Gerta Ital

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Gerta Maria Luise Karoline Ital (born July 7, 1904 in Hanover , † July 21, 1988 in Munich ) was a German artist , actress , author , Zen Buddhist and mystic .

Life

In addition to Eugen Herrigel , Hugo Makibi Enomiya-Lassalle SJ and Karlfried Graf Dürckheim , Gerta Ital made a decisive contribution to Zen Buddhism becoming known in Europe. She showed acting in Berlin and Dresden. With the general music director Leo Blech, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Richard Strauss she organized recitals and concerts. She fell ill with a tumor on her neck for over seven years, temporarily lost her voice, and so she ended her artistic career.

In 1926 she began her journey inward. She studied the Egyptology and Heidelberg of Indology at Heinrich Zimmer . Eugen Herrigel taught Gertrud Ital from 1953 to 1955. In March 1963 she traveled to Japan. She was the first western woman to be allowed to live and meditate on an equal footing with the monks in a Japanese Zen monastery. She left the monastery after seven months. In May 1967 she received an invitation from Mumon Yamada Roshi . Gerta Ital participated in the meditations in the monastery for another 7 months. Gertrud changed her name to Gerta on July 27, 1982 at the Wilmersdorf district office. She resigned from the Protestant Church on July 23, 1987. In his last lecture on April 10, 1989 , Osho commented on the harshness of the traditional Zen path, which is represented in the books of Gerta Ital as a condicio sine qua non .

Instruction of seekers

Since 1970 Gerta Ital has been teaching spiritual seekers with the objective: "How do I bring God to life in me?" Zen meditation was adapted to the needs of Western society. “What we practice together is 'ZEN', it's meditation. However, not exactly the Zen as it is practiced in the monasteries, because I will not confront you with 'nothing' for the time being. Why? As a western person, I myself know that we, who are different from the eastern human being in terms of the overall structure, must first slowly escape into this nothingness in order to be received and penetrated by the totality of God through nothingness ”.

At the request of the students, the instructions given in the meditations were published in summary form.

Works

  • The master, the monks and I , a woman in the Zen Buddhist monastery
    • 1966 Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag; further editions by Scherz Verlag
    • 1987 English edition The master, the monks and I , by Thorsons Publishing Group, ISBN 0-85030-565-9 , translation by Timothy M. Green.
  • On the way to Satori , supernatural experiences and the experience of enlightenment
  • Meditations from the spirit of Zen. The great transformation towards self-liberation. Walter Verlag, 1977, ISBN 3-530-39510-2 .
  • On the way to Satori , extended by an afterword with an opinion on the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent turning away from the decision on ecumenism. 1980 Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, ISBN 3-442-11701-1 .

swell

  • Gebhardt, Lisette (2007): Gertaltals “mystical Zen”: Constructions of meaning by German Buddhists and the intercultural community of knowledge of the 1950s and 1960s . In: Gebhard, Walter (ed.): Reception of East Asia in the post-war period. Cultural revolution - coming to terms with the past - new departure. pp. 191-207. [1]

Individual evidence

  1. ^ District Court of Charlottenburg, Berlin, A 834/87
  2. ^ Osho's Last Discourse
  3. ↑ Meditations from the Spirit of Zen, page 96

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ital, Gerta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ital, Gerta Maria Luise Karoline (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist, actress, author, Zen Buddhist and mystic
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1988
Place of death Munich