So what would you like me to speak about today? You're dressed finely. I have a question. Yes, please. I have a question. It's better for me if you speak in German, because I can feel what you say, and then I hear it in English. In psychotherapy or in constellation work, we oftentimes deal with aspects that belong to someone else and that we're taking on.

[01:08]

And in Zen, I know that we speak about that we are identifying with something. You mean personally we identify with something, like possessively or something? Possessively. So do you think that we personally identify with something that belongs to us? Yes, I think my question is about the self, about psychology, how he would talk about it. So my question is about the concept of self in Buddhism. I think in psychotherapy we do have the sense that there is something like a healthy sense of me-ness or of I. But in Buddhism we also speak about no-self.

[02:10]

And if you can say, how do you conceive of the self? Does someone have an easy question? Oh, okay. What Nagarjuna says actually is not no self. He says a non-articulated self. A non-articulated self. Okay. Articulated self. If borderline people who have trouble with their self, with boundaries, they love to practice Zen, but it's not for them.

[03:13]

It doesn't work for them, really. Wenn man sich zum Beispiel Menschen mit einer borderline Persönlichkeit anschaut, dann ist es häufig so, also Menschen, die Probleme haben mit den Grenzen des Selbst, die häufig lieben es, Zen zu praktizieren, aber das ist meistens nicht gut für diese Menschen. So you need a strong sense of self to be able to... Not self in comparison to others, but self in how you function. I mean, your immune system is a form of self. The immune system knows what belongs to you and what doesn't belong to you, and that's an essential distinction. Yeah, so it's a matter of how you identify with the agency of observing which can become self.

[04:20]

One aspect of mind as I spoke about yesterday is the observing capacity or observing agency. The ability to give attention to attention. And that then can become your narrative self. So Zen practice is to separate the observing self from the narrative, excuse me, the agency or the ability to observe from the narrative self.

[05:34]

Zen practice is a craft. Like learning to play the piano or to make a pot, you know, on a wheel or something. And when it's turned into philosophical generalities, it's usually nonsense. So the kind of idea of Buddhism has to do with non-self is nonsense. Yeah. Anyway, okay? Okay, someone else. I didn't say anything yesterday that perked anyone's interest?

[06:58]

Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. But I said a lot about it yesterday. Yes? Okay, okay. So for now, yes. I was somehow carried away yesterday with the lecture. If you look at me from behind, you can see that I was carried away. But what happens here in the exhibition And that's the question then, where is then this self or this observer self, this creativity that comes up again and again. And yes, that is the origin, or the connection between the exhibition work and this meditative or this original observer. The connection.

[08:00]

How do you call it? The observing? Yes, that was ultimately the observation, the connection, ultimately to perceive and also to reflect and that we actually need the exhibition work to get there, to get to this observational ability, which ultimately makes up the self, which is the world, to get there, to get to the origin of the creation. Okay, so in constellation work we need the constellation work in order to make this distinction between the observing agency And so I'm wondering how we can connect that more, the constellation work and the Zen practice, .

[09:29]

Well, If we're going to do that, this is a good territory to do it in here at the center. And that's kind of an answer to your question, to what you said. In other words, we've created this place to do what you're saying. But we can only, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm Alice through the looking glass.

[10:32]

Does everyone read that in Germany? Well, there's also Alice through the looking glass. She went through a mirror. And here, I'm not Alice who they're looking at. I'm Baker in the dishwater. I'm trying to give you a glimpse into how this practice, this craft of Zen can relate to And by the way, Guni and Walter, Christian Dillow says hello to both of you and wishes he was here. And he is director of our center in Colorado.

[11:53]

And the senior teacher there. And he, in a way, part of his inspiration to practice Zen now, most of his adult life, is consolation work. His closest friend, Frank, what is his last name? Hirscher. Hirscher? Hirscher. Is a constellation therapist, among other things, and has been part of his inspirations. Okay. So it's hard to respond directly to, in any kind of depth and accuracy, to the kind of question you asked, which requires depth and accuracy. But let me approach it sideways.

[13:06]

Okay. I'll come back to it. And by the way, it may be fairly obvious that we're just in the process of developing this place. And changing this building, which looks sort of like a farmhouse, which was an office building for 52 people. into a meeting place, really, not only where we meet to practice meditation, but where we can also meet to practice constellation work.

