Ramana, one of India's great enlightened beings, lived in Tiruvannamalai. At the center of his teaching is the concept of the self: its emptiness and at the same time immeasurable vastness. His teachings are simple, he does not follow a long tradition of interpretations. He was a simple man who meditated on the mountain and held satsangs. As a contemporary of Aurobindo, people have [...]
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 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
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 [...]
General intelligence and the cosmic archive
II am in a sesshin, a 2.5-day short form of intensive Zen meditation. My thoughts and images keep coming back to me about the artificial general intelligence (AGI) that we are currently creating. More and more people from the fields of humanities, psychology or team organization are impressed, surprised, anxious about the capabilities of AGI. It seems that [...]
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 [...]
Play and Blunder
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 [...]
Full moon
Et is full moon in India. Time for self-reflection, meditation and inner reflection. I have never really thought about death. It has always been a boundary for me, the thing that defines our existence in a negative way. Finitude throws us back on ourselves, or so I thought. I somewhat agreed with Heidegger here. Something [...]