Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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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?

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

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.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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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.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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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.

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A sudden fear: the baby doesn’t belong to me (us). It belongs to no one. The baby liberates me (us) from possessiveness by its own irrevocable existence. As far as itself is concerned, it wants me (you) possessionless, dispossessed. That which is cannot possibly be possessed. Which does not mean that what is cannot, itself, own or possess. After all, we belong to the baby! A Question: Is it easier or harder to take care of something (or someone) that (who) does not belong to you, than to take care of something (someone) who belongs to you? The answer: the baby’s face, asleep.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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We want to be good. To be good quickly. To be good right away. To be good all the time. The baby prods our ambition. And our ambition allows us to hope: That we will reach our goal; that our child will thrive. But our haste rests upon a misunderstanding. It could lead us to miss what is most essential. The baby knows what we need now. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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The inversion. It is not we who are the caretakers. Rather, we are being cared for. The baby’s greatest care is for our attention. We are habitually inattentive. The baby has found us in order to bring that to our attention. It demands our undivided attention, it wants us awake and not sleepy. And it wants this precisely now that it has so thoroughly disordered our sleep. We obey the baby and an unaccustomed tiredness seizes hold of us. We understand (for the time being): What we used to consider our waking state was an extension of sleep.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Everyday life. The baby rules. It would be pointless to object. Not only because there is no choice in the matter. We want to obey the baby and the slightest resistance arising within us reminds us of that willingness. Not to seek nor to find a way out of the daily chores – a practice we have long done without. Their repetition shows us the way. Waking up at night, getting up early. Nursing, undressing, wrapping, dressing, silently watching and listening. Again and again: holding the baby with a care that is as selfevident as breathing.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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Home. Something clears up when the baby moves in. It takes up more space than the space of its little body. It is present throughout the apartment. The whole house. The street in front of the house. The district. The town. The country. (Everywhere where we are.) It can do that because it does not occupy space. There is nothing belligerent about it. It doesn’t care about boundaries. It comes from water. Being is liquid. In this way the baby teaches me (us) something: how to grow beyond oneself in one’s own body. We remember. This is touch.