Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

Our baby’s ear: always present. We talk about others, about this and that man, this and that woman. Sometimes we say good things, sometimes something less good, sometimes nothing good at all. Suddenly we notice: our baby is hearing it. He may not understand us, but he hears us. He hears. A peculiar shyness grips us suddenly as we speak, as though we had always taken it for granted that no one can hear us no matter how loudly or softly we speak, no matter if our speech is directed outward or inward. And with shyness comes caution: it could be dangerous to talk the way we talk, not because someone might understand (and pass on) what we say, but only because we are being heard. Whom are we betraying when we speak as we do? Beautiful, hairless ear of our baby. But wait, a backlight reveals golden down that seems to be reaching into the air between him and us. We get very quiet. Saying nothing good, nothing bad. Nothing about this or that man, this or that woman.

 

 

 

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

I come home. Our baby is glad (he’s standing by the table in the living room, tearing a newspaper and occasionally tasting a piece in his mouth). But not glad because I came back after the few days I was gone. He’s glad because I’m here now. The difference is so huge that it is hard for me to recognize it (maybe it’s hard for me too because I would like to think he awaited my return with longing, counting the days, not with his fingers but with his heartbeats). Whoever is here is here, and whoever is not here is not here! It’s that simple, but only a baby can live and experience it without effort. Our mutual encounters join seamlessly: this produces elation in me. A poem starts forming: Unsutured time harbors bliss, it says. Just then, from the background, distinct and friendly, your voice comes into play, saying: Wouldn’t you like to welcome me too?  

 

 

 

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

I’m on an island. Not a very large island (circling it takes no more than half an hour). The water, slightly stirred by the wind, caresses its shore. Ducks are rocking on the lake (typical duck behavior: rocking perfectly, without enthusiasm, casually, as a matter of course). In the background, mildly steep mountains, mottled with patches of snow. After daybreak, the sightseers come with the ship. They prowl about aimlessly, talking, laughing, taking pictures. Of me too, as I cross the cloister’s courtyard to enter the seminar house. The island is me, I call out to them, maybe you’re an island too, who knows. They wave in reply. I think of our baby: water and mountains lie between us. (I’m very pleased with myself for not trying to imagine what he’s doing at the moment. Not imagining his smile either, or the grip of his hand, nor even the occasionally upright shock of tangled blond hair. I’m imagining one thing only: how he’s lying in your arms.) 

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

 

 

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

How slowly the border opens. There, the baby; here, the two of us (you, I). Forever (that’s how long time with him looks in retrospect: beginninglessly long) our baby, though in our nearest proximity, dwells in a monad that is lovely to look at, which we take pleasure in turning about, which we can also look into (but there’s almost nothing to see), which we foster and supply, touch a great deal, and talk to. Every effect of our actions delights and confirms us as much as it sometimes confuses and puzzles us. Seen in this way, it’s a one-sided business that belies, covers up, glosses over our love. We flow toward our baby, but the reverse current is much sparser and thinner than we would like to believe. But today! Our baby holds on to us, to our breast and neck, he pulls himself over to us and suddenly his body surface seems to be losing its innocence, a shy but perceptible welling up begins, an uninsistent, soft and warm flow in our direction, like a first response (and in fact, we now notice, it is something we have been waiting for with great perseverance).

 

 

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

Is this is an egoistic thought? The wish arises that our baby might be spared the development of an individual personhood and personality. We are not at odds with our own person (yours, mine) or our own personality (yours, mine) – the wind of egoism is not, at any rate, wafting out of this corner. We think: Couldn’t our baby stay as he is now (all is well, after all) and nevertheless mature and grow up? Couldn’t he just do without his I? Without an I we would different, completely different, or even not at all. Just to wish it feels like a sacrilege (a much more far-reaching sacrilege than the crudest genetic manipulation could be). But it is just this impossibility and inconceivability (of an I-less development) that appeals to us (so that is where the ego-wind is coming from). All the more so as our baby is looking at each of us in alternation, from one (me, you) to the other (you, me) and back (at you, at me). This exchange of glances strikes us as so new, this look that goes back and forth and that, every time it lands on us, feels like the toll of an inner bell. Which is soon followed by the gloriously egoistic wish that our baby may soon bring an I to maturity.

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

Shortly before 4 AM is when night (we look at the clock in disbelief) ends for us (you, me). Our baby wants to leave his bed and get into ours, then he wants to leave our bed and go to the closet, to the lowest drawer with the sports gear (he’s particularly taken with the Yoga block made of cork; he chewed off a piece yesterday – but isn’t it still yesterday?). The feeling of being expelled from deepest sleep is overwhelming: the sleepiness is huge, but now wakefulness is there and will not be replaced. The weight of sleepiness is as heavy as the whole world; wakefulness bears it with astonishing courage and great (though grumpy) composure. Our baby says (now at this early hour, which feels like a late one to us, we understand him quite well): What do you want with your daytime here, nighttime there, you one-sided creatures! Night is as good for clearing out shelves as day is! (Shouldn’t we have been suspicious from the beginning that our baby was sleeping so much? All the things we believed! Concerning the baby’s sense of time in your belly. Concerning his switch to the outside world, to us, to our diurnal and nocturnal rhythms. Concerning the disproportion between his sleeping and waking. The conviction of knowing the difference between day and night, and of knowing the purpose of each, now looks to us like an inadmissible conclusion. Our temporal arrangements seem false now, we would go so far as to say that we can no longer tell day and night apart, nor do we wish to. We have switched to the other side, the utterly other side of our baby, who appears to us as the first human being, who knows nothing about the division of day and night, light and darkness, following a rhythm that is no rhythm but his own, our beautiful baby, squatting on his legs, immovable as he reaches into the drawer and pulls out the Yoga block and throws it at our head, in the middle of the night – but this can’t be true, probably we all fell asleep again, the baby, you, I, and just forgot to turn out the light.)

 

 

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

And our master is growing. It’s strange that we (still) hold to the opinion that a master is someone who has grown up. But the grownups are us (you, me) and we are truly not masters (which does not mean that we think little of ourselves). Maybe, we think, our master’s growth (in speed, in size, in persistence) corresponds to our growing comprehension as students, but this we immediately reject, for it would put the baby’s original perfection in question or even make it seem implausible. Our baby doesn’t make it easy for us: He can’t possibly be less perfect now than in the beginning. So it’s like this: He is as perfect in the beginning as he is now, and from the beginning he grows and has not ceased to grow even now. What that means to us is that his perfection and his growth go together. And what does that mean for ourselves, his grownup students? (No one is watching, so we turn for help to our baby’s ear. We are not in agreement as to whether his ear resembles your ear more than mine, or your father’s ear or my mother’s. That is something only the future will tell, possibly with an utterly surprising result. At any rate, we realize now: the lesson of growth is reaching us too early.)

 

 

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

If we’re asked what we’re doing (the baby, you, I) the answer is, not much, strictly speaking we’re doing nothing, nothing at all. Apart from a few important things, we walk around without purpose. In fact, by now we’re taking care of even the most important things in the same way that we do the meaningless ones. Although — there really aren’t any meaningless things, although — there aren’t any important things. In short, we don’t do much, yet we experience a lot. With a side glance at our baby with his sidelong glance (he’s looking at a recently heat-insulated wall with a sign: “No leaning of bicycles here!” — at nothing, that is, that might serve as an experience), we say: it seems to us as though we had only recently started to experience things. Ever since the birth of our baby, little by little (because we’re slow learners) we have found our way into doing nothing, which is actually the richest kind of doing there can be, and now it would be hard for us to stop doing nothing. It is an unbelief that we share with some parents (but many have already fallen away from it), the unbelief of our contentment in not-doing, which is impervious to any activity we may undertake (after all, we are pursuing our professions, albeit with somewhat shortened work hours). So we can say without exaggeration: We have never been busier than today.