Babelsalat's blog ^pro

To say it in a neutral tone: the unaware being is a drifter without a path. - Don't get me wrong. That we need to have a destination is not what I'm suggesting; just moving along is fine with me. Then, let me add: From time to time it's great to know, though, where we are, how we came here and which way we can go ahead, ain't it? So, what I want to express today is, how I think one can know one's path.

(reedited on January 3rd)

Basically, I feel like our identity, for the bigger part of the whole thing, is where we have been to and how the places and their people we've seen have moved us. We are the path we already have drawn behind us, and moreover, we are also the path we'd like to find ahead of us.

And what about being aware or unaware - doesn't that simply mean "I know what I'm thinking"? There's a little bit more to that. How about this: being aware means to have a path yet to remain aimlessly orientated, to have an imagination of tomorrow without clinging to one's expectations. Otherwise it happens what buddhist teachers call the "common misery": One is unaware and all the unfulfilled expectations one is bound to encounter, become unavoidably frustrating.

Some of you may grumpily utter: "Why the hell do you guys always have to preach that awareness-thing? As far as I'm concerned, I was never as sorrowfree and blissful as I've been in my childhood years." - You're right of course. To be peaceful is only possible if you know how to be carefree. So, bless you and be carefree, and, simultaneously, perceive that you did ran around that bend and flipped over that hole. If you do not, I may scold you as an ignorant consumer.

As I often realize, from one moment to the other my habit of identifying myself with something can have totally different results. The twists can be really funny. As orthodox buddhists like to put it: Any feeling of identity is a fine piece of illusion. You are not a continuum.

A valued friend of mine, Klaus, had a surprising reaction when I once quoted that buddhist principle for him. Delighted he evoked: "That's it! I'm a CONTINUUM!" Somehow speechless I accepted that he did - in perfect awareness of it - ignore the little word "no" between "you are" and "continuum". Obviously, the word "continuum" carried the meaning he was looking for as a means of expressing identity - and he didn't care a bit about what buddhists say about illusion.

In the meantime I became convinced that we can be an aware non-continuum and an erratic, drifting soul at the same time, walking a path without knowing it. Just as we are and are not at the same time. And just the same with everything is real yet merely an ingenious illusion - you know what I mean, don't you?

Since one year, or so, I'm playing with the thought of "recording" my dreams - I mean, just with a pen and paper. Tonight I finally wrote the first draft into my note book. Moreover, I did also surf the web for some help concerning dream interpretations; anyone who shares my interest is welcomed to leave some notes!

Here's my dream from last night, the - I admit - stupid title is:

Half~under~water,

floating on a poor raft in flooded Prenzl'berg*

I'd like to note first that I, since four years already, don't live anymore in Berlin, which is my hometown. Still, my dreams take often place in Berlin and I mostly dream of caucasian people. Since I moved to China, I dreamt about Chinese people only twice! It's unbelievable how slowly my unconsciousness is adapting . .. still living in old Germany, man!

Ok, here it comes now:

The setting is quite grey, sky is overcast, people live on rafts like in "Waterworld". Circumstances are disastrous, people rob each other from time to time. I'm on a raft with someone who seems to be my boyfriend, { he resembles noone I've ever met in real life, and I don't have a boyfriend at all, so he's totally made-up ~ which appears to me now to be the weirdest thing in the whole dream ~ I suggest it's perhaps not a boyfriend but an alter ego of myself instead } so, "we" are on the raft and it's maybe afternoon and both of us feel quite exhausted.

The buoyancy of our raft is very poor, therefore we are half under water. I don't feel cold but I do desire stable ground under my feet and some dry clothes. It's also tiresome that we have to watch over our belongings. Not that we posess much, but we've got some precious electronical instruments to observe something { now, I don't know what in detail, though }.

Our equipment is vacuum-packed and also protected by some layers of bubble-wrap, or whatever, therefore it's no problem that it's submerged in the water all the time. So, that "boyfriend" and me are both lying in the water, when I suddenly realize that two devices loosened from the safety net on the raft and will be lost unless I immediatedly dive after them. My boyfriend is asleep, by the way. The situation is critical because the water is not the least transparent, its color is a muddy-green khaki. Yet, I can eventually catch the instruments and bring them back onto the raft.

Back on the raft I realize something is wrong with my boyfriend/ my alter ego - I can't wake him/ me up. At this point I'm already conscious again; the dream is over . .. . quite bizarre, isn't it?

~ ~ ~~ I n t e r p r e t a t i o n

Well, after my in-depth investigation on dream interpretation and the key symbols of water and rafts, I concluded that this dream was indeed an echo of my current worries; the ones circling around my friendship with Zhu Qing: it is a very unstable thing and the cause why I'm regularly lost in big emotional turmoils.

In a broader context it also reflects my anticipation of our world going down ~ and me as being capable only of looking at it going down. I try to comfort myself by pointing out it's not necessarily a complete break-down, maybe just a big slide which will be followed by an up-turn soon.

Yeah, actually, I'm not in a depressed mood; I still appreciate being an observer on this lovely globe; I feel quite allright after all. Must be the meditation that keeps me up, I guess.

*(Prenzl'berg is a north-eastern district of Berlin)

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This month I offer you a special feature, showing twelve pics shot by my friend Zhu Qing, who's working in the special police force of Shen Zhen, Kanton. During the last two months he had several deployments, leading him far away to Wen Chuan, Si Chuan Province, where an earth-quake wreaked havoc over the entire area. The Chinese title was choosen by himself, playing with the fact that it took two arduous months to rebuild the only road leading to Wen Chuan. The 6th picture is an auto-portrait of him.

Since my first attempt of doing something that at least looks like meditation,

some years have gone by already; five years if I remember it right. The first

type of meditation I learned is the Japanese Zazen ("sitting in Zen"), which

seems to be a very pure and basic technique. Although I was determined to

meditate not less than three times per week, I couldn't do as I wanted.

Only this month a change happened: I've learned a new technique, one which

gives me the strength to be disciplined enough to sit every day for one or two

times, each time for one hour. The technique's name is Vipassana ("seeing

things as they are", pronounced like "Vee-pash-shana"), a method that survi-

ved the slack period, for around two thousand years, in Burma/ Myanmar, be-

fore it came back to its land of origin, India, from where it eventually spread all

over the world. The organisation which teaches Vipassana works non-profit;

each student is free to decide after the course if and how much (s)he wants

to pay.

The courses are open for every one, no matter what religion, nor is there a

need to believe in anything at all. The teaching is easy to grasp. Actually,

I dare to say, the method is as transcendent as empirical science - simply

perfect for Meditation-Dummies like me!

Give it a try and you will be thankful for every hour of the

10-day course.

www.dhamma.org/

In August 2007 I wrote an essay and gave it to my buddhist mentor Thorre Schlaméus. His feedback has been better than expected. . .

Because I like translating, I translated it this week into English (LOL). Everyone who is eager to get a new and provoking view on the subject may find this attempt interesting.

I post it directly into the blog, but I also offer you a PDF-file with a better layout and the original German version.

Deliverance –

The self-fulfillment of an illusion

1\2 The Eternal Loop

For the human eye – actually the human conception altogether – the way of things is conceived through contrasts. We can’t perceive light without darkness; warmth we notice only, because we also know the cold, and so on.

Generally speaking, everything we observe is based on our judgment whether or not an appearance is current or absent. Even the phenomenon of consciousness becomes evident for us only, because we do experience unconsciousness as well.

Every one of us, once in a while, happens to feel how it is to wake up slowly from a sound sleep. With sticky eye lids, we are diving up to the surface of clarity. Sometimes it needs incredulous five seconds before we recognize inside whose house it is we’re waking up this morning.

One or two moments after our striving for clarity, we see ourselves triumphantly taking back the full power of consciousness. And, we Buddhists are in no way an exception. But, aren’t we a little bit inconsistent by doing so? Isn’t the state of unconscious, deep sleep already the absolute painless,teasingly peaceful Nirvana? I suspect, the only reason why we live with might and main, is in order to fall asleep exhausted the coming night and to get rewarded anew with deep, painless sleep.

Ok, I admit, it's just joking around. The true, ever-lasting Nirvana has to be earned by means of a life-long training. Otherwise, everything would start all over again from the very beginning; life-cycle after life-cycle we would be kept in the loop of rebirth, which in the end appears to be as arduous as the daily struggle of awakening.

Hence originates our commitment to a lifetime of drudgery walking the Eightfold Path. We want to make sure that after the end of this life we will never have to wake up again, that we never again need to become aware, triumphantly, of our power of consciousness. And, we aren't even irritated by those foolhardy voices who want to assure us that eternity doesn’t last longer than a calm, motionless night.

However the nature of eternity is; before we’re able to subside into the cosmic, permanent sleep, we have to tread the aforementioned path, which demands a high degree of discipline and patience. One wants to say: Tough task! –Right, and don’t forget; during your hike on that long road, your sufferings will never be eased even a little bit! Now you may wonder: “What? No ease at all? Didn’t the masters promise on that road I’ll learn how to eliminate the sources of pain, one by one?” Yes, but that still doesn’t change the intensity of pain you have to perceive. I see, you’re shaking your head. Consider to read the second part!

