Tag: ZEN

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The Quality of Relations

The Salt and Pepper ghosts in the South of FranceThis blog post is inspired by a tweet from Perez Hilton. Thank you, Perez!

I played matchmaker last night – quite successfully – and I love it! Hopefully, soon, I will meet a QUALITY man myself! I deserve it! #Amen

Have you noticed that some people treat relationships like a (tennis-) match? Even before the two opponents meet, we know already the final result: one winner ”“ one loser

Let”™s have a closer look at the tennis court. Balls are like arguments, the net reminds me of our (inner) censors, the court itself could be named the empathy area and the lines are your (self-set) borders. In the deluxe version you will also find a judge and an audience.

Maybe the following scene sounds familiar: you are happily at a party and suddenly out of nowhere, a couple starts to play. They did not even ask you if you would like to be their judge (or audience). In the not-so-lucky case, you can”™t leave this awkward scene and Scotty just doesn”™t beam you up”¦

What”™s the quality of a discussion victory with a loser and only one winner? It”™s 2010 and you are intelligent! Try a different approach:

Go for win-win, remove your fences, have a look at your own-built limitations (censors, lines ”¦) and have the balls to loose. You can only win, because Love is Louder!

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Real Down

Real Down or Real Down - that's the questionWhen you read Real Down, what concept does your brain present you? Maybe some not so comfortable feelings come up. In the ups and downs of life most of us try to avoid the way down. While sinking, we feel like the Titanic.

Naturally we invest a lot of energy to swim against the current. What a waste, you might miss some good lessons. Humans tend to learn quicker in “negative” situations and fake friends could be worth a fortune for you in the end.

When there’s nothing to do, let go — hit the bottom and ground your-self. Now it’s time to jump up!

P.S. … and Real Down by Barbour will keep you warm in wintertime 😉

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ZEN-Sparring with Peter Ralston

Portrait of world champion Peter Ralston“Sparring is a form of training common to many martial arts. Although the precise form varies, it is essentially relatively ‘free-form‘ fighting…” Wikipedia.

World champion Peter Ralston and author of the books Cheng Hsin, Zen Body-Being and The Book of Not Knowing agreed to do some ‘free-form thinking’ with me. I did sent him some questions and he was so friendly to give us some kind of training with his detailed answers. Thank you, Peter!

Let’s do a warm-up:

5. Feelings: Anything we experience only has the value we put into it. If you feel hurt, who did *really* hurt you?

You have to experience not just that you are creating your emotions, but feel yourself in the act of creating the emotions.

6. Work: It seems we struggle day in, day out. What is the highest level of fighting?

One of the most important dynamics I learned while attempting to master fighting is that whenever I had trouble with an opponent ”” when the relationship was characterized as a struggle for me ”” I always found that I was mentally resisting the opponent being exactly the way that he was.

8. Love: Love is being the first one to give. Why are we afraid to love?

When you are afraid to love, or afraid of anything else for that matter, you imagine future negative consequences. If you didn”™t imagine something bad might happen, then you would love freely, wouldn”™t you?

Are you ready for the full, detailed training?
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The Stress Window

a new window conceptWhen we are stressed, our window to the world can be full of bricks, in the worst case, all we see is a plain wall. The good news is, you don’t have to be Jackie Chan (or Guy Kawasaki) to fight back your clear vision. Omar Al Rashid Bey wrote in the year 1912(!):

“You enter the room – and out of nothing evolves appearance, movement and design, body, character, strength, effectiveness, development, life in endless abundance and endless changes; from your feelings – the world.

Soon this room will appear to you large or small, high or low, light or dark, hot or cold, beautiful or ugly, or in any aspects desirable or undesirable to your senses, and every gradation between these opposites of your feelings. The ground on which you stand is under you, the ceiling you see above you, the portal through which you have entered is behind you, before you, giving wide views, the open bow, the closed wall here is to your left and that’s the right side of the room.

These are descriptions, judgments that seem indisputable – but when someone stands in front of you, he claims, the side that you refer to as the right one, is suddenly the left one for him and he says, the wall that you call the left , is now his right one. Judgments can not both be true: they are contradictory, are opposites that exclude each other, they cancel each other out.

Here happens the miracle that something with a specific attribute is used simultaneously with the opposite of the term. Who of the judges is right at the end? No one – or, if you want both. The wall is both right and left, also none of the two, neither left nor right.”

