AschePerlen. Группа авторов
Also verpflichteten Kathleen und ich uns der Idee, zwanzig Jahre dieser speziellen Praxis mit einem veröffentlichen Mandala schriftlicher Erfahrungsberichte zu ehren. Bald nach diesem Tee in Bonn bot Andrzej Krajewski, ohne zu zögern, seine Unterstützung an; er hatte eine ganz ähnliche Idee gehabt. Wir waren uns der symbolischen Bedeutung dessen, dass eine deutsche und eine jüdisch-amerikanische Frau sowie ein polnischer Mann sich zusammentaten, um an diesem Projekt zu arbeiten, äußerst bewusst. Mit Eves Segen und Bernies zurückhaltender Billigung begannen wir also, schriftliche Reflexionen von Retreat-Teilnehmenden einzusammeln.
In dieser Sammlung sind starke, zarte und sehr persönliche „Zeugnisse vom ZEUGNISABLEGEN“ zu finden. Vielleicht möchte die Leserin, der Leser eines nach dem anderen lesen, mit einer Pause dazwischen, um aufzunehmen, was jede und jeder der Schreibenden mitgeteilt hat, und um dem Raum zu geben, was diese ganz spezielle Erfahrung des Bezeugens im Lesenden auslöst.
Ich lade dazu ein, während des Lesens den Grundsatz des NICHT-WISSENS zu praktizieren – also alle festen oder gewohnheitsmäßigen Vorstellungen über die Erfahrung, von der da gerade die Rede ist, aufzugeben.
Ich lade dazu ein, einen Weg zu finden, mit offenem Herzen zuzuhören (also: Zeugnis abzulegen), und den enormen Mut und die Kraft zu spüren, mit denen diese Schreibenden ihre Retreat-Erlebnisse und Familiengeschichten teilen. (Mein Mentor und Lehrer Tom Verner, der auch am Auschwitz-Retreat teilgenommen hat, sagte einmal: „In jedem tiefen Ausdruck von Verletzlichkeit kann große Stärke gefunden werden.“) Viele dieser Texte zeigen eine Mischung aus ungeschliffen-rauen, angstvollen, trauergetränkten, inspirierten, liebevollen und zärtlichen Reflexionen.
Ich lade auch dazu ein, die in die Texte eingewobenen großen und kleinen HANDLUNGEN wahrzunehmen, die aus dem NICHT-WISSEN und dem ZEUGNISABLEGEN erwachsen sind und stetig neu erwachsen (und damit den dritten Grundsatz der ZenPeacemaker erfüllen).
Möge das, was auf den folgenden Seiten erscheint, während die Leserin, der Leser lesend Zeugnis ablegt von den Drei Grundsätzen der Zen-Peacemaker, inspirieren, trösten und motivieren.
Ginni Stern, Mitherausgeberin, Auschwitz-Retreat-Koordinatorin & Hüterin des Retreat-Geistes, Orcas Island, Washington/USA, am 22. Juli 2015
Kathleen Battke
Finishing this book while the sentence is pronounced in “what could be one of the last big Holocaust trials” (The Guardian, July 15, 2015) in Lüneburg, Germany, doesn’t make it easier, but sets a special frame to what we tried to do here.
Oskar Gröning, one of the bookkeepers in Auschwitz-Birkenau, was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people. This happens in 2015, right here, right now. Auschwitz is present, seventy years after the camps were liberated.
The practice the Zen Peacemakers offer in the camps honors the past, but it happens presently, and it might shift the future. In accordance with the Zen Peacemakers’ often used wording “Living a life that matters,” I hope we created a “book that matters.”
There were doubts, of course. Is it really a good idea to invite people to talk and write about what many call The Unspeakable? Would it be just ego stuff, conceptual profiling, a bunch of brainchildren? Can you still hear silence in the middle of more than 100,000 words (this is how many this book contains)?
I guess I wouldn’t have overcome these doubts, if not this many of the Retreat participants had resonated positively, gratefully and encouragingly, if not Andrzej, Ginni, and Peter Cunningham (who had compiled a book with testimonies and his marvelous photographs to honor the 5th birthday of the Retreat in 2001; it was never published, but he generously offered to use all of it) had supported the enterprise. And if I wouldn’t deeply love language, this awesome gift life gave to us humans. How can I elicit the silence inside (and between) the words, their space, genuineness and freshness, the Not-Knowing in them, the heralding sound of “not-yet-there,” “not-yet-solid”? This is one of my favorite Koans.
Peacemakers try to make use of language in this way during Council. Ginni, Andrzej and I considered it possible to also write Council, and we explore this possibility here.
One who is encouraging me in this is Natalie Goldberg, one of the pearl artists of this book, who says about how Zen practice affected her writing: “… if you know you have nothingness at your back, emptiness, you can’t crystallize as easily. For me, writing is always connected with that kind of emptiness.” (from the Afterword to her book Writing Down the Bones, Shambhala 2005).
Many of the writers in this book may have touched emptiness, the Not-Knowing state of mind the Zen Peacemaker plunges are able to push us into. Many of them wrote that they have no words for what they experienced in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in themselves and with their fellow humans. There are no words for a place like this; it is beyond articulation. It silences us. Or, another shade: Some (also in Germany) think it has been said enough about what happened there, maybe even too much.
Beyond this, passing through this tunnel of wordlessness, some come to the conclusion: But we still have to speak out. We must bear witness actively. We want to communicate the message of this place, this plunge. As Father Bruce Teague puts it in his testimony, saying nothing means falling silent in the face of present genocides, war and torture throughout the world.
This “and still …” is compassionate resistance, and it honors the universe’s gift of verbal communication, trusting in the chance to create understanding.
And also, the writing itself is an opportunity to carry the energy of the retreat plunge on into one’s own life. “I am grateful for the opportunity to write which unfolds itself only in doing it; it opened a door,” says Hans Reiss in his testimony: “For me, it was and is a possibility to express myself, and this helps me to understand the changing of my world since I was in Auschwitz, to move on step by step, towards comprehending, touching, helping – towards people.”
The testimonies comprised here are not so much articles about how one might deal with visiting Auschwitz, or about how the retreat functions. They are personal sharings, as if each person had picked up some of the ashes, the dust, the ruins of the place and curled it up in their hands, kneaded it in their minds, until a pearl formed – augmented with helplessness and grief and awe. A pearl that radiated, shimmered. This is how the title “Pearls of Ash & Awe” entered my mind.
Only after this giving birth to the title out of the process of editing was it that Barbara Wegmueller called my attention to the relics called “sariras” (Sanskrit) or “ringsels” (Tibetan): bead-shaped remains – pearls – found in the cremated ashes of spiritual masters. Many Buddhist practitioners honor them as they are believed to contain the spiritual knowledge, the core of the teachings, or living essence of those wise women and men. Even though I didn’t think of this tradition when the book title emerged, I believe it to be a beautiful resonance.
In addition to my deep gratitude to the people of Oświęcim{3} who take care of the camp sites of Auschwitz{4} and Birkenau there and who host us every year, and to the Zen Peacemakers who had the vision of this practice and have the courage to renew it over and over again, I say thank you to all the writers here who dared to open their heart and translate its contents into words, letting all of us in, allowing us to touch their vulnerable Self.
Many bows to Ginni and Andrzej – much more than co-editors; visionaries, Spirit Holders (to the Retreat, and to this book), calming down my monkey mind.
And unlimited thanks to those who supported the emergence of this book with their generous offerings and donations – be it daring (our publisher Ursula Richard), money (Barbara Wegmueller, Claudia Hiepe, Cornelius Collande, Evi Ketterer, Richard Segal, Sabine Sharma, Silke Gross, Viktoria von Schirach), translating time and skills (Heike Drinkuth, Anneke Burger), trust, critical questions or encouragement.
And loving gratitude to Thomas, this immense power house beside me. “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?,” 21-year-old Franz Kafka wrote in a letter to a friend. And he postulates: