Some days ago I got an e-mail from an Indian friend searching books of Pythagoras for an acquaintance. I didn’t know much about any books of this great initiate in English, I just have read the excellent book of Master EK (Ekkirala Krishnamacharya), “The Wisdom of Pythagoras“, which for the time being is out of print in English and only available in German and Spanish.

Wikipedia said that no texts by Pythagoras survived, but some relevant source texts from Antiquity deal with his life and teachings and that of his followers. There is even an on-line book, The Complete Pythagoras, containing all survived biographies and Pythagorean fragments. Since my Indian friend has built up a beautiful little Spiritual Book Centre in Hyderabad, which I had visited last January, I tried to find out a bit more about books on the esoteric teachings of Pythagoras and asked an American friend with a profound spiritual background, but he referred me also to Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica, with paid content.

May last year we had been for a seminar on Pythagoras with our spiritual teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, in Samos, where the great spiritual master was born. He later had to leave his native island to escape the tyrannical government of Polycrates. We had seen the caves where he had lived and I remember a beautiful evening meditation in the harbour of Pythagoreion at the feet of the Pythagoras statue.

Statue of Pythagoras at Pythagoreion, with cosmological and mathematical symbols related to his teachings

View from the cave, where Pythagoras meditated

The cave is situated in a rock face at the north coast of the island.

View from out of the cave

Pythagoras – meeting of cosmic and human wisdom

Yesterday afternoon we went with our eldest son to the cinema seeing “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” (see also the previous post). Though I found the film was better than the last one, my son said when leaving the cinema: “I had imagined it very differently”.

A book might give you strong inner images. A film is an externalisation of the imagination of the director, the producers and the public expectations. The Harry Potter-film contained quite an intense visual imagination work, elaborated in the high-tech studios.

Outer pictures superimpose themselves on your own imagining. This is what my son felt, and me too. If you get an overload of outer images, they can drown you and block your own process. But they might also be a stimulant, because they are a concretised visualisation. Visualisation is an important tool for the journey inside.

The last days there had been several encounters and exchanges – at the office, via e-mail, at home – where the topic was something about the spiritual path and spirituality in life. Reflecting on them gave an image how varied the individuals shape their paths.

Some gave the feeling of groping their way through a foggy cloud of aspirations, being attracted by various themes and teachings, but only hazily committing themselves to a routine and a task. There is something like a diffuse light, which has not yet taken shape.

Others seemed to be focused on a path – it was practising and teaching yoga exercises – but somehow with a mental conception learnt from a teacher and a tradition. There seemed to be a rigidity – trying to maintain a purity, which at the same time seemed to lack suppleness and inner connectedness. Their light was like being crystallized.

Again others were taking to commitment and an active search to shape their path. Though still not all-round chiselled, contours could be seen and an inner fire felt. Their path seemed to be in a process of clearing and the inner light to be ready to shine forth with the development ahead.

My wife said that the last days she often had the image of a circle with a point before her inner eye, when she was dealing with people. The point – the inner core, the I Am, or the soul – is like the focus of a lens. It has to become centred in order to gain strength. The fire has to be kindled. This can be done with the help of different means like dedication to a task, the support from a spiritual teacher, a meditational discipline … – or a combination of these.

The purpose remains the same – strengthening the fire, the radiance, the magnetism. In the image of the circle with the point, you go from the circumference to the centre, and then again from centre to circumference.

Photo of a sunspot seen from the side, from the Japanese satellite Hinode, by Nasa Astronomy Picture of the Day, April 2nd, 2007

A friend yesterday sent me a link to the Maitreya Project. I had heard before about the initiative to build a 500 ft / 152m bronze statue at Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh in northern India. Kushinagar is the place, where Lord Buddha passed away, and it is one of the most sacred Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India.

The idea of a huge Maitreya statue for the project is from Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935-84) and its realisation is under the guidance of Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.

According to Buddhist scriptures, Maitreya is considered to be the next Buddha who will teach the path of loving-kindness to the world. “The very name ‘Maitreya’ means loving-kindness – in today’s world, we really need loving-kindness,” says the Dalai Lama.