2\2 The staircase without steps

I’m saying again, the effect of downgrading your suffering-level will never be recognized by you. Every time you cut it down one more degree, your desire for the next cut remains as strong as before. (“Degree” is of course an artificial term to illustrate the process.) You won’t feel a tiny bit more coolly, no matter how low you already have been descending. Let’s suppose you’ve already reached the lowest possible degree of suffering-perception; even then, your longing to leave the last level and obtain deliverance would be intense. – And this is because:

There’s a simple mechanism preventing the joy of relieve. The less pain we have to endure, the finer calibrates our receiver. As I said at the beginning, our system of perception is founded on the rule of contrast. If the “input” of pain is fading, the system has to sensitize itself, simply in order to sustain the sharpness of contrast. In effect, the milder pain of tomorrow feels as tormenting as the severer pain of today. That is the paradox of what I call “descending the staircase without steps”.

Now you know the reason why the last day of your life will feel as sorrowful as today, although you decided going the path of the paths. You are doing a seemingly never-ending work just to make sure you'll escape rebirth – given your work was really good. The crux is, it is all a matter of faith! It's potentially insane to believe in a result which impossibly will ever be proved by anyone! So, please keep in mind the last conclusion I want to give you now.

In the moment of death, as you leave the last threshold and enter the here-after, you're losing all your capability of feeling anything. Not just the pain, but also the not-pain. Therefore you weren't able to enjoy the not-pain after death. So, when is the right time to enjoy the deliverance? – Now! You have to imagine it now, and this is why you should meditate regularly. Through meditation you harvest the fruit of deliverance. Indeed, a very transcendental fruit, since you only can anticipate it rather than observe it in real-time, when it really came after your last breath faded. Therefore, I wish you sufficient courage and madness to keep going – no matter what!

Nicole Lüderitz, 2007

. . . in Form einer Kurzgeschichte? Der Link führt zur Download-Seite, auf der es auch einen Klappentext gibt. Es lohnt sich, versprochen!

www.ipernity.com/doc/fern0zt/2066116

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First of all, I feel quite delighted, because I realized that another

clichee is about to die. The young french folks are definitely willing

to communicate in English! Merci beaucoup dessus mes nouvelles

amies Lison du Var et Elsa West!

And, at the same time, I'm very thank-

ful ipernity urges me somehow to revive my French aswell! I browse

through the streams and I can't help but have to figure out what the

French messages are about. So, my rosty French comes back slowly.

In high school, my evil french and english teachers convinced me I

don't have the brains to study foreign languages. The marks of those two

subjects had always torn down my otherwise quite good marks quota.

Yet, as I entered the university I challenged myself. I chose Precolum-

bian America Studies and Sinology, consequently I had to take courses

in Spanish* and Chinese.

After I learned that, besides English, they're

the most spoken languages on earth, I was even more motivated. So, a

decade after my discouraging high school degree, I'm a Language

Maniac who speaks four languages and is determined to add French and

Japanese aswell!

Never trust other peoples' judgements about you - except for very good

friends of course, and maybe those rare white-haired wise men and wo-

men... .

*Yes, although it is "Precolumbian", the primary study sources are most-

ly written by the Spanish conquerors.

.

I just posted pictures of the place I lived two years ago. When I watch them I feel sorry for how hard it is to make compromises. Back then, I had just two travel bags with me and my bike, brought from Berlin, and I had the amazing feeling to be able to move anywhere, just now, without having to leave behind anything.

In the meantime I moved three times and I have to carry 13 cardboard boxes with me when I want to change my place of residence. So, I need someone to drive it by car now in order to move. That's really annoying me.

At the same time I'm so thankful for having a well-paid job now and that my living standard raised to a more comfortable level compared with where I was two years ago. I definitely can't be happy without books I can call my own, and nice lamps, and bla bla bla . . .

The only thing that gives me some confidence, still, is that I see me throwing things away reguarly, so that it won't grow exponentially. Maybe I should establish a box limit: never hoard more than the volume of 15 boxes!

In August I was hitch-hiking along the

northeastern coast of Japan. I can only

recommend that to other travellers. It was

one of my best and most adventurous trips ever. As

always, I didn't had enough time, but it

worked quite fast. From Hitachi to Aomori

and back in only two weeks! A good way to

come into contact with interesting folks, a

natural way.

The place is called Shen Nong Jia 【神农架】. That is “The

shelf (of herbs) of (the legendary druid) Shen Nong”. It’s

maybe the biggest national park of China, located in the

west of Hubei province.

Just vegetation and sky. Just black and white.