individual perceptions have more power than the mems are. Do you understand what I'm saying? Okay. Now, one of the good things about this seminar I'm always telling you what's good about this seminar. Because depending on whether you count the days or the people, you have one or two more full days than I have in a usual seminar. So I can go much more slowly. Half as fast. Or twice as slow. Anyway. So I can stop and ask, what do you understand? Because this is a really simple idea, joining a percept and mem sign.

[20:15]

But it has an It took only a few hundred years for Buddhism to work it out, but it's a very simple idea. But the implications of it are amazing. And It also asks of you the refinement of attention that allows you to notice the joining of mem-sa in it. So such an idea comes out of aggressive mindfulness, I say sometimes.

[21:35]

I mean, aggressive is too strong a word. But aggressive... core of the word means just to approach and engage. Yeah, but In English, it's come to mean to approach, engage, and argue. But, you know, mindfulness sounds a little passive. I'm sitting here being alert. Isn't it nice to be alert?

[22:43]

What I'm talking about is really engaging. what you're bringing attention to. So maybe I just say engaged, engaging, engaged mindfulness. And some kind of mindful attention like that is required if you're going to be able to notice, really feel, the percept and the mem sign coming together. Now we can come back again to my imagination of

[23:47]

I would say that watching you guys do it, often you put your hands on somebody's back, not their front, The person was moved about. I would say you're adding mem signs to the situation. And you probably want to be very Add less rather than more. I have a strange question in my mind for some reason.

[25:05]

Can you be hugged from inside? Kann man von innen heraus umarmt werden? Oder muss man zunächst von außen umarmt werden? Und fragt mich nicht, woher das kommt, diese Frage. But somehow I think, again, my imagination of constellation work, that you're being, in the midst of a constellation, you're being hugged from the inside by the past. Und... In other words, When we're in the present, inevitably and necessarily, we're calling forth the past.

[26:13]

Not memories in the usual sense, but all the information about what's in this room, associations from the Buddhist point of view, is memory. Now, those mem signs also call forth all the other kinds of memory, narratives and so forth. So, So in various ways I'm saying, how is memory present in the present? And the bigger question I'm posing myself, which was implicit last night but not very explicit, is what is excuse me for being so simple and primitive but what is a human being and I use the word human being with some reluctance

[27:44]

Yeah, as I mentioned the other day, the curmudgeonly, curmudgeonly, I figured that out, didn't you? Not yet. The girl, okay. Whatever that is. A curmudgeon in English is somebody who's always grumpy, you know. As my friend, the poet Philip Whelan used to say. I was going to write a poem, but the muses were out to lunch. That's the kind of thing a curmudgeon would say. So anyway, Herr Dr. Konze, who's developed Buddhist Sanskrit, brought it anyway for contemporary times.

[29:09]

He said, I've been called many things, but I've never been called a human being. And it was clear he didn't want to be called such a thing. He didn't want any generalizations like that applied to him. And human comes with the baggage of humanism and humanity and the individual and so forth. I don't have any other word. I could use the non-human being. Less than human. But what is then, whatever, a person?

[30:11]

No. What is a human being? A human being who locates most of his or her functioning in the And what is the present, the medium of the present in which the human being locates him or herself? And we've made clear that much of what one knows about the present is actually from a Buddhist point of view the past. And then the question is, how Is the past present in the present?

[31:31]

And how does the presence of the past in the present afflict or liberate the individual? And how, when we are afflicted or liberated, can we enter into the past That's in the depths of the present. Yeah, is that a place we can stop and never break?

[32:20]

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