Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

What is the baby? (A question we try to avoid answering. We dislike the question because it implants a doubt: as if we didn’t know what our baby is. There it lies on the red blanket with the white lilies, spreading the fingers of its right hand. That is our baby. An inadequate answer, evasive, as are all the answers we could give. We suspect that this question is tempting us. To what? To admit that the divine needs us and that we are not as random as we would like to assure ourselves.)

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

A leap of time, and we hear the voice of the baby as it may sound some day when it is no longer a baby: Climb upon the hill outside your city. Look at her and her constant growth, and look at the sky above her. How it watches over her with unchanging grandeur and power, though the sky itself does not grow.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Our strong wish, again and again, to return to the adult point of view and stay there. To look at the baby from there, the better to see the little human being who knows nothing and needs us. We think: The baby can’t exist without us. That we can’t exist without the baby seems true, but it is a truth we resist. Then the baby screams, and without hesitation we heed his call.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

The baby’s outrageous proximity to death. Hence his composure. And the gravity he has brought with him into the world. A gravity untainted by fate, vanity, and judgment. No fear clouds the baby’s proximity to That which we dread above all (it is we who are cowards). His sleep is deeper than any depth we can imagine. With whom is he keeping a rendezvous down there? The baby’s faithful proximity to death. Hence his infinite pleasure in life.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

In handling the baby, let every touch be guided by affection. This demands discipline and allows for no practice. How could we practice something we were born with? The baby shows us our capacity by yielding itself to our care. Dressing the body, undressing the body; watch out for the head. You can do it: loving kindness, with no interruption.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Contemplation of the baby continues (stops). Wondrous recognition: that irony, mockery, or ridicule are inconceivable here. All the usual artificialities of human distance have evaporated. That is the dignity that imbues the space between us and the baby. Where else is such completeness ever realized, we ask ourselves. Into the dawning of our fear that we could bring something into the world that would destroy this perfection, the baby shrieks with delight.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Equally beautiful: the baby’s sleeping face, the baby’s face awake. Equilibrium.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Just watching. Looking at the baby. For minutes. Hours. Day after day. Learning to be: the only – motionless – doing (this is the most important thing: to remain motionless). And not to act. To carry out the most necessary actions with the greatest restraint: not to act. To be like the baby without being a baby. To imitate without imitating. Just watching. Seeing (and as for happiness, just letting it be).

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

No chaos in the beginning. No disorder that would ever need to be transformed into its opposite. Everything is clear and evident and visible. This is too much for us. We interpret what is, make a puzzle of it. The obvious eludes us. Like lunatics we seek to understand (a desperation we do not like to admit and that stays with us throughout our life). Simplicity is too simple for us. It’s not due to a lack of good will on our part. It’s due to the chaos we have become. But we were once babies ourselves. Just like you, exactly like you. You must be within us. Exactly the way you lie before us, you must be within us.