Recently, a friend asked me about the relationship between Eastern and Western culture. This is, of course, an enormous question that I also ponder and that, naturally, no one can truly answer. However, I want to formulate a few thoughts: The distance from an imagined center. The ‚Western‘ world, based on classical antiquity, Christianity, the Enlightenment, and materialism, is contrasted with the Occidental world of the Assyrians and Persians, Islam, and the idea of a divinely guided commonwealth. This...
The CADALfest took place from December 16th to 20th, 2022, in Adishakti. I hadn't planned on going, but I was thoroughly surprised by the four days of round-table discussions, poetry and film screenings, concerts, and theatrical performances by a fascinating group of artists, activists, and academics. I picked out a little something and on Saturday, attended the „Adivasi Round Table discussion with Vandna Tete, Ganga Sahay Meena, Seral Murmu & Ashwini Kumar Pankaj, moderated by Gopika Jadeja“ followed by the…
Yesterday, I followed something in my mind that is difficult to describe. In everyday language, I might say I followed my intuition. But it's a bit more complex. I went back to Tiruvannamalai. It was the last day of the Karthigai Deepam Brahmotsavam Festival. So, on December 6, 2022, a fire was created on that mountain, as has been done for 2500 years. There is, of course, an ancient story about this. Brahman, the universal Self, manifested itself as Brahma (the creator), Vishnu...
I'm just back from devotions and meditation. It's the anniversary of Sri Aurobindo. He left his body 72 years ago, as they say here. I've spent the last few days reflecting and talking a lot about his commentaries on the Kena Upanishad. I came across the word ‚intermiscence‘ there. It's used almost exclusively by Aurobindo. I asked everyone I met what the word meant. A friend here found a translation into German: ‚ineinanderfließen‘ (it describes in German...
“the eye thinks even more than it listens” (Deleuze) I now recall that, before I started reading Deleuse, I had been wrestling with a process aesthetics. I had cobbled together a 100-page manuscript, with notes, quotes, structural sketches. I wanted to move away from the idea that art consists of objects perceived in a particular form, because this leads to two essential threads of consideration: 1.) What constitutes an object we designate as art, and 2.) why is the perception...
I'm slowly approaching Sanskrit. On Thursdays, Nishtha holds a seminar on the Rigveda. The joint recitation in Sanskrit, the detailed analysis of the translation, Nishtha's philological considerations, and the explanations of the psychology of the gods open up access to these ‚sacred‘ texts. I remember my Latin studies, the Indo-European roots, the sounds that echo in the Ragas, phonetics as an expression of existence, language as sound and vibration, communication as rhythm. The breath of life, yoga, vitality, thinking in...
The last time I seriously wondered what I should do was during college. I studied philosophy, and I was often asked what I wanted to do with it. What a stupid question, I always thought. It's an inner drive, almost a compulsion, that you can't resist. Any such attempt must fail, there's only thinking ahead. So it wasn't really a question of what I should do, or what was to be done,...
Yesterday I fell asleep with the expectation of waking up early to meditate. I set my alarm for 6 AM. In the evening, a French yoga instructor and mountain guide told me that the early morning hours in India are the best for meditation – I already knew they were good for *ryas*. She also spoke of the morning chants in the cities; I remembered the mantra chants in the temples. I woke up at 5:30 AM. Temple chants were...
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