The Satori Process

Dear friends of Satori,

Since it's never too early to plan ahead, we send you greetings in the middle of summer along with a preview of the upcoming Satori groups.

Above all, we are very much looking forward to next spring, when we offer the 5-day Satori process back in Finkenwerder again, from April 27th to May 2nd, 2026!

Far from any distractions, we can immerse ourselves in the Satori Process at this beautiful (and for many of us familiar) location.

By the way, a Berlin weekend in Kreuzberg is also planned again for next year, with the expected date being April 17th to 19th.

But there are still several opportunities to experience Satori until the end of this year:

Join us for an autumn Satori weekend in the heart of Amsterdam or contemplate your Satori question in Sintra/Portugal, a beautiful place situated on the Atlantic coast!

This year will come to an end with our online winter meeting, which offers you another opportunity to work intensively for a whole weekend of online Dyads from your home.

In between these intensive events, we invite you to our regular online satori meetings, which offer a good opportunity to continually integrate the insights of your Satori process into your daily life.

That's our brief outlook, combined with a warm invitation to you!

We look forward to seeing many of you on the path!

Best regards

Rafael, Esther, Ombretta, Xamira

After the thunder and the rain,
the sudden squall which broke the evening,
morning comes with its quiet blessing
of dappled stillness and steaming sunlight.

The graceful ash trees slowly exhale,
songbirds return to their confident foraging,
an ancient church bell calls the hour
and the new day opens like a bud.

I have ached to stand in such quiet moments,
my senses alive to every happening:
the drilling of the woodpecker,
the rootlings of the boar,
the delicate twitch of the grazing deer.

I want the smell of the grass to heal me,
the dew to cleanse my travelling soul.
This morning I can be a part of the stillness.
Today I can rest in the calm of the world.

- The Travelling Soul, William Ayot

'It’s important to reflect on impermanence, and the finiteness of life, not to be made morbid by it, but to keep your priorities straight.

When you watch an old movie or see an old photograph, take a moment to realise that almost everyone you see, and perhaps everyone you see, is now dead, they were as alive as you are now, but their lives ran their course.

Reflect on how everyone you see out in the world today, and in the media, is in the process of becoming old - if they are lucky, really old. Even the fittest and most beautiful people will eventually be stooped by age, that is if they live long enough.

Again, this isn’t meant to be morbid, the point is to feel a clarifying jolt of urgency, so that you can fully enjoy this moment in the sun. It will not last, because it cannot last.

Don’t miss the opportunity to embrace everything in your life with full awareness’.

- Sam Harris

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”

- Sasha Sagan

A weekend that could change your life - https://mailchi.mp/satoriprocess.com/satori-news-6747811

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being r***d by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of the poem:
"After the Vietnam War, many people wrote to us in Plum Village. We received hundreds of letters each week from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each week. It was very painful to read them, but we had to be in contact. We tried our best to help, but the suffering was enormous, and sometimes we were discouraged. It is said that half the boat people fleeing Vietnam died in the ocean; only half arrived at the shores of Southeast Asia.

There are many young girls, boat people, who were r***d by sea pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries tried to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continued to inflict much suffering on the refugees. One day, we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was r***d by a Thai pirate.

She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.

When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we can’t do that. In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate. There is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I can’t condemn myself so easily. In my meditation, I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians, and others do not do something about the situation, in twenty-five years a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we might become sea pirates in twenty-five years. If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, you shoot all of us, because all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs.

After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the poem is “Please Call Me by My True Names,” because I have so many names. When I hear one of the of these names, I have to say, “Yes.”