(from the German book “Das hohe Ziel der Erkenntnis”)

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Balloon glowing

balloon glowingSome people glow in the dark. Some even lift off…

Recently at a party a guy asked me: “Who are you?” My name is Chris. “Have you ever been to London?” Yes, I have been there several times. (He was shocked!) “Last time I was in London” he went on “we really did scare the English party people! We were four and went to a club and drank six liters of Vodka!!!”

My brain was calculating and searching for the added value in the content of his story. Maybe you already guessed it, he had some more valuable stories to share. Being a good listener, I mindfully followed his adventures through London, Munich and St. Moritz. After a while, he had my compassion for looking for happiness and peace in all the “wrong” places (glasses).

At one point, he reminded me of a balloon. Filled with lots of hot gas, floating over ground. Rising up into higher spheres but without much control. Up and down is easy to manage as long as you have enough gas (drinx) left. Where you finally will land, is written in the cosmic winds.

With two feet on the ground, navigation through life is much easier. Use all your sharp senses and be a proud pilot! You might not glow in the dark but you can be a great guiding light for others. Namaste

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The quality of Sleep


It’s all about quality. The quality of life, love, friends and family. Quantity can make you feel tired, left alone and useless.

How would you connect stress with sleep? My personal life experience is, I can sleep for 10 hours and still feel like a smashed tomato or be totally refreshed after a 15 minutes Power-Nap. What makes the difference?

Our brains are a bit like computers, we have energy saving modes like standby (that’s when you wait in this endless customer support hotline), hibernation (you try to sleep but your brain still takes a backup of today), sleep mode (your brain finally shuts off after you got a blue screen) and dreaming (only for humans, unless you are HAL 9000).

When we enter the supermarket, most of us have a tag cloud in our heads: milk, bread, tomatoes, beer, juice, water, potato chips… We are lost until we start to focus and set priorities. If you want to relax and increase the quality of your life, a good sleep is a great foundation. Power-Naps and Sleep-Ins by ZEN-MEN might be great tools for you. Happy relaxing and Bonne nuit!

iTunes: ZEN-MEN

iTunes: free video podcast by ZEN-MEN

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The Book of Not Knowing

Book cover of The Book of not KnowingThe package from Amazon arrived and I thought: “Wow, quite heavy for one single book!” Opened the box and first of all I had to laugh 😀
Does it really take 581 pages to learn how to NOT know? In one word: Yes.

In the past I wrote about two other books of world champion Peter Ralston: Cheng Hsin and Zen Body-Being. The Book of Not Knowing is basically a manual how to dismantle Your-Self. Let’s do a flight through the table of contents (only a few extracts!):

  • Questioning the Obvious
  • A Powerful Openness
  • Beginning to Wonder
  • Knowing and Not-Knowing
  • Learning to Not-Know
  • Empty Your Cup
  • We Are Culture
  • What Is an Insight?
  • Authentic Experience
  • Honesty
  • What Is a Concept?
  • Concepts Dominate Our Perceptions
  • Masks and Hats
  • Looking for Self in All the Wrong Places
  • The Origins of Your Self
  • What Am I?
  • “Doing” versus “Being”
  • The Never-Ending Story of Me
  • Life in the Loop
  • Living as a False-Self
  • All about You
  • Social Survival
  • Survival Is Not Being
  • Changing from Reaction to Experience
  • On the Shoulders of Giants
  • Feeling Trapped
  • Creating a Place to Stand
  • Looking Both Ways
  • The Nature of Emotion
  • The Paradox of Being
  • A Final Word

Keep in mind, there are even more chapters/ topics in the book! My favorites are in the chapter The Nature of Reality: Fear and Anger

Peter leads the way a bit, provides reflective questions to help us to keep on going the path ourselves. If we would only believe the insights Peter talks about, we would just drop into another concept trap. Have you ever thought about how fear can exist? Fear is only possible in a future space-time and maybe you have already noticed, we live in the Now… A hint: fear is not pain…

Anger and a feeling of being hurt are close friends. You find the fuel for anger in your past. It’s up to you how much you feed that fire. Some let it burn until the therapist fires up the three silver bullets: “You have burnout!”

If you know a lot, you are considered clever. If you don’t know much, you are labeled as dumb. Breathing in is a wise move if you like to stay alive - breathing out is considered as intelligent, too!

