We do, after all, live only in the moment. Often this sounds like an accusation. You should not live only in the moment; think of the future, be conscious of your responsibility. In many modern societies, living in the moment is considered a kind of dreaminess: unproductive and escapist. For those who have time — beyond mere survival in a capitalist, socialist, or otherwise organized economy — to set aside some time for themselves, the great driving force seems to…
The contrast could hardly be greater: Auroville is flat, hot, on the coast; it wants to be a city, based on the teachings of Mirra Alfassa and Sri Aurobindo. At the core of their visions is the idea of bringing a divine consciousness down to earth, a “download” of the Supramental. Some seem to claim access to it. And sometimes I feel I understand what they are speaking of. The experience of a deep spirituality in meditation, in work, in…
I am back in Europe for a short time, and I see a busyness here, an energy of constant doing. Working, discussing, tidying up, running errands, fulfilling obligations, organizing, optimizing, presenting, questioning, exchanging. Something is always being done. To do something seems important; to do nothing seems unproductive and in need of justification. Yet not being productive has many important qualities. Sometimes non-action is a form of resistance, and a quiet turning inward can be understood as inner work —…
Sometimes I react strangely. Someone does something unexpected, and an insecurity in me is awakened. How do I classify it, and how do I react to it — and what does reacting mean here? It is therefore about expectation, about a being in the world that anticipates. The future is considered predictable, and is also seen as such. If I do this or that, then someone will perhaps react in this way or another. But sometimes it happens that the…
First Encounters with Ragas As a teenager, I listened to ragas for hours. I knew nothing about them. I looked up a little: microtonality, meditation, sequence of tones. I understood no more than that. But they were the deepest musical experiences — a meditation to music. To this day, ragas lead me inward or into deep states of insight that are not rational. Rather, they are a way of being in the world. Music as Shared Space and Pure Energy…
In Zen, the task is to find the true Self. But it does not exist, and that is the mystery of our existence. In a world of representations, cognitive dissonances, and alternative facts, it feels good to sink into the essence of existence, into non-dual being. Thinking helps only in a very limited way, because thinking is, in fact, always a thinking-of-something, a thinking-about-something. Thinking is an activity that relates to something, that concerns itself with representations of the world.…
A koan, then. I had often heard of them, those mysterious riddles of Zen that are meant to lead the mind out of the purely rational and open new forms of insight. I decided not to read much about them, nor to ask others about them. I wanted to receive one from a Zen master. During Doksan he asked me a few things about myself. We closed our eyes, he smiled, and said I should imagine a forest with a…
I am in a sesshin, a two-and-a-half-day short form of intensive Zen meditation. Thoughts and images keep coming to me about the artificial general intelligence (AGI) we are currently creating. More and more people from the humanities, psychology, or team organization are expressing admiration, surprise, and fear at the capabilities of AGI. It seems that the Turing test was passed some time ago, and that we are now watching an intelligence develop that appears to be superior to us. This…
