Yeah, I've been meeting here with Novrit Nandilov and friends for quite a long time, but there's more new people here than I've ever seen before. You look new to me. Are you new to me? What's your name? Aneta. Aneta? Yes, Aneta. That's not nice. You too. Hello. What's your name? Jana. Jana, hi. And... If you're not used to sitting, please, there's a piano you can sit on top of or a bench over there. Now, coming up here, for the first time since I've been doing this for years now, I had an escort, a dog and Angelo. And Angela told me about a seminar they just did in Bodensee?

[01:10]

Yeah, it's a nice town. Do you want me to translate? Oh, that's why you're beside me. Okay. That was a psychosynthesis seminar. And You know I don't know much about psychosynthesis except it's been around much of my life in California. So I know, you know, by osmosis I know something. But Asajuli, that's the guy's name who founded it more or less, right?

[02:25]

Asajuli? Asajuli, yeah. And I think he broke with Freud even earlier than Jung did. And... But my impression is it's changed a lot since his time. And it seems to develop so that it's more related to meditation and Zen and things like that. Is that right? And I found out this morning they even include constellation work, right? So while we were walking, Angela told me about the constellation. And had some questions related to that. But I wonder if you and Norbert would want to say something to everyone about that constellation as a way of starting, because then I can hear again, too.

[03:51]

I mean, whatever you two think might be interesting for us. Okay? I wonder if it would make sense if Angela and Norbert would tell something about this exhibition to start here, so to speak. I was about Zeitgeist. I think you use the same English word. I mean the German word in English. Sometimes we do, yes. So they were in a group where they asked the question what is Zeitgeist or what does Zeitgeist mean and what What do we mean when we talk about zeitgeist?

[05:03]

So they talked about it, kind of brainstorming, and came up with a number of terms, and they made a constellation with these terms. And there we especially had young people working with multitasking, so the phenomenon of multitasking, computers and networking, that represents a person. For example, one was multitasking, especially what young people do these days, like with a computer and Facebook and iPhone, and they are in this network all the time.

[06:04]

I got the picture. And to a representative of the older generation, on the search, And one other person who was of the older generation who was looking for, well, the meaning of life or the meaning of work. One of those guys. And then we had... So the person who represented the searcher at one point kind of joined this younger generation person And the two of them together represented the male aspect.

[07:15]

Really? And so they were vis-a-vis the female aspect, which included like a motherly kind of character. Logical. But also like in the younger version, something very fresh and lively. Right. The other opposition was the material basis of our life, the economy. So one pair of opposites was this male-female thing and the other was our materialistic or material basis for our life or in our society.

[08:25]

Commerce? Economy. Economy? Yeah. And the other was the spiritual aspect. What happened? Everyone was satisfied. We needed about an hour for this order to take place. Before it was very chaotic. because it was not clear what fits where. So it seems they started out like kind of fragmentary and chaotic and it took about one hour that it seemed like some order appeared and these maybe opposites appeared, like this kind of structure. The pairings appeared. But the pairings were not so much opposites as maybe aspects or forces that work together.

[09:36]

and the important part was that they noticed how important the space in between is that that really helped or was the basis that they could work together and maybe that what's in the space between is the zeitgeist Now, was the point of this constellation to explore the relationship of psychosynthesis to contemporary way of thinking or society or something? The male component of this pairing says no and the female component says yes. At the seminar it was about researching how this psychosynthesis behaves with contemporary thinking, i.e.

[11:07]

with the time spirit. That was Roshi's question. And he noticed that Norbert said no to Angela. So Angela now thinks that she did not quite understand your question and now she would answer no as well. He is bigger, it's true. So Angela thinks many questions remained open and they really didn't get to the point where they could discuss psychosynthesis vis-à-vis zeitgeist or contemporary thinking.

[12:07]

Okay. Well, from my point of view, I'm always constellating Zen practice with any person I practice with or when I practice with or am part of a group like us. In Buddhism the lineage is considered to be both vertical and horizontal. So the vertical is of course through time and the horizontal is your contemporary, your generation. And it's assumed that the teaching develops through its fusion with each historical period, each generation, and so forth.

[13:48]

And so we think of, you know, let me say first of all, unless you guys force me to, I'm not trying to teach Buddhism. But since it's all I know, it's almost unavoidable. But when I do a seminar like with you and with the psychotherapists I've been meeting with in Austria for 20 years or so.

[14:53]

I try to imagine and think about what aspects of Buddhist and Zen practice have psychotherapeutic applications. And it's clear to me that the Zen practitioner can use psychotherapeutic approaches. Because I've done that. That's at least one reason why I know. But also, but I'm not so clear that psychotherapists can use Zen approaches. Yeah, so why is that?

