Yesterday I saw two millipedes mating. It was pretty much the most fascinating thing I've seen in a very long time. The creatures intertwined, rubbed and entwined, there was rhythm, devotion, engulfment. The two met by chance and after a few minutes moved on in different directions. A [...]
I've been reading in India for three weeks now: Deleuze, Upanishads, Sri Aurobindo. Sometimes I meditate in between. The rest is still a remnant of everyday life in the New World. Reading the news, consuming entertainment media, organizing things that don't really have any meaning here but need continuity so that they don't break down in old Europe and the New [...].
Today I was in a choir lesson. What happened there was a very intense shared experience. I'll try to describe it as objectively as possible. We (around 60 participants) started with breathing exercises, 'warmed up' our vocal chords, sang four-part chords and scaled the pitch. The choirmaster pointed out to us that we were not here by chance [...]
I recently met a young Indian here. He comes from Delhi and for him, South India is also a foreign world, although not as foreign as it is for me. He doesn't speak Tamil and his spirituality is also a bit more serene or enlightened, as you might say. I met him again on the street [...]
Today, for the first time, I went to the Matrimandir. Six years ago, I had a guided tour, which is a prerequisite for going alone later. It also makes sense to have a general orientation about what kind of place it is, how to behave there, and what would disturb others. During my Monday meditations in the Zen circle Bremen, I […]
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 [...]
I have always resisted the word meditation. Much about it seemed suspect to me. However, I have 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 [...]