About the purpose and vision behind the project they say:

“For thousands of years the world’s enduring monuments have provided powerful symbols, reminders of society’s most treasured values. During the 20th century most of the world’s great buildings and public development projects have been ‘monuments’ to commercial interests: high-rise business buildings, airports, shopping malls, theatres and theme parks. The Maitreya Buddha statue will provide the world with a much-needed and enduring monument to spiritual values, a reminder of the benefits of creating peace at every level through practicing loving-kindness.”

The Maitreya Buddha statue and its throne-building will provide the public with temples, exhibition halls, a museum, library, audio-visual theatre and hospitality services. All will be set in beautifully landscaped parks with meditation pavilions, beautiful water fountains and tranquil pools. The buildings and grounds of the Project will contain a remarkable and inspiring collection of sacred art.
Thus the vision of the Maitreya Project combines charitable, educational and medical facilities along with the enduring spiritual focus of the Maitreya Buddha statue, to directly and indirectly foster whole-community economic and civic development,
both now and for generations to come.

The statue is designed to stand for at least 1,000 years, supporting the Project’s spiritual and social work for at least a millennium. So may the people be guided from seeing a huge beautiful outer statue to experience inner beauty, beyond decaying forms.

(c) Maitreya Project

You might like to read about Lord Maitreya as seen from the wisdom teachings coming from the Puranic tradition, in a booklet from Sri K. Parvathi Kumar. See also the beautiful Maitreya-statue at the Planetary Healing Centre near Visakhapatnam, India

Yesterday at my office I was at a presentation of impressions from a journey to the north of Mali a colleague and a photographer had made last week. They had been accompanying a health care team of the Mali Red Cross – distributing mosquito nets to pregnant women – to shoot photos for a donation campaign. The journey – via Timbuktu and Goundam to small villages over bumpy roads – through the desert had been quite an adventure for the Europeans, and the report of my colleague gave a lively, colourful impression.

It was very impressive to see how the people there live in great poverty in a desert-like area, which had been full of lakes until beginning of the 70ies of last century. The Niger River dry, 40 degrees centigrade, burning sun, a sandstorm, nothing of the infrastructures which are so normal to us here, like electricity, water, telecommunication… not even vegetables, and for food just a bit of rice and millet. And the wells are running more and more dry.

In the group of listeners the head of a PR-agency who has designed the donation campaign asked: Why do you support people in an area where there is no future for them? Why not evacuate them to other areas? – The photographer explained that he also had reflected on it during the journey, but that you cannot give just simple answers. The people have arranged their lives in a way to cope the extreme difficulties, though many children die and the health of the adults is also often poor.

I was deeply moved by the impressions of the journey. Looking out of the window, it was raining, and it continued to do so the whole day and night and also today. The rivers in Switzerland are overflowing their banks, there are help appeals in the media, and this morning I shot some pictures of the flood water in the old town of Berne for a news article on relief efforts. It was cold, the sky heavily covered with grey clouds.

A friend from Minnesota wrote today that the farmers over there are praying for rain, and this for the third year. The climate is getting warmer, but the people don’t believe in global warming.

It’s such a range of simultaneous extremes.

The old town of Berne with high water of the river Aare

Some days ago I read in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about new directives the Chinese government just has released to “administer the reincarnations of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism”: The Buddhist monks have no longer the right to search for reincarnations by themselves. The Party decides who is a living Buddha. Ignoring the rules leads to punishments, and the reincarnation is illegal. So after their birth control politics the communist� rulers also have rebirth control mechanisms in their empire.

It’s such a silly thing, and wouldn’t it be another political power play to subordinate people and infringe free will, I would have laughed. The decision is a means to break the age-old reincarnation lines of insubordinate monasteries. Now 4 authorities have to agree, if a Buddha is a genuine incarnation, the monastery, the local government, the administration for religious affairs and the Chinese State Council. It is unclear if living Buddhas also have to register retrospectively. However, the newspaper reported, that not all living Buddhas are devout people. So-called reincarnations are working as businessmen and executive consultants in Chinese cities…

Maybe the whole rebirth control politics serves a good purpose in the end: The purely materialistic government might control social and religious structures, but not the reincarnation process of souls. Spirit will turn out to be stronger in the long run, even in our dark age, and the real reincarnations of highly-developed souls will find their ways to fulfil their purpose.