[16:01]

I don't know. It could be a possible subject of discussion. But anyway, I usually try to think of what might be applicable for psychotherapists. And this time when I was musing, riding down here with Gerald yesterday, I was I'm thinking maybe artists see how Zen Buddhism can extend, might offer a way to extend the worldview of psychotherapy.

[17:02]

And because it's also clear to me, of course, that psychotherapy extends the or the realms of Zen practice. But I always make the point, and for those of you I've known for years know this, that I make the point, that Zen is not a form of psychotherapy. And in fact I think it's better to say there's no Zen psychology. The more fruitful emphasis Zen is a mindology as I call it and not a psychology.

[18:24]

now the study of the mind is also part of contemporary psychology and cognitive science and so forth no but as cognitive science may or may not be able to add something to the practice of psychotherapy By the way, I'm aware that not all of you are psychotherapists, but I'm speaking in that vein, because I have to speak in some context. Okay.

[19:28]

So as cognitive science may offer something to psychotherapy, Perhaps in a somewhat similar way, Zen, the study of the mind through Zen, Yogacara Buddhism, could also offer something to psychotherapy. So könnte vielleicht auch Zen, also die Erforschung des Geistes, auch etwas der Psychotherapie anbieten. Yeah, I mean, for 2,500 years now, Buddhism has been trying to think about the mind. Seit 2,500 Jahren versucht der Buddhismus, über den Geist nachzudenken. Now, let me just give you one obvious example. The consciousness as the most noticeable aspect of mind notices the contents of mind. Consciousness notices the contents of consciousness. For instance, the contents of consciousness right now, my consciousness at least, I don't know what's going on with yours, are each of you, the bells sitting here, the sound of our voices,

[21:17]

the shape of this room. Those are all the contents of consciousness. But consciousness doesn't usually notice itself as one of the contents. But one of the contents right now of consciousness is consciousness itself. Now, what happens when you begin to notice the content, that consciousness itself is one of the contents of consciousness? That kind of emphasis has been a big part of Buddhist theories, study, practice, and so forth. Now, consciousness does not also notice the conceptual conditioning of consciousness.

[22:35]

So consciousness notices the physical objects and the light and the color and the sound. But it doesn't notice itself as a content. And it also, as I just said, doesn't notice its own conditioning. Now, the simplest example of conceptual conditioning I can give One I've been using for years. Of course, conceptual conditioning includes everything our culture has given us. But I'd like to mention one which becomes an interesting aspect of practice, and is related to what Angela and Norbert just brought up in their constellation, which is that it's, excuse me for those of you who have heard this too many times,

[24:34]

that we assume space separates. And that is a fact, the space between Katrin and myself and so forth. Okay. But this is a cultural fact. It's something we learn from culture. Das ist etwas, was wir durch die Kultur lernen. Because space also connects. Weil Raum auch verbindet. The tides and the moon. Die Zeiten und der Mond. And right now, if you took a photograph of us, a moving picture, and you slowed it way down, you'd see that all of our eyelids and body movements are closely connected.

[25:54]

So there's a saccadic scanning, for instance, visually? scanning that's all outside of consciousness, almost completely outside of consciousness. You say saccadic scanning? Saccadic. S-A-C-C-A-D-I-C, I believe. It's so hard to spell in German and English because those letters are the same but they're said differently. And it means, it's a few, many, many, many times a second, your eyes are actually scanning and then putting the picture together.

[26:56]

There's psychotic scanning too, but that's another subject. And this is actually noticing, knowing about this. It's hard to notice, but knowing about this is an important aspect of what we might speak about. Okay, all right. So, I'm saying that seeing space as separate is a cultural conditioning. As separating is a cultural conditioning. Okay, now, and what's interesting about keeping this point fairly simple

[28:05]

This cultural conditioning occurs before perception. In other words, the views you hold are mostly prior to perception. If you expect to see separation, that's what you'll see. But if you can install a different view prior to perception, For instance, if you can install the view that space connects, then that view will begin to influence your sensorium, influence what you see.

[29:14]

then this way of seeing will influence what you see. And then it will occur that you will feel more like you are swimming in such a field where So, in other words, consciousness does not see that space also connects. Because the way connectedness is established is mostly too fast. It's outside the way consciousness functions. But it also, simply, we are programmed not to see it. And I can't end this example until I give you, I think, the most useful way to notice it is to take a phrase like already connected and contrast it with the phrase already separated.

[31:03]

and see if when you are with people, meet people, you're implicitly saying to yourself, already separated. And then you can contrast that with already connected. So for three or four days, I would suggest, you try to remind yourself to on every appearance of someone, say, Your immediate feeling is already connected.

[32:23]

I think most of you will notice it begins to change the way you feel about somebody right away. It may create almost too much feeling of intimacy or connectedness. Leave me alone. I don't want to be that connected. Okay. So... What's interesting here is what we've done, and I'm just using these simple examples. We've taken two words and three words actually. Already connected and already separated, three words. And we just introduced already connected into our mind stream.

[33:36]

And it can have absolutely amazing effect. Okay, so the fact that two or three words can gather attention in such a way and locate attention in the perceptual process so that you change your zeitgeist. And again, this tells you something about how we function in the world.

[34:40]

And can function in the world. Okay, now let me go back to the idea of horizontal lineage for a minute. I've been practicing Zen, not doing much else, for about 50 years. I shouldn't say that. I should say it's only been ten. Anyway, and I am practicing in a Western context. And my teacher, Suzuki Roshi, most of the initial lectures that I heard with him or was part of, Zen lectures,

[35:48]

Zen practice has a great deal to do with what I can call simply meeting and speaking. That something happens in a constellation, for instance, with the actual people there, even if they're representing other than they are, something happens in this face-to-face situation. It would be interesting if you got several of these multitaskers. Which I think is probably more multi-distractors than multi-tasking. And try to get them to do a constellation over the internet. I mean, something might happen, but who knows what it would be.

[37:26]

In any case, so what we're doing here is at the center of Zen tradition, which is meeting and speaking. And if you read the koans, all the koans are basically about meeting and speaking. A whole bunch of people who feel already connected. Or eventually feel already connected. And if you read the koans somehow there and practice them in the context of meeting and speaking, you somehow really begin to feel already connected with the constellations of the koans. When you read Koans and practice with them in this situation of meeting and speaking, in this constellation of Koans, Koans turn around,

[38:42]

and there actually the technical word in Chinese and Japanese is wado which means to really go to the source of the word through the experience of the words So if you went to the source and sort of field of the words already connected, You would actually feel all is ready. All ready would be a feeling of allness. All ready is being ready. and for connectedness.

[40:18]

And so you're not working with dictionary definitions. You're working with all of the ways this word has been part of your experience since you ceased to be an infant. Then, as I said in Hannover, often, strangely, the etymology of the words parallels the layers of which you've experienced the words already. In my experience that somehow the etymology and the history of the word is maybe accidentally, maybe more fundamentally connected with one's deeper use of a word. In my experience, the etymology and the history of a word may be coincidental, but may also not be coincidental, parallel and connected with the deeper use of this word in my own experience.

[41:54]

Thank you. I'm speaking about this partly because I'm wondering these two days or at least so far this day if this practice of articulating immediacy articulating the activity of the present with language might be useful for psychotherapeutic practice. So, I think we probably should have a break soon. Just for your legs, if nothing else. Hello legs, how are you?

[43:01]

But to just finish these thoughts I started. So in the first few years of practicing, I was practicing with these koans that Sukhiroshi presented And there's phrases, often the koans turn on phrases. And I usually call them, not wados, but turning words. Because you turn them, repeat them, turn them in the flow of your consciousness. And they tend to turn you.

[44:11]

And they can even turn the world. Und sie können sogar die Welt wenden. How you see and experience the world. Wie du die Welt siehst und erfährst. Okay. So in any case, I mean, there are phrases like not knowing is nearest. Es gibt da solche Sätze wie nicht wissen ist am nächsten. Or I'm always close to this. Oder ich bin dem immer nah. Now those two phrases... are part of koans and relate to the particular koans. But I found that practicing them in relation to the koans, they kind of cut loose and they start functioning in my life. And are not limited to the context of the koans.

[45:13]

Yeah. And so I began to extend the use of these turning words into daily activities. And because at this historical moment, this particular historical horizontal moment in the lineage, I'm meeting the paradigms of the West. The zeitgeist of the West. The worldviews of the West. I was particularly interested in As Angela put it, they constellated the presence of commerce and, as Norbert put it, materiality.

[46:42]

But nowadays, it's a commercial materiality as part of today's zeitgeist. I'm not sure I can follow this. They constellated... Mm-hmm. materiality or commerce. What did you translate? Karma. Karma. Once I was in Berlin giving a talk And I was talking about... I don't know if I remember what I was talking about. That was a long time ago. calm abiding mind.

[47:49]

And I kept saying calm abiding mind and the audience which is some hundreds of people at the Freedom University of Uwe Morowitz who came to meet me, visit me recently from Thailand. And the audience, the group of people started looking stranger and stranger. And I said to the translator, what are you translating? Well, they weren't saying calm abiding mind. They were saying karma biting mind. That was the day of computer games, Pac-Man. And Pac-Man would go along, you know, like... So I think I should come back to this theme after the break.

[49:11]

Because karma biting mind is a waiting out. Tea, cookies. Thank you very much. Thanks for translating.

[49:27]

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