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Dainin Katagiri Roshi " You have to say something " I thought this was a great book and it brought me back to meditate every day and see, that the day to day practice of ordinary things is important and the core of all spiritual practice. Dainin Katagiri is clear and uncomplicated - my favourite quote: "The changes that occur through spiritual practice are not really your business, if you make them your business, you will try to change your life directly. If you try to change your life directly, no matter how long you work at it, you will not satisfy yourself. So if you truly want to change your life, you should just form the routine of doing small things day by day. Then your life will be changed beyond your expectations . If you practice continuously, day after day, you will become a peaceful, gentle and harmonious person. There is no explanation for this."  I always meant to read one of his books since I first heard about him via Natalie Goldberg, one of m...

Marina Abramovic is a perfomance artist. She was born in 1946 in Belgrad, a daughter of partisans in the army of Tito. She was raised to be like a soldier. Her mother never hugged or kissed her in order not to spoil her. Her performances often put her body in the center and are shocking, because they come so close and/or they put the audience in a position to participate, to cross borders. In her performance  Rythm 10  she plays with knives and actually hurts herself. In her performance  Rythm 0  she gave among others a gun and a bullet to the audience. 6 hours long, the audience could please, torture, ignore her, they were free to use the different objects on her. In the end she was naked and full of blood. Interesting how fast a crowd of people can turn into a mob. For me this is what Abramovic among other things wanted to show with this performance. "She is directly and boldly challenging the audience." In a way she challenges peoples very optimistic view on thems...

I said I would publish lists now, and I keep my promises usually. Here comes a list of books that did not exactly change my life (though a bit they all did) but helped me shape my perspective on life and myself immensely over the past twenty years. Each of those books put a major impact into my life. and funny enough each of those books came to me by chance, by coincidence and each time it felt like stumbling over something meaningful, the universe presented to me to make me learn something, to wake me up really to what was possible for me, how much more depth and choices I was allowed to look for. Suzuki Roshi  Zen Mind Beginners Mind  I mentioned this before. It was the first book I ever read about  buddhism and after this I was basically hooked. The minute I started reading it I also started to meditate on my friends sofa. It opened for me, a girl coming from the catholic german narrowminded smalltown world, a whole different world of how I could be. It opened a r...