Hinduism: Rituals in the Himalayas (Satis Shroff)

American Chronicle | Voklstrauertag - Memorial Day Rituals in the Himalayas (Satis Shroff)

Tika, a Hindu symbol, A blessing from the parents, From the priest at the temple, During a visit to a shrine, After a puja, A ritual ceremony. Faith and belief in God, Spirituality in the Himalayas As old and strong, As the Abode of Snows, Undaunted by colonialism And conquests with the sickel sword. Om namo Shiva, Rituals reveal the unity, Between the self and the cosmos; A light in your innermost self. Through rituals you become one With your soul. You feel it within the molecules, Atoms and positrons in you. Be it big or small, In this eternally moving world, Nothing is without a meaning. The ancient rituals Have each a meaning, In the endless metamorphosis Of the individual, To be in tact with the universe. It is the daily rituals That lead us to unity, Growth of consciousness, That engulfs all. In rituals we bundle energy For the changes in the cycle Of Death and Creation. It is the litany of mantras Combined with ritual offerings, That create a work of art: the yantra. Dedicated to the Gods and Goddesses, In the shrine, temple and pagoda. Seasonal flowers plucked at dawn, To beckon and appease the Gods, Sandalwood tika paste, Cereals and herbs, Sweetmeat and fruits. The beauty of the yantra Creates harmony. The chime of the temple bells Evoke feelings of spirituality. There is a mingling Of cultural powers that be, In peace and balance. If you’re ill perform a ritual At the right time, To restore the balance, Between illness and recovery, Between right and wrong, Between holy and unholy, Between wealth and poverty, Between rain and sun, Flood and drought, Life, death and rebirth.

American Chronicle | Intercultural Reading Marathon

American Chronicle | Intercultural Reading Marathon

The Healing Power of Hope (Satis Shroff, Germany)

World Healing Poetry: 

The Healing Power of Hope (Satis Shroff)

Unto you that fear my name

Shall the sun of righteousness

Arise with healing in his wings

(Malachi)

Bridges of peace, friendship and togetherness

Are built on mutual respect,

Tolerance and Miteinander.

We must talk about the symbols

Of tyranny in your villages, towns and cities.

On Memorial Day we gather with earnest faces,

To honour and remember the people

Whose names are engraved on stones,

Who died in the two World Wars.

The suns and husbands have fallen,

But a new ghost raises its ugly head again,

The Neonazis who work for

The Bundesnachrichtendienst.,

Who receive money for their incompetence,

In Thuringen, Saxony,

Hessen and Lower Saxony.

The lesson of faschism taught us

Never to combine

The police with the secret service,

For it would be akin to the Gestapo,

The Geheimen Staatspolizei.

The sixteen secret services in Germany

Cannot coordinate and cooperate.

Since thirteen years have we given

Neonazis a free hand,

Who robbed banks,

Executed Turkish and Greek migrants.

The constitution makes it possible:

‘Germany for the Germany,

All aliens out!’

Long live the Freedom of Speech.

But prithee, where is the protection

Of the migrants and underdogs

Of the society?

Is a new holocaust in the offing?

Yet there is no way

But the path of peace and togetherness.

The ewig gestrigen and the neos

Are still licking the wounds of war,

Wounds that won’t heal,

For they are infected with hate anew,

With brown-propaganda.

War has always been ugly and brutal.

The widows of the on-going krieg in the Hindukush,

The survivors who don’t understand their own world,

After the trauma of Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan.

When the NATO sirens are tested,

The air vibrates with a monstrous noise.

Fear makes the olde soldier’s heart beats faster,

His pulse races and he almost chokes.

The memories and the fury of war overwhelm him.

Who will restore the faces we’ve adored?

Love, faith, togetherness and peace

Haven’t been lulled to sleep.

We still hear the clarion call

To the dangers of war,

To the hoarse shouts

Of the Neos in the street,

Who strut and fret,

And believe Auschwitz was a lie.

A silence treads like clouds shadows,

Among the people of Germany.

Hope hasn’t abandoned us yet,

Despite the petite victories of the rightists,

In Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

The people in these lands

Think otherwise.

In every good person there is a bad part,

In every bad person there’s a good trait,

Like ying and yang.

We can only appeal to humans,

Hope and pray for peace,

And the old wounds to heal,

Between humans in this world.

Triology on Martin Heidegger (Satis Shroff)

Martin Heidegger Triology:

The Silence of Existence I (Satis Shroff)

Plato once said:

Megala panta episphale,´

Questionable,

Destined to fall,

Endangered.

This was Plato´s philosophic answer

To the tyrant Syracus,

Who was doomed to fail.

But why did I follow

Plato´s words,

And took them

To a heroic sturm-and-drang?

It is true,

I sympathised with the inner truth

Of the National Socialism,

For a short while.

But this short episode cost me

My very existence.

The human being has to grow big

In his own self,

In order to see big movements

And to be aware of it.

I came from a small family,

Didn´t want to be involved

In petty matters,

Donning the mantle 

Of stubbornness and refusing

To accept new challenges.

I wanted to understand

The secrets of powerful men,

To ultimately be a part of them.

But in the course of time,

The powerful persons for which I yearned,

Changed their countenances.

My philosophic thoughts

Dwelled on my homeland,

God, 

Existence,

Being, 

Nothingness,

The German folk,

Original thought and great poetry.

Towards the end came the planetary technology,

Which grew big.

My works of philosophy

Went through the illusions and catastrophies

Of the 20th century.

All striving for greatness

Leads to downfall.

At the beginning of the war

The German nationalism was awakened.

The people were collectively enthusiastic,

Hitting us all,

Like a tidal wave.

I didn´t care much 

About what was happening

Around me.

In my thoughts I was living,

Thinking about people in the Middle Ages.

I was following a metaphysical imperative.

In the battlefield of Verdun,

Half a million soldiers perished.

But I was disappointed 

For I didn´t get a professorship

At the University of Freiburg.

The Führer once wanted to be an artist.

I wanted to be a priest

The Jesuits and the Catholics in Freiburg

Turned me down.

Similar to Friedrich Nietzsche´s

Forty-year old Zarathustra,

Who after ten years of solitude

In his mountain cave,

Went down to the humans,

To teach them the incredibility

Of being,

The meaning of their being,

I also wanted to reveal and teach

The essentials of human existence,

Which deals with one´s own being.

For the world of being or Sein,

Is not only the self-world,

But also the world of togetherness,

In which the being-in 

Is always the being-together.

Existence is threatened by anxiety,

Behind which lies 

The temporality of existence.

The aim of philosophy

Is to listen to the silence of existence.

***

The Führer of the Mind II (Satis Shroff)

In his ‘Seventh Letter’ Plato wrote

About his three journeys to Syrakus and Sicily

Between 389 and 361 BC.

Plato had close relations to the ruling tyrann:

At first with Dionysios I,

Later with his son Dionysios II,

Who he tried to educate and lead.

Among other philosophic questions,

Socrates had to answer this one:

In which way does a state have to use philosophy,

In order not to go under,

For all greatness is questionable.

Platon was defeated in Syrakus,

Because Dionysios II refused to overtake

His ideas about State,

Education, laws and constitution.

Plato became frustrated.

His state-philosophical plans had failed.

I hoped that history would repeat itself,

This time with a happy result.

So I chose Plato as my own hero,

For the political battle,

With Adolf Hitler in the role of Dionysios II.

On January 19,1933 after the big elections victory

In Lippe,

A great storm has come over me,

In which I’ve set out my full sail.

With this, a lot of old ties

Were torn or broken.

I can’t mend them now.

O what a storm it was,

In which you and I and all

Were swept away.

It was the greatness and exemplary Greek philosophy,

Waking up anew,

Albeit, the dark orders of a state and society,

Undergoing a massive change.

