We begin our LKG life decoding the world through concrete fragments. A is for Apple. B for Ball and C for Cat. The apple is red, round, fragrant—an object we can grasp, name, bite into. We learn first by touching the edges of things, before realising that some truths have no edges at all.

At the age of 45, I went back to Azim Premji University and enrolled for a full time MA course in Education not to learn or unlearn.. But to learn how we learn. Once I remember my spouse , half in jest and half serious, telling me as I had started early morning for my class “An Emme  (Buffalo) goes for his MA in Education “ .:-) . And I retorted immediately  quoting the name of the best book on leadership I had read “Flight of the Buffalo. Soaring to excellence”.  By Belasco.   Thara did have the last word when she said “Vikata Saraswati”.

And so learning becomes a spiral—from example to essence, from form to formless, from “This is an Apple” to “What is freedom?” to “what is consciousness” to  “What is the Observed and Observer”…. We cross thresholds without knowing it. Suddenly, we're conversing in abstractions—justice, love, compassion, gender—not as fixed ideas, but as felt experiences. “Gender” no longer simply refers to biological designation; it blooms into a fluid landscape of self-perception, expression, and relational truth.  Manu, my elder son, who is pursuing his graduation at JGU taught me that there are more than 60 different terms to denote gender now.  A long time back , in 2004, me and Thara ended up in Troy, Michigan while I was working for a project for GM at Renaissance Centre, Detroit. Thara  who was born in Chennai, where the three seasons of the year  are hot , hotter and hottest, had only one word for  snow.  Me Too.   SNOW.  I have read some where ( May be in "Lanugague in Thought and action" by Hayakawa) that Eskimos are said to have number of words to denote Snow..  But I do know that Mallus have many terms to denote rain.  As a Mallu, I was quite proud of it ,  till a good friend told me  Hawaiian language has more than 200 words for rain.

The point is more “we” know about something, the more words our language has about it. And we really know it, only when we "EMPTY" all those words and concepts from my mind.  Words and concepts are just bridges to know something, whether  a bird, tree or absolute truth.  And they are not the bird, tree or absolute truth.  Krishnamurti or Zen, any spiritual teacher worth his salt teaches this essence. 

In Zen Way—Jesus Way, Tucker Callaway offers six types of mind—Only-Mind, Spectator-Consciousness, Stored-Up Consciousness, Turning-Over, Six-Sense Mind, and No-Mind. According to Bala, my Vedanta teacher, Vedanta adds its own lens: manas, buddhi, chitta, ahamkāra—mind, intellect, memory, ego. There are Koans which says. “No mind  No Buddha” and  “Mind is Buddha.” Yet both traditions point beyond structure, toward freedom. The koan does not inform—it transforms.

In my view and understanding, Zen tells us: No-mind. Mushin. Not the absence of mind, but the absence of grasping. The presence that remains when thought ceases to cling. This is not always easy to understand—especially when we are conditioned to seek clarity through concepts. Mind, as conceptualized in spiritual traditions—from Zen to Vedanta—is not a rigid category, but a shifting metaphor. Psychology tries to map it with models, but even here we find spectrums, not binaries.

This movement from concrete to abstract, from grasped to ungraspable, is not just epistemology—it is pedagogy. (Or Andragogy). We learn best through stories, examples, felt metaphors. It is no accident that teachers use animals, rivers, lamps, and chariots to talk about consciousness. Without metaphor, truth feels dry. Sterile. Inaccessible. And perhaps this is why some (like me) find Jiddu Krishnamurti so challenging.

Krishnamurti stripped teaching of metaphor, story, and system. He refused to be your guide. He would not tell you a parable or give you steps. He only pointed: “The observer is the observed.” For many, this was too abrupt—like trying to breathe on the moon. But for a few—like physicist David Bohm or martial artist Bruce Lee—it was ignition.

Bruce Lee, once told by his Doctor that he would never walk again after a severe spinal injury, lay bedridden and broken. And there, in the silence, he read Krishnamurti. He let go of systems, styles, rigidity. From that emptiness came Jeet Kune Do—his art of fluid expression, of formless freedom. “Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.” He healed. He trained. He became the river.( And he taught “Be like water my friend”.)

Fr AMA , my Zen master, told me once that " Zen teaches you just 1/4th and you got to learn the rest".  It teaches you just enough to destabilize the scaffolding of our concepts. And nothing more. 

So what does this tell us—not just about mind, but about learning, change, transformation? That we learn through body, story, breath. That concepts are not endpoints, but gateways. That meta learning—the awareness of how we learn—is the true curriculum. It’s not enough to know something. We must also know how we know.  ( I did write a term paper for my Epistemology class at. APU during my MA Education days.  “How do we know what we know?”  Message me if you would like to read it. )

Coaching, like teaching whether they are LKG students or  after retirement spiritual seekers, too, must follow this spiral. Begin with the apple. Then the arrow. Then awareness. Then amnesia. Then action. Then… paradox. Because there comes a moment when the client , student and seeker no longer seeks answers. They become the question. This is the Koan of Knowing. And deeper still, beneath even that inquiry, is a felt saturation—still, clear, alive. This is the Dot of Dharma. And Bindu of Being.

Between the koan and the dot, between example and essence, between Bruce’s broken back and his blazing presence, lies the river. And like the breath, it flows—not toward conclusion, but toward depth.

This reflection didn’t arrive in a vacuum. It emerged through a quiet exchange in a coaching forum—a space meant for exploration, not conclusion. Someone referred to the unfolding ideas as “shallow understanding.” I paused. Not with defensiveness, but with wonder.

Because perhaps what appears shallow is actually surface tension. The place where the sky first touches the water. The edge from which depth begins.

In that moment, I didn’t refute. I wrote instead.

That our learning often flows from concrete to abstract. That metaphors aren’t ornaments—they are bridges. That mind, gender, consciousness, god —all these are conceptual frameworks to explore what cannot be grasped directly. And that truth, in its deepest form, may wear no definitions but remain alive in breath, in silence, in relationship.

We do not teach with conclusions. We invite with presence.

And so, the coaching conversation became part of the river. Not an interruption, but a tributary.

Shallow? Perhaps. But the lotus only grows there.