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There is nothing the baby would not take into his mouth. His tongue licks everything, whether alive or dead (should the baby know the difference, he does not care). Tongue and saliva investigate the world. The intensity of this investigation will be forever unsurpassed. No sense organ, no thought, no device comes close to where the tongue (with innocent pleasure) advances. We are witnesses of these investigations, but we learn nothing of their results. Perhaps the nature of our baby’s activity lies in investigation itself, which precludes any result. And that may be the source of our great reluctance to use our tongue in the way babies use it (a stage we’ve left behind, we smartly conclude). But perhaps it is also the source of our great delight in entrusting language to our tongue, for this corruption of the tongue’s proper activity (we believe) will never be noticed.

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Our baby’s consistency in following his own rhythm (which from the beginning struck us as an exceptional faculty) is now more and more visibly being supplemented by his ability to adapt. This increase (we definitely want to call it an extension of his character) is nothing less than the miracle of a successful life’s natural constitution. The baby is at home with himself and with us (simultaneously!): two possibilities that interpenetrate and never put each other into question. No one is overpowered, no one is won over. We (the baby, you, I) find that this is the simple path which we should never leave again.

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Who are you, baby? This question has not developed, has not grown a day older. After all, the right moment to ask it is now! The door through which the answer might enter has not yet been constructed, nor is there a building in which its frame could be securely lodged. Therefore, now! Often we ask ourselves this question after years, decades, centuries, when the meaning of asking it has been lost. Who are you is not a question that tolerates delay. It must be asked of the baby in his presence, and even if the only answer we can think of is: our baby, we have already developed and grown one day older.

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A fleeting conversation with an acquaintance (the baby in the carrier bag, we are on the way home from an errand) elicits great indignation. But it is not a protest directed at our disrupted intimacy, which we carelessly interrupted, it is not this evident egoism, which it seems so tempting to interpret (and which after all is just a misrepresentation), nor is it impatience on our baby’s part, or a demand, or an expression of discontent. His displeasure is about the by the way of our conversation, the peculiar thoughtlessness of (friendly, nice) words casually dropped and their semiserious irresolution. When we come to understand this (much later), we become quiet and feel once more (again) the strictness of our baby (disciples and servants, we whisper inaudibly, let us be that, disciples and servants).

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With the baby I can think what I want (I like to think that). In his presence there is no limitation, no censorship, no morality (a more immoral creature than the baby cannot be invented). Amazing that I don’t exploit this freedom (and maybe I can’t – for basic reasons). Even more amazing is the fact that nevertheless I think what I want. It may be like this: just as the baby leaves me in peace with my thoughts (does not come along with thoughts of his own), I too leave myself in peace with my thoughts (by not butting in with my own  thoughts). For a long time my thoughts were closed (like buds). With the baby they flourish. 

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Are these the first little habits? As we put our baby to bed (the pillow across our legs, the baby in the crook of our arm, where he likes to dig his head in deeper), his playing around on the changing table (our surprise at his feet slipping out of the pantyhose again and the baby’s giggling about that), the invented song about the mule (while the baby is rocked on our belly)…? None of what we do together is planned, calculated, deliberate (not even when planned, calculated, and deliberated by us). We could pretend and say: we do it like this and that because we think that’s the best way and because we have these and those other reasons. But we can also marvel at the inventions of life (with the baby) that lightly arise and just as lightly pass away. 

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Our own size surprises us. How huge our hands are, with our baby’s tiny hands lying inside them. And the enormous length of our arms: just one arm is enough to encircle the baby, lift him up and carry him around. And how tall we are (the baby, having pulled himself up by our trouser leg, barely reaches our knee)! Our size is unsettling, because it is known to us from a different point of view (way back then, when we were that little ourselves). We are not quite at ease in this largeness, because we haven’t thought about it for the longest time, and now it strikes us being of the greatest importance. And conceivably we find it unsettling that to our baby our size doesn’t make the slightest difference.

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And we simply don’t see any shadow. No matter where we are and from where we look at our baby, his happiness, our happiness, will not be dimmed. When we hear talk (whispering) of a shadow, we shake our heads imperceptibly. But when we turn around and gaze back into our own life, we see him before us (behind us). But this is not his provenance: the past (his, your, my past). We think: we don’t wish for a shadow, we are not cursed and not superstitious, and we are only slightly fearful, but why do we want to prevent something that does not exist?

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To rejoice in life! A glance at our baby is sufficient: so that’s how it’s done. His joy is convincing. Humans and things elicit the same amicable laughter (only saints can do that). Perhaps this is the secret of unwavering joy: to hold out one’s open arms equally to what is alive and to what is not alive. Or is it the clicking of the tongue against the palate, a thoughtless clicking, in self-certain exultation. Or is it the impossibility of worry and the equally thoughtless confidence. The secret of joy can be all sorts of things, just not secret.

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Do you think, baby? What is going on with your thoughts? Has the first one shown up yet, has it already been thought? We look at our baby with curiosity. A first thought – shouldn’t we have witnessed it already, or will we do so soon, or are we witnessing it just now? Is thinking something that develops in you? Is there a life before the first thought and then a life after? Thus we gaze at our baby, wait a little and then a little longer, and now suddenly it arises, floats into view and falls away again. A thought, we immediately think, is something very different from what we always thought.