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The baby is in pain, completely. We want to console it (faster than we want). Do we want to console this away: being completely in pain? Being at one with pain? The baby accepts consolation, allows itself to be consoled. It takes what comes: pain, consolation. No, the pain is it. Consolation comes from outside. But consolation in our arms has also an inner side, is an inward, indwelling feature of this world. A doubt, which does not interfere with consolation: the baby’s pain and our wish to console have nothing to do with each other.

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A dream chimes in, unsolicited. It’s about the affluent city we are visiting at the moment. About the beggars who are posted at every corner, every passageway, by every bridge and in front of the churches. The beggars all look alike, even male and female are hard to tell apart. Each one bears a picture of his or her family and place of origin. A styrofoam cup from a coffee shop stands in front of each one on the pavement. They all mumble the same words, waving a hand and wishing passersby and their children a good day. Suddenly our baby escapes. Quickly, with swift, nimble motions, like a fish, he glides through the alleys and gives all the beggars coins from our purses. We rush after him but are unable to catch him. Soon we have crossed the entire city, but the baby persists in giving away our money, down to the last coin. Then it turns around, looks at us, shrugs, and snuggles up to the nearest beggar, who holds it to his breast as if it were his own child. We wake up screaming, but it is only me who woke up, and a moment later I realize that I didn’t scream at all.

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Everything that happens, happens spontaneously. If the baby appears to be thinking, we are immediately tempted to assume the opposite. Behind every stirring, especially a stirring of the eye, every glance, and especially when that glance meets our gaze, we imagine something hidden, a secret, a context (preferably that of love). If joy shines out at us, we brim over. If we hear screaming, we are alarmed. The baby’s patience is unfathomable. Every day he practices with us the flux and transience of feeling – and yet succeeds only in nourishing our unbelief in his spontaneity.

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My conviction that what I’m saying makes sense is powerful. I am quite full of myself. And rightly so. I really make an effort. When I speak nonsense, it’s always on purpose. The baby listens to me, no matter what I choose to talk about. Sometimes he responds with something I don’t understand.  Or he’ll pucker his lips. Or turn his hand. I, at any rate, never do anything that might negatively affect our conversation. When you’re silent, I tell him, you’re not really silent. When you make a sound, like the one you just made, you’re not making a sound. Your language is the language of your body. I think there’s something undivided in you that is divided in me. I can speak as if I had no body, as if I could speak without my body. My speech is like thought. I only think that I speak. Here the baby interrupts me. Glances sideways. I too glance sideways.

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You are always there. You’re not a teacher who slinks off on his own. Who ducks away or absconds. You’re not the disappearing kind. You are visible. Audible. Palpable. Breathable. You don’t smell at all like the well-known teachers. Your odor: This is a teacher one can inhale. And exhale. Without remainder. Who, with this scent in their nostrils, would still listen out for the teacher to say the unsayable?

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You will not remember this moment. (This could be the first time your nails are being cut.) You prove that it is possible to exist without memory. To be completely present, without any knowledge of now or a moment ago. Why do you show us this? But you’re not showing us anything, or proving anything. You let us think what we want. Gracious baby, who are you?

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Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Having an unrealistic sense of one’s own size is a persistent error. It can’t be corrected by argument. It lies deeper than faith in God. Only a god can heal it. A god’s foot. A baby’s foot. Foot next to foot. The baby’s foot next to the adult’s foot. Amazement at their relative size. Later, after the baby’s foot has been wrapped up and one’s own foot juts out beyond the sofa’s armrest, we feel a kind of vertigo: we are so small. We are all too happy to forget our smallness. Our limitation is not that we aren’t great. It’s that we don’t remember.

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The aversion felt in the past toward the teacher, the skepticism, envy, even mistrust – they are gone. As if they had never existed. And our previous confidence, blind obedience, desire for union, even euphoria over the teacher’s approval, seem now, in retrospect, little more than empty gestures of faith. Gratitude to the baby and his sovereign way of dispensing with words. Single sounds are sufficient for teaching. How much more so a cry.

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Who are you, baby? Who are you, stranger? Remarkably, we manage to live without an answer to this question. To live with someone unknown to us, without feeling revulsion and fear. Even though normally we’re shy with strangers. But there is no doubt regarding the baby’s character. Just as there is no doubt concerning the little hand that is stirring just now. We firmly believe that this stranger’s small hand is showing us home.