Ein koan, that is. I had often heard about these mysterious Zen riddles, which are supposed to lead the mind out of the purely rational and open up new forms of insight. I decided not to read much about it and not to ask others about it. I wanted to get one from a Zen master. During Doksan he asked me a [...]
Bodhi Zendo I had ordered a book to take with me to Bodhi Zendo: "Zen in the Art of Ink Painting" by Katharina Shepherd-Kobel. It is a beautiful book, it speaks to me and feeds my longing to learn ink painting and to deepen my meditation. When I got involved in Zen meditation 3.5 years ago, the act of [...]
Auro Art World organized a series of 6 lectures at the Centre d'Art multimedia room in Auroville. These lectures, conducted by Dr. Christoph Kluetsch, explore connections between art, philosophy, and spirituality, bridging Eastern and Western traditions to illuminate the enduring questions of existence, consciousness, and creativity. The series is offered on the first Tuesday of every month. Fourth lecture - Tuesday 7th January [...]
Spiel - misstep In the West, I used to think that playing had to do with games and games had to do with rules. To play a game is to enter a space that is constrained by rules, and the player can develop strategies within those parameters to act according to the rules, with the goal of [...]
II woke up from a nightmare at 4 o'clock in the morning. I was talking to Will in Apt about a strange irritation in my perception of time. I described how time fell into fragments and some were simply missing. It was a matter of seconds or minutes, and while I tried to immerse myself in time to describe it better, [...]
Vhe last two years I have immersed myself quite deeply in the Upanishads, practiced some yoga and studied the system of yoga a little. I have immersed myself in my own body, my own senses, my own consciousness. I have seen that there are a large number of levels and that there is no reason [...]
Wuring the Chola empire, the layout of Shiva temples was highly formalized. Based on the agamas and shastras, the temple was fully developed into a place in space, time and consciousness where the microcosm and macrocosm mirror each other. The study of the Irumbai temple as a smaller temple following the strict rules of temple construction and as a [...]
Mometimes meditation is quite simple and natural. I sit down, go into my body, become aware of my sensory apparatus and how my consciousness and mind deal with it, bring everything to rest and higher consciousness shows up, a different kind of knowledge, space and time, a different world of experience... But sometimes it is also difficult, and then [...]