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Sometimes we dream together with our eyes open: how the baby stops time. We feel the jolt that makes us reel. And a rumble that drives the plugs from our ears. A new, fresh insight shoots into the place in us where, a moment ago, we still suspected some movement: the stagnation is over! Now that time has ceased, there is no stopping for us. We are growing. We have never seen anything like this before. The baby seems familiar with it. He appears unconcerned. It’s not a dream, he says, breathing softly between parted lips, not even a dream with open eyes.

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The baby pays no heed to the world that came before. (Our own measureless passion for the past almost killed us on several occasions.) But we can’t just drop our caring for and tending to our origins from one day to the next: doesn’t the shape of our baby’s head resemble that of a grandparent? That is one of the baby’s favorite ways of pulling our leg: by having us seek and find similarities (our faith in blood-kinship is unwavering; we find it confirmed on all sides). What we call similarity is our prayer to posterity. But this is one prayer the baby will not answer. If we did not know better, we should have to say: the baby denies any kinship with us altogether.

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We can feel it: nothing is hidden from this baby. We are not hidden from his view. We are more visible than ever (a pleasure that requires no waiting.) The baby reverses our ceaseless desire for concealment, it draws us out of the morass of our ordinariness, which shows in our tendency to disintegrate into habits. Now that we are visible, we are wholly visible (whole). Astonished, we think (now, of all times): This baby lives in seclusion.

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The teacher who dwells inside me, and whom I don’t know. The perfect other within me, whom I resemble in all ways, down to the last hair. He couldn’t be more different from me. We are completely the same. And not at all similar (hard to imagine, because I’m an almost fanatic believer in differences). Without this teacher I cannot take a step. The baby, I think–and a connection suggests itself: that the unknown, indwelling teacher is the baby. It’s clever of him not to be able to come up with an explanation for this impossibility (we resemble each other after all).

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We feel the baby’s selfless efforts to understand us. And immediately (a flash of insight) we rush to assure ourselves that surely it can’t be his goal in life to understand us (the fact that this is a necessity proves nothing). Do we ever try to understand anyone the way the baby tries to understand us? Without prejudice (do we even know what that would be like?), with open curiosity (not the grasping kind), without foreknowledge and references, wholeheartedly? (Could we put into words how far ahead of us the baby is?)

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Maybe it really is crazy: following someone I don’t know anything about and about whom nothing knowable can be learned. Placing trust (the greatest trust) in someone I met only recently, a baby, tiny, toothless, chubby! I think it is to my credit that this idea (to follow him) came into my life as unexpectedly as he did. And that I can trust myself (my trust) without reservation, precisely because there are sound reasons for distrusting myself. How about you? Are you crazy too?

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Not to bother the baby, just as it doesn’t bother us. Not supporting any effort. Stopping short of futility by relaxing all strain. Letting thoughts sink into the groundless void, and remaining unimpressed by that. The emotions are at rest. The baby’s long stretches of sleep teach us a kind of first rule: Take a vacation from everything (once applied, there is nothing more to be learned in this area).

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The baby’s perfection encounters our imperfection (that too is something we find difficult to admit: Basically we consider ourselves perfect. What makes this admission even harder is that we are in fact perfect). In this collision, the baby helps us by miming the needy creature (which in fact it is; its perfection does not leave anything out). Still, we don’t readily shed all our dross. We are slow to be purified. We look to the baby for an answer. All it wants is to drink.

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Even if we wanted to (we don’t), we could not dissolve the bond between ourselves and the baby. A sudden, darting thought: that whatever is indissoluble could not ever have not existed. But the baby didn’t use to be there! Or did we overlook it?