Allgemein

34

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

There’s no need for us to get used to it, that’s how quickly we say our baby. Our baby. Our. Our. Our. Our. Our. We joggle the word every which way until it either divulges its sense or confesses its non-sense. But nothing like that happens. We continue to say and feel: it is our baby.

33

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

To be in the world without being of the world. Gliding through the waters of his gaze into a sense of the unknown meaning. Without sighs: which we will never be able to utter. When the baby’s gaze flows toward us, that flow is, for us, at the same time a pull, as of a current. Directions are always all directions. We find comfort in the absence of any visible intention. We follow the invisible one.

31

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

In the past, without the baby, one day followed another. Today, with the baby, we dive through the days. Each time we rise to the surface of a day, another one falls upon us. Again we float upward, and a new day descends. It’s almost as if we had exchanged the horizontal dimension for the vertical. It’s as if we had lost the night.

29

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.)

28

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.

27

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.

26

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.

25

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Babies everywhere (including babies like us). Babies everywhere: Our eyes blur, our ears burn. Outside and inside: babies. The only ones who exist: babies. Every day new babies. More and more babies. For years, centuries, millennia: more and more babies. The only constant in our world. Yet no single baby takes away from another; nor does it add anything.