Tag: photo

Pure love and minimalistic beach tent life (August 2022)

From the hill in the southern mountains of Bulgaria, I went to the Black Sea Coast and picked up Artha. Together we headed to a wonderful and lonely beach that Artha had visited before. And our time there was profound… Full of pure love and openness.

It felt super to meet Artha again. It was like we knew each other for years although we just had spent some hours together at the Beglika festival. The connection between us was just intense, warm, and deep.

I picked her up in a flat. A flat. That was the first time since Corfu that I was in a flat again. It felt weird. The strong walls. The distance to nature.

After a bit of offroading, we parked Rosinante and took a few kilometers walk to the beach we would call home for some days. We found an awesome spot at the beach, set up Artha’s small tent and that was everything we had to do. In addition to the tent, we only had our sleeping bags, sleeping mats, a hand full of clothes, some fruits, some nuts, and some water. And I brought my bo staff with me.

Since I saw the people camping in tents in Greece, I wanted to try it and here I was. At that lonely beach. Absolutely minimalistic. With a wonderful woman, I barely knew but at the same time, it felt like I knew her my whole life.

We had a gorgeous time together swimming naked in the ocean, meditating, doing yoga, walking, talking, and feeling. We just lived there together deeply connected, deeply loving each other. But not in the craving and sexual way. We had no sex or any contact in that direction. We just flowed with whatever was there. Life was pure, simple. We talked about everything and these conversations felt so profound and authentic… Like old friends we felt and knew what the other was about, if the other wanted some space for herself or felt like spending time together. This connection between us…

I loved her deeply and that deep love felt so different to me. It felt pure and unconditional. Like it always was there in my life and I just rediscovered it. And I felt not only giving and sharing this love in Artha’s direction. I felt that same love coming from her as well. I felt so purely loved… I don’t know… Maybe this love was just what humans are seeking: being so purely and unconditionally loved as you had been (or still are) by your mother. A love without concepts. One that is just there and will never cease. A marvelous love that feels like a companion that heals you.

Some solitude and connecting to the Heart Sutra (August 2022)

After Beglika, I felt like I want to have some time on my own again. And so I went east and south. More into the mountains and there I discovered something profound.

On my, way I met two friendly border policemen. I can remember that I felt somehow reserved when meeting or encountering the German police. But since I left Germany, that changed. These two guys were super nice and mostly interested in Rosinante and how the cabin is attached to the pickup. One of the guys showed me enthusiastically photos of the self-build modifications on his jeep.

I found a super nice, quiet, lonely place on top of a small hill. I observed a couple of times before, that after more closed places, I like to go to more open ones again and vice versa. It’s interesting. After all the impressions of the Beglika festival, I enjoyed being on my own. Reflecting on the impressions. Feeling how they changed me.

At that place, I rediscovered the Heart Sutra, and this time I connected so strongly to it. It was magical. The Heart Sutra is kind of a summary of everything Buddhism is about. It’s profound and beautiful. I felt like it was absolutely what I in a way needed at that time. Sounds like attachment, right? And in a way, it was like that. One of the things about the Heart Sutra that I love most is that it states that the world as we perceive it is illusional and that Buddhism and the Heart Sutra itself are illusional as well. So it states that attaching to itself is not a healthy way as well.

If you like to get an understanding of it, make sure to check out these two episodes of the Zen Studies Podcast:
19 – The Heart Sutra Part 1: Introduction to the Most Common Mahayana Text
20 – The Heart Sutra Part 2: Line by Line Explanation, Continued
And if you feel like talking about it, write me on WhatsApp.

I did a hike in the area around my home and then I felt like contacting Artha and asking her if she would like to meet again.

Beglika part one: magic in the Bulgarian mountains, labor, and about motivation and beliefs (August 2022)

At the big lake, I decided to go one week early to the area where the Beglika festival would take place. I thought it would be nice to help build stuff that is needed for the festival and I hoped for some physical labor in nature and nice people that connect with nature, spirituality, and music.

When I arrived at the festival area I was stunned by the beauty of that place. It was located at about 1.300m and a wonderful hilly spot mostly surrounded by a mountain lake and woods. The whole place was not very big and not small nether. It was perfect. All that was already build-up, was made of wood and mostly natural resources.

A group of volunteers was preparing all kinds of things for the festival and a few locals camped at the lake. Everybody I met, was super nice, friendly, and chilled and I immediately felt that this place, the people were gorgeous and the festival would be like that as well.

I found a super nice spot for Rosinante. Next to the main area of the festival, there was a small forest up a hill. At the foot of the other side of that hill, Rosinante and I found home right next to the lake. A walk at the lake led me to my neighbors: two Bulgarians who were there camping, living, and working (online) for a week. They were spiritual topics and we connected very well. They even had a dedicated tent for meditation.

I went to the volunteers and joined them for most of the time before the festival started. We built big tarps, organized drinking water, prepared wood for fires and construction, cooked, washed, cleaned, constructed, ate, talked, and had a good time together. Some of the about twenty volunteers were already for weeks at that place. One group of French scouts had planned and organized their trip to and help at the Beglika festival for months. It felt good to work with them and the atmosphere was mostly harmonious and good willing.

Before I started my journey, I had been working at a software development company and had a lot of different tasks. One area in which I had been contributing a lot of my energy was the organization of working processes and addressing the people’s needs.

In Beglika, it was interesting to just flow with whatever had to be done. I did what had to be done and got not into optimizing or changing the way how it was done. This was a profound experience for me. I just flowed with whatever happened. It was interesting to observe how the motivation of the others was going up and down and what let them struggle. The organization was very loose and based on the engagement of everyone and I loved this approach.

This experience reassured me, that it is very easy to become encroaching. In the past, I had often been very convinced that I know how to do things. That doesn’t mean that I forced people into things. It just means that I had a strong belief and direction in the things I thought and did. And sometimes others welcomed this, I guess. It can give stability, hope, and direction. There have been times when that approach let me feel responsible for a lot and that turned out not to be healthy. At least for me.

At that time at Beglika, I felt that instead of giving stability, hope, and direction it would be healthier for others and myself to learn to keep up direction and the hope in it together. I mean less “this is the direction I’m believing right now, let’s talk about it, I’m happy if you believe in it too, take it” and more “let’s see together what direction we can come up with and develop intrinsic belief in it while doing so”. I’m wondering if I will ever build up/ work together at something in a group of people for a longer period. If I will, it will be very different for me.

I felt totally good to just do things. My favorite tasks were: cleaning tree trunks with a slicer and manually drilling holes for pillars. It was tough to drill into the hard ground, through stones and I loved it.