[14:14]

And if you have any ideas about how we can... develop this place and improve this place as a meeting place, please let us know or let Paul know or Nicole know. I know one thing we need is better lighting in the garden. I have a little office and room up here. And last night I worked till about 11.30. And then I walked over to the office where I live. And then I went over to the Johanneshof where I live.

[15:20]

And it was completely dark. And I know the path pretty well. But I was in the bushes, I almost fell in the stream, on my hands and knees. It was kind of fun, but really, if somebody who doesn't know is sleeping here and has to get to their car for some reason in the middle of the night, they're going to have a problem. They may fall in the stream and, you know, who knows? Now, let me say a few things. Because this whole question that you brought up and that my friendship with Guni and Walter brings up for me, is how to look into, how to...

[16:22]

identify and explore the interfaces and overlaps of constellation work and Zen practice. Okay, I would say that constellation practice is an imagistic, I don't know what word to use, I just decided this morning to say imagistic practice, Now what do I mean by that? And I've just recently been trying to explore the difference between imagistic thinking But rather than say thinking imagistically, I should probably say imagine imagistically.

[17:41]

Because Zen is an imagistic craft. My job is to create problems for Nicole. Imagination? We're not talking about fantasy here. Imagination? Also eine bildliche Praxis. This doesn't sound, it's a little clumsy in English too, but... Okay. Also im Englischen auch so ein bisschen tollpatschig. And it's used in art for certain kinds of poetry and painting, but I want to refrain from those aspects in English.

[19:03]

Okay. There's always a problem with things like when we think about form and how is form emptiness and how is emptiness form, etc. ? Or non-self and self, etc. But if you think imagistically or through images, as Einstein, excuse me for using our favorite genius as an example, found... images in his body which he turned into metaphors and then mathematics. So form and emptiness are images. And they exist simultaneously as an image. They're not interfering with each other.

[20:32]

All right, so that, I'm just, now here I'm, you know, just looking at some of the silverware with you under the dishwater. At the most I can put out some images and ideas which maybe will have some play in you at some point. Now let me suggest an image you could use or you could explore its use. of the world as a sphere of interconnections. And I say the word sphere only because it's helpful for imagination to have some boundaries. Now, one of the very difficult things for us as human beings, and also particularly Westerners, is to recognize, actually even think

[21:54]

that space is not a universal and time is not a universal. We could say if we want some concept, space is what allows connected connectivity. And parallel to form is emptiness, emptiness is form. We could say space is connectivity, and connectivity is space. So what I'm suggesting you imagine, and the imagination doesn't have to be true in some scientific fact,

[23:17]

it only has to be effectively true. It has to only be effectively true. So since I've been an atheist since before I was born, I'm sorry to admit it in front of everyone. I would say that God and all of that that goes with it has been a very effective but erroneous image. it's often produced some good things. And to deny its truth is not to deny its effective truth. Okay, so here, what I'm suggesting is we imagine we're in the midst of a extremely dense informational sphere.

[24:50]

A sphere of relationships, connections, dislocations, emergencies, and so forth. Dislocations and... Emergences. Okay. Fractures, etc. So all of this is functioning through these interrelationships. Plants, trees, planets, etc. Plants, trees, planets, etc. And we, as some kind of animal in the midst of this, know an amazing amount about it.

[26:06]

But the percentage of what we know about it is very close to zero. Okay, so let me riff or rap about this for a minute more before I get to installation practice. So, this immensity of immediacy and inner connections and inner penetrations, We are the expression of that.

[27:15]

Everything is the expression of that. But we understand very little of it. We are it, but we don't understand. But we can use mathematics. And mathematics lets us study relationships in an extraordinary way. It develops as a system of geometry and addition and so forth. But after you start creating the theory, the numbers themselves begin to tell you something's going on that's beyond algebra and geometry. So we can use mathematics to imagine a world of 10 or 11 or 26 dimensions.

