When M@@@@Lee first arrived at our zendo, I was struck by his quiet discipline. Middle‑aged, yet carrying the vitality of someone twenty years younger, he never missed a single zazen session. He spoke little, preferring to rest his gaze on forests, hills, and waterfalls rather than books. Only later did I learn of his past: 18 years in the United States as a chartered accountant, often working eighteen‑hour days in investment banks, living in luxury until burnout forced a reckoning.

For the last One and half decades, he has lived like a nomad, frugal and free. He speaks of happiness and contentment not as achievements, but as discoveries. His story is a living commentary on Byung‑Chul Han’s The Burnout Society. Han, another son of Korea, describes how the achievement society—with its relentless drive to optimize, perform, and succeed—leads not to freedom but to exhaustion. He contrasts deep attention, the contemplative focus that gave rise to philosophy and art, with hyperattention, the restless scattering of the mind across endless stimuli. In losing boredom and silence, Han warns, we lose the very conditions for renewal.

Lee embodies the medicine Han prescribes. His burnout was the breaking point Han diagnoses. His nomadic simplicity is the refusal of the achievement society. His steady zazen restores the deep attention Han says we have lost. His gaze on forests and waterfalls is a return to what Han calls the contemplative dwelling that modernity has abandoned.

And then there is Gopal, a respected corporate leader who recently reflected on his own transition into retirement. Quoting his father, he wrote: “To catch a train that has already started, you may have to run alongside it before jumping in.” It is a wise metaphor for transitions, yet it also reveals the subtle compulsion many of us feel—to keep running, to keep filling life with activity, even when the train we are chasing may not be ours to board.

In observing these two paths—Lee's and Gopal's—we see a fundamental dichotomy in how we face life's transitions. On one end lies the person who is totally burnt out... On the other, the person who, even after a great innings...

So it is safe to assume there are two kinds of people out there. The exhausted renouncer and the restless achiever. One who feels totally burnt out and want nothing to do with it. For him, emptying his mind about anything about it is what makes the rest of his life worthwhile. While the other, after a great innings and having done brilliantly well in his chosen profession, still is eager to jump into the next train of achievement. After reaching the top of the pyramid, why the eagerness, why the worry about the next phase of productivity? Monetary considerations of worry about a lesser lifestyle may not be the reasons. If one is intended to use their great expertise and knowledge of serving the mankind for the rest of their life after a great fist innings, may not get that wary about what s/he will be doing with their time. Being not comfortable about not being in limelight, could be one. Or maybe it is due to the worry about how to be with the void /emptiness in their life.

Even if  they worry about the next innings for none of the above mentioned reasons and it is just for timepass, when we call it timepass—scrolling reels, flipping channels, or filling the calendar with trivialities—it is rarely innocent. Beneath the surface lies the same movement: the fear of the void.

We are uneasy with silence, with the space where applause fades and identity loosens. So we keep ourselves busy, not because the activity nourishes us, but because it shields us from emptiness.

But as Krishnamurti reminds us, emptiness is not a defect to be patched over. It is a doorway. When we stop trying to fill it, the void reveals itself as fullness—alive with creativity, compassion, and presence.

The real courage is not in passing time, but in letting time pass through us, unresisted.

Here, Pascal’s old warning rings true: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Whether it is the youth endlessly scrolling through reels, the middle‑ager flipping through channels, or the retiree rushing to fill the calendar, the root is the same: our discomfort with stillness.

Krishnamurti went even deeper. He observed that as long as the mind is seeking to fill its emptiness, it will remain empty. We try to fill the void with activity, possessions, relationships, or applause, but this only perpetuates the sense of lack. He wrote: “As long as the mind is seeking to fill itself, it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be.”

For Krishnamurti, emptiness is not a defect to be patched over, but a doorway. “In emptiness alone can there be creation,” he said. When the mind stops running, stops filling, stops chasing trains, it discovers a silence that is not absence but presence. From that silence, something new can be born—innocence, creativity, compassion.

This is the crucial distinction:

• To fill hunger is natural, necessary, life‑sustaining.
• To fill psychological emptiness is endless, and often destructive.

When activity arises from genuine need or from the joy of service, it nourishes. When it arises from fear of silence or the craving for applause, it drains.

Zen would call this the great death of the striving self. And in that death, a new life appears—one that needs little, yet feels complete.

In the ancient Indian worldview, Vānaprastha—the stage of “going to the forest”—was not only for ordinary householders but also for kings and emperors, who were expected to renounce power and wealth at their peak and turn toward contemplation. King Bharata, after whom Bhārat (India) is named, is one of the most striking examples: he gave up his throne and retreated into the forest to seek liberation.

Today, the forest may not be a literal place, but a state of mind—an inner withdrawal from applause and limelight into presence.

Between the exhausted renouncer and the restless achiever, there are a few rare ones who discover meaning early and live it seamlessly until their last breath. For them, life is not about applause or limelight, nor about withdrawal in exhaustion. Their work itself is their prayer, their service, their offering.

Saba Naqvi once wrote of Mallikarjun Mansur, the saintly Hindustani vocalist from Dharwar. Stricken with lung cancer, doctors had given up. His daughter was told not to deny him the things he loved most. In his final moments, he asked for a bidi, and as he drew on it, he was still humming Raga Jogiya, almost inaudibly. With the raga on his lips, his head rolled over, and he was gone. His art was his final breath.

Another story is told of Abdul Karim Khan, founder of the Kirana gharana. On his way to Puducherry to sing for Sri Aurobindo, he sensed his end was near. He stepped off the train at an unknown station, spread out his prayer mat, and sang his last song. He died there on the platform. He did not board the next train of achievement—he stepped off, to let music itself carry him across.

And I see the same spirit in my own Zen master, Fr. AMA Samy. At ninety, he still sends emails at 3:30 a.m. with reflections, still walks into the zendo for early morning meditation. His life is not about filling time or clinging to relevance. It is about continuity of presence, a rhythm of practice that does not retire.

These lives remind us that there is a third path: not renunciation in exhaustion, not striving for the next platform, but a life so deeply rooted in one’s calling that even the final breath is an act of practice, art, or service. For them, there is only one train—the train to eternity.

In the end, whether we are young and restless, middle‑aged and distracted, or retired and still wary of leaving the limelight, the invitation is the same: to stop running, to stop filling, to sit still. The rishis called it Vānaprastha. Han calls it deep attention. Pascal calls it the courage to sit quietly. Krishnamurti calls it the doorway of emptiness. Zen calls it the great death of the striving self. Many names, one truth: the train we most need to catch is not out there on the tracks—it is already here, in the stillness of this very moment.