After Hitler was given the right

To govern by the old Reichspresident

Paul von Hinderburg,

My will to work for the Third Reich

Became stronger.

In order to stabilise the NS-rule,

My philosophy became a part

Of the Nazi ideology.

I had my doubts when deeds were done,

To lift the needs

Of the folk and the Reich,

But I believed that the political changes

Were a challenge to me,

My country needed me.

Between the Greek philosophy

And the NS movement,

I wanted to fight

Against the dying spirit of Christendom,

And the spectre of the communist world.

The Greeks and the German folk,

A politic of Being and Führer-state,

Platon and I myself.

I was a convinced National Socialist,

At the beginning of the Third Reich.

It was in the solitude

Of the autumnal and wintry Black Forest,

That I decided to be involved

In building a world,

Created by a folk.

That was the new reality.

The ‘Being’ I’d learned from Parmenides,

Platon and Aristoteles,

Should be used to make the NS-spirit,

A part and parcel of German history.

The NSDAP became my political home.

The Rectorat gave me the institutional confirmation.

I became a member of the NSDAP

On May 1, 1933

With the No. 3125894,

Gau Baden.

* * *

BACK FROM SYRAKUS III (Satis Shroff

My first act as the Rector

Of the Freiburger University,

Was to send a circular letter

To all lecturers.

The construction of a new mental world,

For the German folk is the essential duty

Of the German university.

This is national work

Of the highest meaning and priority.

In 1933 I craved for power,

In the field of Political Science.

I wanted to be a Führer of the Mind,

To create a real geistige world

For the German folk.

I found a suitable forum

In the NS-Führer-State.

I greeted the Freiburger students

With the authoritative imperative words:

‘Not teachings and ideas

Are the rules of your being.

The Führer himself alone

Is the German reality

And your law today

Till hereafter.’

The teachers had to be taught again,

So I transformed my philosophical thoughts,

To political activities.

Again and again,

The being, the Germanvolk,

And the Führer were connected

In all my speeches.

At the beginning of 1934 ,

It became clear to me,

That the greatness (Hitler) which I desired,

Was destined to fall.

I noticed that the liberals and conservatives

Were disgusted with Hitler’s propaganda.

Erich Jaensch characterised my philosophical thoughts

As ‘tamundic-rabulistic,’

Which would have a magnetic attraction

For Jews and people of Jewish descent.

To Erich Jaensch,

I was a dangerous schizophrenic

And my pathologic writings

Would only be admired by weird people.

Ernst Krieck saw in my philosophy

A ferment of decay and decomposition

For the German folk.

I saw in the Führer not the egocentric powerful man,

But an instance of political knowledge,

With a concentration

Of the new spirit of state-and-folk community.

There is only one will for the state to exist.

The Führer has awakened this desire

In the entire folk and made it

To a common goal.

In lieu of the objective he-she-it,

I preferred the meaning of being ‘I am.’

I became a follower of the NSDAP,

The propagandist of national socialism.

I wanted to see people who had the will,

The inner power to make greatness even bigger.

Most people made the usual snarls

Of ordinary citizens,

Who cling to small and half-things;

They don’t want to see,

Never can see the big and farthest,

The unique and all-powerful.

My friends wrote to me on my 80^th birthday:

‘Mr. H.,

Are you back from Syrakus?’

Back from my escapade.

I felt like Plato,

Who was disappointed by Dionysios II.

My disappointment was much bigger

Than that of Plato,

Because the tyrant and his victim,

Were not beyond the seas,

But in my own country.

My thoughts moved to Being,

Das Sein.

In my search for heroes I came across:

Parmenides, Heraklit, Holderlin and Nietsche.

I abandoned political thought,

Embraced the thoughts of the poet,

Poetic thoughts,

For in the language of poetry,

You find the purest essence of language,

Which can begin and develop.

I wanted to show that language

Is not an expression of biological-racist humans.

The essence of humans through language,

Is the basic reality of the mind.

To the Nazis I became suddenly

A suspected person,

Who needed to be shadowed.