First Encounters with Ragas As a teenager, I listened to ragas for hours. I knew nothing about them. I looked things up a bit: microtonality, meditation, melodic progression. I didn't understand anything else. But they were the deepest musical experiences – a meditation through music. To this day, ragas lead me inward or into deep states of realization, which are not rational, however. It's more of a way of being in the world. Music as a Shared Space and Pure Energy Listening to music draws…
Contemporary art is obsessed with the „next step.“ The avant-garde, the unprecedented, the new and unique. Yet, in the pursuit of the new, we lose sight of something essential: artistic practice itself. Artistic practice isn't just about pushing boundaries. It belongs to those who use art for self-exploration, spiritual practice, healing, therapy, or craft. But in today's culture, especially in the West, we act as if...
An apple, a strawberry, a melon or a passion fruit, a banana or plum, a tomato or cucumber, a bean or grain, a coconut, and a pomegranate. Fruits want to be eaten, they want to bring pleasure, nourish, and sometimes even intoxicate. They shimmer and ferment, decay and exude scents, they catch the eye, enchant the senses, create desire and enjoyment. They are not entirely accidental. Fruits reflect a desire of those who eat them: humans, horses, monkeys, ants, beetles, birds...
Zen is about finding your true self. But it doesn't exist, and that's the mystery of our existence. In a world of representations, cognitive dissonance, and alternative facts, it's good to immerse yourself in the essence of existence, in a non-dual being. Thinking helps very little here, because thinking is actually always thinking about something, reflecting on something. Thinking is an activity that refers to something, that deals with representations of the world. That which...
I'm thinking about Deleuze, the movement of becoming. To erase the sound of the stream, I must become the sound; to enter the stream, I become part of it. When I linger in the forest, I participate in the silence and the chirping, the rustling of leaves. I become one with nature. That notion from Romanticism – oneness with nature, with a loved one, with the cosmos, with God – generates bliss, ecstasy, bliss, ananda.
So, a koan. I'd heard of them before, those mysterious Zen riddles meant to lead the mind out of the purely rational and open up new forms of insight. I decided not to read much about them or ask others about them. I wanted to get one from a Zen master. While Doksan was asking me a few things about myself. We closed our eyes, he smiled, and told me to imagine a forest with a small stream flowing through it. When...
I am in a sesshin, a 2.5-day short form of intensive Zen meditation. Thoughts and images about the artificial general intelligence (AGI) that we are currently creating keep coming to me. More and more people from the fields of humanities, psychology, or team organization are showing themselves to be impressed, surprised, or anxious regarding AGI's capabilities. It seems the Turing test was passed some time ago, and we are now watching an intelligence develop that seems superior to us. This intelligence...
Form is emptiness. It has shape, but no substance; it is neither matter nor energy. Form is consciousness – to see something as something gives rise to form. Form is also functional: substance, matter, and energy interact according to laws. As part of consciousness, they interact in form. Form is emptiness. Form is consciousness. Consciousness interacts with consciousness. Matter arises from form – not the other way around. Matter does not give rise to form. The flow of energy and matter – from individual…
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