Hoday was my first time at Matrimandir. I had a guided tour 6 years ago, which is a prerequisite for going there alone later. It's also useful to have a rough idea of what kind of place it is, how to behave there, what would disturb others. During my Monday meditations in the Zen circle in Bremen [...]
Context
Schopenhauer, who was a great admirer of the Upanishads, wrote a small book "Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde" (1847). He identifies 4 forms of causality, e.g. small cause - large effect, or large cause - small effect etc... I was fascinated by this because it offers a broader understanding than the purely [...]
Gauges
IToday I was at a place for village children with special needs (Deepam). Someone from the guest house here had invited me to accompany them. It was a kind of ceremony as part of Navarathri in honor of Goddess Saraswathi - she stands for education, prosperity and success. In India today, the objects used for work [...]
Meditation
II have always resisted the word mediation. I was suspicious of many things about it. At the same time, however, I have always practiced my own forms of meditation without calling them that or without having learned them. For me, mediation includes: a.) contemplation, i.e. sinking into a thought [...]
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.
Center guest house
Iany films feature good hotels that are centrally located and where the political, intellectual and economic elite meet. I have always perceived this as something very elitist, colonial and power-hungry. What I missed in the films, and was probably rarely a topic there, is the networking that takes place in such places. [...]
Attention
An a boulevard in Paris, café and bad music, sun and lots of people. So many people want to be seen. They are busy, sexy, cool, knowing, adventurous, sporty, educated, cultured or indifferent. Many want others to take notice. They see themselves as what they want to be. Perhaps they live their lives in a certain [...]
Flusser
Goday, after many years, I finally drove to the center of Roubion. Vilém Flusser lived here for many years. I quoted his books a lot in my seminars and used them as a basis for discussion. Especially his philosophy of photography. Flusser is a wild theorist. He has written a lot about images, media, language, technology, signs, history... It seems to me that [...]