Our spiritual teacher, Sri K. Parvathi Kumar, once remarked, that in the Americas many native Americans who had been killed by the European colonists have come back in the bodies of white Americans and are now much involved in activities furthering a respect of nature and environment. Maybe a similar destiny happens to the souls of the suppressed Tibetan Buddhist exponents. Though old traditional forms will necessarily break this way, the essence will keep on living and enlivening the search of man along the eternal path.

Buddha-statue in Lhasa, photo of a friend

It’s now three weeks ago that my father passed. Everyday life has taken over again. There had been quite some talks with family and friends around the passing, and it had opened doors to some profound conversations. Even at my office a woman, with whom up to now I never had exchanged about anything private, spoke to me about the situation with her mother, who just had to go into an old people’s home and where she had to dissolve the house. Others spoke about their encounter with the death of loved ones and how it had affected their lives. Again others shared reflections about experiences of pain, of transformation of relations, of farewell situations.

It was not just a casual expression of sympathy, but the passing of my father stirred in them – and also in me – thoughts touching regions about which you normally don’t speak. It was like an opening of souls, and expression of a bond of a subtle connectedness. New qualities of relation were forming.

Complexity of relation – picture sent by a friend

Some days ago a person from another part of the world wrote to me and asked for a very effective mantram. It should help him to make his mind open, so that he can become more intelligent, get a better memory and can more quickly reflect and reason, since he is feeling a bit tired in his studies.

I explained him a bit about working with sound and the significance of mantrams, so that he might find a way. Many people think they can use mantrams to develop special skills or even powers. It is quite a delusion, leading you onto a deceptive path towards disappointment. Master EK gave a good explanation in one of his lectures, explaining the purpose of yoga (: spiritual practices):

“Don’t deceive yourself by believing that by practising yoga or spiritualism, you will get some benefits. The very benefit is the ease and happiness you experience. And the path itself is the goal. And if you believe that there is something beneficial out of it, better stop it, because you will be utterly disappointed after sometime. For example, some people begin to practise yoga for what they call ‘powers’. They are deceiving themselves, because God is not a fool to confer powers for certain practices… If people believe that their luck will increase with the practice of yoga, it is false, because the very idea of luck is foolish and everything depends upon how we do things and how we think and our motives in doing.”

Not a bridge to walk – picture of a Swedish friend

Friends of mine from Spain had been in Mongolia, for the second time, in search of places of power. Some days ago they sent me a powerpoint-presentation with pictures showing scenes with motives of the paintings of the famous Russian painter Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), whom I admire since long. He had been on an expedition to the Himalayas, Tibet and Mongolia in the 20ies of last century and brought back a rich treasure of most beautiful paintings. They can be found in several famous museums, such as the Roerich Museum in New York.

Here are some of the photos of my friends (thank you, Rosa and Miquel!) alternating with pictures from Nicholas Roerich (Courtesy Roerich Museum), showing similar motives.

Arriving at Eeijkairkhan (the Goddess Mother), silhouette of the Sacred Mountain

The Song of Shambhala

Eeijkairkhan (the Goddess Mother), silhouette of the Sacred Mountain

Star of the Hero, Cave-Temple

Cave-temple

Ascension to the rainbow

Inside the Roerich-Museum, New York, April 2000

The “Song of Shambhala” at home in the bookshelf

Shambhala, the mystic place now on the etheric planes, is also called the “White Island”. You can read more about it in the extract of book presentation of “Wisdom Buds” by K. Parvathi Kumar. And you find some of Roerich’s photos as e-cards on the Good-Will website.

I just read an interview with Bruno S. Frey, a Swiss professor of economy and happiness researcher in the Migros consumer magazine. The essence: Important factors for happiness are the relations with family and friends, but also a job giving enough autonomy and recognition of one’s work by the superiors. To be happy is the result of a good life. And a good life consists in doing what seems to be meaningful for oneself.

Research has shown that this is the case when people do voluntary work and give money for good causes. However, running after happiness is of no use. If you try to do it, it slips away. A materialistic attitude makes you unhappy, idealists and optimists are generally happier people.

These findings are very much in tune with the wisdom teachings, saying that good living is a result of acts of good will. They give you satisfaction and at the same time you learn to become less selfish. You might like to read the Good Will in Action on the Value of Service (PDF) or the post on The Future of Volunteer Work.

Children in India