Erst encounters with ragas As a teenager, I listened to ragas for hours. I didn't know anything about them. I looked them up a little: Microtonality, meditation, tone sequence. That was all I understood. But it was the most profound musical experience - a meditation on music. To this day, ragas lead me into my inner self or into deep states of insight, which are not rational [...]
Art beyond progress
Dotemporary art is obsessed with the "next step". The avant-garde, the unprecedented, the new and unique. But in the hunt for the new, we lose sight of something essential: artistic practice itself. Artistic practice is not just about crossing boundaries. It is one of those things that make art [...]
The desire of the fruit
Ean apple, a strawberry, a melon or a passion fruit, a banana or a plum, a tomato or a cucumber, a bean or a grain, a coconut and a pomegranate. Fruit wants to be eaten, it wants to give pleasure, nourish and sometimes intoxicate. They shimmer and ferment, decompose and exude fragrances, they catch the eye, beguile the senses, [...]
The true self
IZen is about finding the true self. But there is no such thing, and that is the mystery of our existence. In a world of representations, cognitive dissonance and alternative facts, it is good to sink into the essence of existence, into a non-dual being. Thinking only helps to a very limited extent, because thinking is [...]
Koan - Becoming
II am thinking about Deleuze, the movement of becoming. To extinguish the sound of the brook, I must become the sound; to enter the brook, I become part of it. When I linger in the forest, I take part in the silence and the chirping, the rustling of the leaves. I become one with nature. [...]
Koan
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 [...]
Form and emptiness
Form is empty. It has a form, but no substance; it is neither matter nor energy. Form is consciousness - seeing something as something produces form. However, form is also functional: substance, matter and energy interact according to laws. As part of consciousness, they interact in form. Form is emptiness. Form is consciousness. Consciousness [...]
Bodhi Zendo
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 [...]