Meditation
I've always resisted the word meditation. Much about it seemed suspect to me. At the same time, I've always practiced my own forms of meditation without calling them that, or without having learned them. For me, meditation includes: a.) contemplation, i.e., sinking into a thought and consciously tracing thought impulses on a topic, circling around it until the mental image becomes clearer and appears before the inner eye. b.) focusing on…
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From the archive
In 2017 we were in Varanasi. Varanasi is the spiritual center of Hinduism. Those who are burnt here in the fires that Shiva lit 2500 years ago and which have been burning ever since are freed from the cycle of suffering.
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Center guest house
Many films feature good hotels that are centrally located and where the political, intellectual, and economic elite gather. I've always perceived this as something very elitist, colonial, and power-hungry. What I missed in the films, and what was probably rarely addressed there, is the networking that takes place in such places. Now, the Center Guesthouse in Auroville is hardly comparable to a luxury hotel in a metropolis, although it is a very beautiful place that invites...
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Arriving in Auroville
My perception changes when I arrive in India. The smell, the sounds, the slowness, the intuition, the acceptance, hope are wonderful things that I see. Others may see stench, noise, inefficiency, irrationality, and resignation, despair. I think it is this different perspective that allows me to feel comfortable in India. So I have had wonderful experiences. Thus I learned that different people have different perspectives on the same things. I learned by going from A to…
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Birdsong
Auroville was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfasse. The architect Roger Anger developed the city plan for it. It is based on a cosmic spiral nebula. The land that was provided for Auroville was a dry plateau. A forest has been planted since the early years. There is a beautiful, slow documentary about it (Ever Slow Green (2020) – S.O.S. from Auroville (now), 2021.) Now I have slept my first night in this forest. The Auroville Center Guest House is a magical place. There is...
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Attention
On a boulevard in Paris, a café and bad music, sun and many people. So many people want to be seen. They present themselves as busy, sexy, cool, knowledgeable, adventurous, athletic, educated, cultured, or indifferent. Many want others to notice them. They see this as who they want to be. Perhaps they live their lives in a certain way, happy and content, or externally influenced and bored, outcast or privileged. That's the beauty of Paris and other big cities, that people...
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Flusser
Yesterday, after many years, I finally drove to the village center of Roubion. Vilém Flusser lived here for many years. I often quoted his books in my seminars and used them as a basis for discussion. Especially his philosophy of photography. Flusser is a wild theorist. He wrote a lot about images, media, language, technology, signs, history... It seems to me that he repeatedly thought about how thinking works. How do words and images arise in our heads and how much does that have to do with...
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Packing
What should I take with me to India? I want to live a different life, in a different society, with different ideas and goals. It's warm there, life will be simple. Besides the basics like a few pieces of clothing, I need my tech gadgets like a laptop, phone, and camera. And what else? A good flashlight, because the dirt roads there are not lit. And books... There will be a number of libraries there too. I haven't had any ‚fun‘ for a very long time...
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Knowledge
There was a time in Europe when people spoke of polymaths. In Germany, that would be Alexander von Humboldt or Goethe; in France, an Enlightenment thinker; in Italy, the Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci. In antiquity, Aristotle. Certainly, in many cultures and eras, there have been wise people whom history tells us knew everything that could have been known at the time. This is nonsense, of course. But this narrative serves a longing. We want to know everything, but we have...
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Encounter
I've been waiting for a while. I actually enjoy waiting. Waiting is a space and a time in which there's nothing else to do but wait for time to pass. Usually, you can't do much else besides read or talk, or think. For me, waiting times are therefore always free spaces. I most enjoy waiting in community centers, for example; here, all people are equal. Together with others, I'm in a room where there's nothing...
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Freeway
Highways have always been special places for me. Most of the time, I wasn't under time pressure; I rarely had to get from A to B by a certain time. Rather, highways are travel routes. I find myself in transitional states there, a kind of no-man's-land with endless possibilities. That opens up room for thought. Often, these rooms are simply empty. The brain is busy navigating safely in traffic. It's a pleasant form of occupation; consciousness is occupied and alert, a mistake would be fatal. When I...
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Protected: Soulmate
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