It takes a village
I'm sitting in a café in France. There's lively chatter all around me. This morning I was ‚on the internet‘. How different these experiences are. Of course, pears aren't easily compared to apples, and yet we often do it. Working in an office and working from home, for example, are similar; seeking community on social networks or in a café, for example; reading in a library or researching on the internet. These are apples and pears, similar and yet categorically different. On the internet, we are...
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Home
Last year, I participated in a Zen meditation circle. Less because I consider myself a Zen Buddhist, and more because I was seeking the quiet community to pursue my practice. During dokusan, I engaged with actively sensing my questions. I let go and left behind a lot. That was surprisingly easy. The ‚teacher‘ pointed out to me that the homelessness I am actively initiating is also a spiritual state. That was liberating. Instead of dedicating one's self to an identity...
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Growing pains
An intense month is ending. Moving, separation, friends parting ways, the love of godchildren, new friendships, longings, waiting... I could write a screenplay about the last few weeks in Provence. Each day filled with pain, compassion, and love – collectively in various constellations. But I don't want to tell these little stories, even though Marcel Pagnol might have enjoyed them. What occupies me is the question of pain. Life is suffering, Buddhists say – very simplified. The wanting...
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Imagination
The Kena Upanishad describes how the Self as such does not exist. Who sees in seeing, who hears in hearing? This is unanswerable. In the Christian tradition, a Self has been constructed for this. I see, I hear, cogito ergo sum, imago ergo sum... What is this cogito (I think), this imago (I imagine)? That Self which establishes identity, possesses responsibility, acts, and interacts. That thinking, when it becomes aware of itself, ...
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Marx
For so many years I've thought about Marx. Who hasn't? The idea of an equal and solidaristic community, free from ideological superstructure, or irrational will-o'-the-wisps. A world that only knows matter, and sees in it a scientific, progressive movement. Its goal? A world in which humanity is perfect, i.e., harmonious, without envy and resentment, solidaristic and equal, without alienation and external determination, which alone enables the unfolding of the individual within a collective. This dream of a better...
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Time
Cézanne drew and painted Mont Saint-Victoire over 80 times. Although from different perspectives, it was essentially just the mountain. This mountain has been there for a very long time; it exists in another era. A fruit fly has one day to live, then it's all over. We think in terms of generations when we expand our time horizon. A few hundred years seems like a lot to us. Our cultural history began 5000 years ago. For a mountain, that's practically yesterday. What do we see when we look at the same...
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Confession
When the internet became publicly accessible, meaning in the mid-90s, there was the phenomenon of people putting their deepest secrets online. The anonymity, the simplicity, and the speed were alluring. The confession was quickly made, anonymity largely preserved, and perhaps there was even that little thrill that someone one knows might be reading the secrets without knowing who was behind them. These tele-confessions were cathartic. Today, it has reversed: everyone is supposed to see what you're doing, without noticing...
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Dreams
Today I dreamed that I was setting boundaries. I changed something in my life because I could no longer bear it. My dream provided me with an image for it that I could easily understand. Dreams have always fascinated me. I dream a lot, vividly, entire
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Grow
Many communities around me are currently experiencing a stress test. The term "midlife crisis" often comes up. I find it a silly word because it suggests that life, individual life, is in crisis. This perspective disturbs me. Why should life have a crisis? It seems more like communities are being called into question. A break-out, a desire for freedom, self-fulfillment, wanting to catch up on something. This idea also disturbs me. Was the past wrong? That would be a concerning notion. How...
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Collision
It was a feat of strength. Disposing of the apartment, moving with friends, storing things, reorienting oneself before a new chapter begins. Leaving behind the familiar, breaking the status quo, doing what is important and right without compromise. But that also means suffering and inflicting hurts, breaking things, and planting new ones. It's strange, though, that some friends are going through similar things. The world is different after Corona. We don't want to live like we did before anymore. Disillusioned, midlife crisis, utopian thinking, realizing wishes, one's own...
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Metamorphosis
I am currently undergoing a metamorphosis. Recently, at a meeting, someone said it was a wonderful group of caterpillars. I paused. He said, yes... soon these will be butterflies. A friend once said that metamorphosis is proof of God. How else could it be explained that a butterfly emerges from a caterpillar in purely evolutionary steps? Is such a leap in complexity even conceivable evolutionarily? I am not a biologist, and this only interested me as a thought experiment. To a Christian God...
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Many me
Today I heard a quote from Sri Aurobindo. He said, in essence, that each of us has multiple selves. That was clear to me. For decades, that has been my experience, that the different aspects of a personality are many and the idea of a subjective identity is a construct. I always saw the principles of construction as ideological, serving the logic of passports, individual responsibility and jurisdiction, but also of guilt and atonement, the idea of a soul in the Christian context, etc. My reaction...
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