Quote from my book

The ideal man as I think, however, is a woman. So the ideal man is the ideal woman, she is the prototype of humans. And though the ideal woman is the ideal human, this does neither mean that females are superior to men nor that males are in any way worse than females. Of course,

The different layers of my Judeo-Buddhist philosophy

My Judeo-Buddhist philosophy tries to connect the wisdom of Judaism and its monotheist God with the wisdom of Buddhism, teaching the need for enlightenment. Both, Judaism and Buddhism are actually very closely related in content. Jewish and Buddhist philosophy are bound to the respective religions of course, but religion and philosophy always share a close

Reflecting about God with our Tibetan friends – Part 5

In the last part, I introduced the only Catholic Church in the TAR, and thus a tiny minority; today, we talk of the majority religion of the Tibetans and get acquainted with their views on God. Though there are many different Tibetan ethnicities, as pointed out in Part 3, something which connects them all is

[PDF] Timo Schmitz: “Deep In the Ocean Is a Hidden Treasure” (2013)

A collection of my philosophical articles which I published last year in English language on this blog are now available as free E-Book in PDF-file. The collection is called: “Deep In the Ocean Is a Hidden Treasure“. Feel free to download below! Corrigendum: On page 110, the word dvesas is written, this is a typo:

Raising awareness for Tokophobia and looking at potential root causes

I think that we do not pay enough attention to fears in today’s society: We are “programmed” to work in everyday life, so there is no place for weakness or fear. But in recent times with all the geopolitical conflicts, wars, climate change, political and social disruptions, how can we ignore that the world is

The dilemma with testimonies and the chances behind them

Today I want to deal with a tricky question. When we hear testimonies of people who saw miracles and found to God, we can assume two possibilities: either the story is true and therefore someone witnessed God and shares his message; or second, we doubt this story, because of course it is in the interest

The cloud as symbol of God’s presence in the Torah

“Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt where they were enslaved.  In preparation to enter the land promised by God, the Israelites remained in the wilderness for forty years, and ‘God guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night’ (Psalms 78:14). The Bible often uses a cloud as

“Because God loves us …” – a simple but important fact which we forget quite often nowadays

“Every day we have to obey rules and laws. There are government laws, and regulations, religious laws, and rules where we work. Schools have many rules. There are traffic rules, and even rules about borrowing money from a bank. Without rules and laws our society would be ruined and there would be much suffering. Because

Basic Introduction into Lojong – Part 3: Transforming bad circumstances into our path of enlightenment

Based on Chapter 12 “Lojong” of my book Buddhism for Overthinkers. Trier: Buddha TS Publishing, 2018. [formerly known as : Rationalism versus Spiritualism and Atheism versus Polytheism in Buddhism. Berlin: epubli, 2015.] After we dedicated ourselves to bodhicitta, the next slogans want to help us with the transformation of bad circumstances into our path of enlightenment

Reflecting about God with our Tibetan friends – Part 4

Despite reflecting about God on philosophical and theological grounds, it is also noteworthy to look at the religion landscape on the ground. Today, we will take a look at Catholicism. In the Yerkalo village in Qamdo City, one can find the only Catholic Church in the Tibet Autonomous Region, serving at around 600 believers. According