[28:19]

So the mathematics can lead us there, but our ability to imagine or understand or think it is really quite limited. Okay, so what I'm trying to say is, because I'm trying to explore what's going on here in constellation work, we are in this field or sphere of interconnections. And they're also personal and familial interconnections. And you know yourself that your own familial interconnections, interpenetrations and so forth, fractures, discontinuities,

[29:39]

False connections, unknown connections, etc. It's all present in this sphere of interconnectedness. You are it, but how do you receive it? Du bist das, aber wie kannst du das empfangen? Durch die Mathematik können wir das empfangen, was eben genau die Mathematik uns gestattet, aus dieser Sphäre der wechselseitigen Verbindungen zu empfangen. So our body allows us to, again using the word yesterday, is a kind of antenna which allows us to receive much of this sphere, a significant part of this sphere of inner penetrations.

[31:04]

Aber dein Körper, unser Körper, ist so wie, und das Wort habe ich gestern verwendet, wie eine Antenne, der uns erlaubt, einen bedeutsamen Anteil der Verbindungen aus dieser Kugel oder dieser Sphäre der wechselseitigen Durchdringungen zu empfangen. So what I'm asking you to do is imagine that this exists. Don't worry about it whether it's true or not. Just imagine that it exists. And then feel yourself in this field. It's almost like you could drown in it, but you have to learn how to breathe in it. Okay. Not atman as self, atman as breath. Your body remembers how to ride a bicycle.

[32:31]

After not riding for years, perhaps. It may take a while before you remember how to ride no hands. Look more on no hands, Crash. But anyway, our body remembers. Our body also remembers the familial story we're supposed to remember. And our body remembers our acculturation. And our experience. Okay. But we know that's not the whole story.

[33:40]

So how do you get out of that story which the body and the mind remember and keep recreating? From a technical point of view as a Zen practitioner, You have to break the link between noticing and thinking. Noticing by itself is a form of knowing. I often spell it in English as connoticing. So simply noticing is a form of knowing. When we turn that into thinking, we turn it into the narratives which hide a lot of stuff from us.

[34:42]

How do you break that link? It's easier. It's easy for me to say, not so easy to do. This is a Zen story about a guy, a monk goes to find this famous Zen master he's heard about. And he's up in a tree. And the monk says, what the heck are you up in a tree for? He said, our practice is to do good and avoid evil. Well, what the heck, why are you up in a tree? Because even children know that, but no one can practice it. We know we're destroying the planet.

[35:56]

We know it, but we're not doing much about it. And our own personal life, we know a lot about it. We don't do much. Okay, so the Technique, I think, works is you really have to train yourself to notice without thinking about. Now, in the Western scientific world, Benjamin Leavitt, in the 70s in San Francisco, pointed out that the body knows fractions of a second before the mind knows. The large percentage of the neurological and scientific community, I think, misread, maybe he did too, his...

[37:04]

conclusions to be drawn from his experiment. So the body knows before, in many instances, not all, the body knows before the consciousness thinks it is making a decision. That means you have to figure out a way to be present in the knowing of the body before it turns into thinking. And that's yogic practice, Zen practice. That is also, I think, some of the techniques of constellation practice, which is a kind of, let's say, parallel to mathematics, which allows us to use

[38:27]

a way of acting to let this sphere of interconnections appear in us. So it's not simply a matter of you can trust your body because it knows more than the mind. or sooner. No, it's like all things, it's a craft. You have to learn when you can trust the body. And you have to learn to develop a body you can trust. Or you have to use something like the techniques of constellation work.

[39:57]

To trick you into or kind of shift you into this body that's free of the narrative, somewhat free of the narrative, familial narrative you're supposed to believe. Or that you want to believe. Or that you know already you don't believe, but you still pretend you do. Okay. All right. So I'm suggesting that if I were to practice, and I should stop a minute ago, But since time is not a universal, something we are creating right now, this space is being created by us as well as by all the inner penetrations.

[41:18]

If you imagine yourself in this sphere in which the inner connections are all there, how to tune yourself, and tune yourself in relationship to others, so the antenna of these shared bodies, these shared bodies in the shared field, even though they're strangers, can begin to reflect for you connections you often benefit from knowing.

[42:40]

You benefit from being in a world that feels familiar. A familiar world you feel you belong in. Thank you. That was, you know... I don't know how much I could make that clear, but anyway, it's such a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you very much. And thanks for translating. You're not complaining too much about the problems.

[44:00]

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