Happy Summer Solstice!

Various


It is a special day today. 

Exactly two years ago this website went live. I still remember how excited I was (maybe even a bit overexcited…). Starting your first website is certainly a life event. Since many things came together for me that day, it was even a emotional moment. 

Then, a year later, also on this very day, I started with the subsidiary website gammaway.space. On this site I collect interesting and inspiring references or “starters”. It is like a digital library for the gamma way.

Today I have no new project to launch. In fact, in the last months I did not add much content to either website. I still have many plans to develop the gamma way further – it is in a way my life project – but I am not in a hurry anymore. I do not need more deadlines or KPI’s. This is part of my life, not my job.

Sharing the first basic ideas and concepts was an important step. But words are only words. They are not written in stone. Certainly not on this website. Life philosophies should be lived and tested. Paths to wisdom should be explored in reality. 

Sometimes it is good to take a break. A break can give you new perspectives and lead to new insights. 

I do not know whether the gamma will ever inspire many others. The inner goal to become wise(r) myself precedes the outer goal of making the world wiser. 

So, first of all, I am living my life now. 
As long as I have confidence that the gamma is the best compass available, I continue to live it in the gamma way. 

Or at least, I am trying to do this, first of all, with an open mind, following my own uniquely curved path, trying to connect to the principles of the universe, grateful, ready to learn from everything and everybody, continuously correcting my views, embracing the colours of cultural diversity, inspired by all wisdom traditions, following the Golden Rule to develop compassion, changing perspectives many times to determine the Golden Mean or just proportion in everything. 

In this way I hope to develop the seeds of my potentials or gifts to flourish like a sun flower, stimulating other beings to flourish too. 

A new circle has just begun.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Gamma day in the Pantheon

Various

The Pantheon in Rome is one of my favourite places in the world. The name of the temple stems from the Greek word Πάνθειον, “[temple] of all the Gods”.

The Panheon remained intact through the centuries because in the Middle Ages it was consecrated into a Christian church.

Next to the tombs of two Italian kings, Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, it contains the remains of the Renaissance artist Raffaele Sanzio who painted among many other masterpieces the famous fresco The School of Athens in Vatican palace.

The inscription on his sarcophagus reads: “Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori”, meaning: “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.”

These words make me reflect on the present relation between mankind and nature.

The cupola of the Pantheon was the biggest in the world for more than thousand years. 
The Pantheon has a hole in the top, the oculus to the sky, that lets both the sunshine and the rain in. 

For me this building is a monument for open mindedness.

Special Day

Religion, Traditions

Today is a special day for me.

Four years ago on this day I woke up in the early morning with an urge to write a book about religion. In the bio on this website I already wrote about this. The illness of my father was a shock to my world. It worked as a wake-up call. I was full of ideas and felt an urgency to write I had never felt before.

In the end I did not write the book within the deadline I had set for myself (three years, three months and three days), but I started this website.

In my life I have made a transformation from a strong opponent of religion to a careful defender of it, even though until this very day I never formally entered any specific tradition. Sometimes this transformation felt like swimming against the tide. Scientific research challenges religious claims with more confidence than ever before and religious extremists seem eager to prove to the world that religion is the most destructive force in human history.

I love science and detest religious extremists. At the same time I am attracted to religion (especially to the mystical side of it, but that goes beyond the gamma way). I reject the idea that many religious people seem to hold that an ethical life is impossible without religion, but I fully accept that religious traditions have a lot to offer to people who want to live a good life.

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (Thessalonians 5:21)

When I look at the notes I made during those days in 2012, this text of Paul the Apostle describes my attitude towards religious traditions very well. I set out to find a common ground in them, a few basic principles that are easy to understand and can create some harmony among them while upholding their unique place and value within cultural diversity.

About three months and three days later the gamma way symbol and its basic principles were created on my computer and in my mind. This period was also more or less the time span between Christmas and Easter that year.

That is why today is a special day for me and probably will be for the rest of my life.

Tu Weiming

Ethics, Philosophy,

This week I had the pleasure to attent a lecture by Tu Weiming. To be honest, I did not know him or his work before. I had only read somewhere that he was a leading Chinese neo-Confucian thinker. Since I seldom get the chance to hear a modern and living Chinese philosopher I bought my ticket right away. The lecture sold out quickly.

According to the program the lecture would be on Europe from a Chinese perspective, so I expected that the western way of life would be challenged. I even had some fears that western arrogance would be confronted by a renewed sense of Chinese moral superiority. Was I about to get a preview of a new clash of civilisations based more on economic power than on philosophical debate?

There was no need for such fears. I should have prepared myself better to know more about the life and work of Tu Weiming. He is a modest man with a broad cosmopolitan perspective on world affairs who has teached at several universities both in the west as in the east. It was a great pleasure to hear his wise words on “the unintended negative consequences of the advent of modernity, such as aggressive anthropocentrism and possessive individualism.” He proposes a new spiritual humanism that can “guide us to survive and flourish in the 21st century by deepening the intellectual and depth of our environmental awareness”.

There was so much in his lecture and his answers during the Q&A that resonated with me that I had to thank him personally for his words.

If you want to hear him speak about spiritual humanism, you can watch this video: