Why this book? Why now?
A few years ago, something shifted. After the stillness of the pandemic years – and a decision my wife Beate and I had been postponing for too long – we left Germany and moved to Mallorca. Not for the weather. For a different kind of life.
What I didn’t expect was how differently I would begin to see things here. The nature I had always loved suddenly spoke to me on another level. Deeper. More direct. As if something had been cleared away.
I began to understand – not intellectually, but in my body, on my walks, in my morning practice – what the ancient story of Dattatreya from the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam had been pointing to all along: that real knowledge is everywhere, if the ego is quiet enough to notice.
So I started writing things down. Not for anyone else – just for myself. Notes, observations, small moments that left a mark. It felt good to have them somewhere. To return to them.
Some of these reflections found their way onto this website – like this one – and later into conversations during retreats and dharma talks. People responded. Something was landing.
But the digital space has its limits. Content disappears in feeds. Reach depends on algorithms. What I wanted was something that stays. Something you can hold in your hands, return to without a screen, pass on to someone who might need it.
So I made a book. Without a publisher. Without an editor. In my own time, in my own way.
Not perfect. But free. With love.
What it is. What it isn´t.
The Everyday Gurus – “Wege der Natur. Stimmen des Lebens” is not a spiritual guidebook. It’s not a manual. It makes no promises.
It’s 26 chapters about teachers that don’t live in distant temples – but right outside our door. An ant. A gust of wind. A pigeon. The ritual fire at dawn. The dog who simply shows up and shares his life with you.
It’s written in German – my native language, deliberately. Not as a limitation, but as an act of honesty. Some things need to be said in the language you think and feel in.
It was written without a publisher. Without an editor. On recycled paper, in a quiet town in the south of Mallorca. Perhaps an English version will also see the light of day someday. Who knows …
Not a lesson. An invitation.
This is not a book that wants to teach. It wants to accompany – quietly, without big answers, without telling you where to go. Just small, still impulses for your own reflection. To come back into contact with yourself. And with the world that surrounds you every day.
You don’t have to read it from beginning to end. Follow your intuition. Open it wherever it opens. Let it find you.
If something in these pages resonates – or even just one single line – then this book has done what it set out to do.
May all beings be happy and free.
Yours, Ghanashyam Das