Besides being a manual, The Book of Not Knowing is also a kind of a dictionary, a travel guide, fun, a translator and liberator. If you are lost in translation at daytimes and are tired of your life in the loop at nighttimes, this book is for you. Thank you, Peter!

Amazon.com The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind, and Consciousness

Short feedback from Peter:

Chris,
Thanks for writing about NK. Glad you enjoyed it.
Not sure if “Fear is not pain” will give readers a correct impression, but I doubt it really matters since they’ll have to read up on it anyway.
Thanks for the support, I appreciate it.
Peter

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Happiness cannot be found

A rainbow in France at the beachAbout happiness, rainbows and elephants by Lama Gendun Rinpoche

Happiness cannot be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present, in open relaxation and letting go.

Don”™t strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises in the body-mind
has no real importance at all, has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with, and become attached to it,
passing judgment upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves,
without changing or manipulating anything,
and notice how everything vanishes and
reappears, magically, again and again,
time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It”™s like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever
catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.

Although peace and happiness do not exist
as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don”™t believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are like today”™s ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there – open, inviting and comfortable.

Make use of the spaciousness, this freedom and natural ease.
Don”™t search any further.
Don”™t go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing…

Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.

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Enough

Man with hat, Mauritius, OceanEnough is a very relative concept. In Germany 18 degree celsius are warm enough to have a drink on the balcony, whereas it would be too cold for people on Mauritius to go to work.

Let’s have a closer look at that concept. The main elements are:

You – Need ”“ Cure

You are thirsty, your body needs water, the cure is to drink a glass of water or a cup of tea. Easy, right? Now get a lottery ticket, win 10 million $$$ – how many cars will you buy? Why?

Sangter Tulku Rinpoche recently said:

If you have 1$ you have one problem. If you have 10000$ you have 10000 problems.

In various topics of our lives, it seems there is never enough for us. Not enough time, love, money, happiness, freedom, peace, …

When a very good friend told me: “In 10 years we will have fully paid off our house, then we can have a real good life!” I asked him: “And what do you do now in the next 10 years?”

Most times the real trouble with the enough-concept starts when we drop into the compare-trap. The good news is, in most cases, the creator and savior resides in the same brain.

Two friends were at a party held at the mansion of a billionaire. One said, “Wow! Look at this place! This guy has everything!” The other said, “Yes, but I have something he’ll never have: enough.”

Anything in this world, has exactly the value you assign to it. Anything. Think about it, until you have enough…

Thanks Derek for the inspiration!

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Buddhism meets Star Wars

One of the key scenes of Star Wars is Luke Skywalker flying through the tunnel of the Death Star. Approaching his target, thoughts and fears cloud his vision, doubts expand in his mind like marshmallows in a microwave. Shortly before he collapses, he hears the voice of his master in his head: “Use the Force, Luke!”

Professor Dr. Gerhard Marcel Martin wrote a fine book about old sayings of the wandering monks of medieval Japan – the Hijiri. The collection is dated between 1287 and 1333. The inherent force of these sayings is enlightening even today:

#4 Disturbances don’t have priority.

Luke was surrounded by disturbances; fire towers, TIE fighters – Darth Vader. How did he reach his goal? Disturbances had no priority for him. Sure, there are as always exceptions to the rule. Next time you feel like Luke, use the Hijiri (or Jedi) force!

#22 Actions where you have to weigh up whether you should do it or not, you’d better leave undone.

A pair of proton torpedos fired by Mr Skywalker destroyed the Death Star – a pair of sonic words can exterminate a relationship. MYÅŒZEN (1184 – 1225) suggests us here to have a look at the tiny gap between our thoughts and actions. A word, once said, you cannot take back. Sure you can try to apologize, but out is out. Like the proton torpedos. Allow yourself this microsecond of time – it might make the difference between Death and Star.

Amazon.de (in German only so far) Buddhismus krass: Botschaften der japanischen Hijiri-Mönche

Feedback (in German) from Professor Dr. Gerhard Marcel Martin:

Lieber Herr Remspecher!
Endlich sage ich Dank für Ihre e-mail. Hat mich erfreut. Und ich fühle mich / mein Buch garnicht mißverstanden!
Ich war kurz in Nordkalifornien (darum die verspätete Antwort) und werde in Kürze nach Japan und Korea reisen.
Freundliche Grüße
Ihr
Gerhard Marcel Martin

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