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Dharma Journey of the OrdinaryPassage 6: What the Mind Edits, Mindlessly…

Dharma Journey of the OrdinaryPassage 6: What the Mind Edits, Mindlessly…

by | Jul 28, 2026 | Experience, Harmony, Meaning, Wisdom, Zen

Blink, and the world does not go dark. It should. For that fraction of a second, the eye sends nothing. But you never see the gap. The brain hides it from you before you can ask.

The eyes do this even without blinking. They jump, several times a second, all day. Each jump should smear the world like a hand dragged across a wet painting. You have never once seen the smear.

There is a hole in each eye too. A small blind spot, off to the side, where the optic nerve leaves the retina. No light lands there, ever. But you do not see a hole. You see wall, or sky, or your dog’s (or cat’s)  face, unbroken. The brain does not just hide this gap. It invents what should be there and hands it to you as seen.

A room full of talk, and you hear one voice clearly. The other conversations did not fade. They were never let in. Something was listening on your behalf, choosing, before you had a vote.

And the mind wanders. You do not notice yourself leaving. You notice, later, that you were gone. The going and the return arrive as one seamless moment. There was no seam to catch.

I have been hearing since I was born. I did not start listening until I was blessed with tinnitus.

I have tinnitus. Bad enough most days. A sound in my ears that never actually stops.

There are hours I do not hear it at all.

Not because it went quiet. It did not. My own nervous system decided, without asking me, that the sound was not worth my attention, and stopped forwarding it. Then something shifts, some hour, for no reason I can name, and it is back — screaming, as it turns out, the entire time.

The silence was never real. Only the report of silence was real. And it lied to me, for hours, out of what — mercy, laziness, indifference — I do not know.

But that scream, when it came back, was the first honest thing my own body ever handed me. Silence had been the lie. The tinnitus was the one telling the truth. I had to fall sick to find out I had never really listened.

Somewhere in my depression days, I read too much. How humans actually hear. What the medicine Dr. Raja Hiremani gave me was doing, underneath. I read enough to have written a thesis, if a thesis had been what I needed.

The first time I noticed my own breath, I was in the ninth standard, in a canal near Malappuram, at an NCC camp, going under. Almost drowning. Nobody teaches you to notice breath. You notice it when it is about to be taken from you. That was not peace. That was panic.

Vipassana came later. Ten days of sitting with nothing else to do but notice it on purpose, instead of being nearly drowned into it.

At the Zendo, it moved from breath to sight. Tavutau — sitting, doing nothing, looking. Bhim, the Zendog, and I in front of K4, Perumalmalai across from us, forest, cloud, sky, that Malabar squirrel, monkeys, birds. No agenda. Some days tavutau. Some days just a dog and a man in front of the Zendo, looking at a mountain — which, with Bhim, was always the teaching, whether he called it one or not.

Sleep is a stranger kind of gap. You do not experience falling asleep. During the depression days, sleep would not come. Dr. Hiremani once told me and Thara, I might need intravenous medicine for it, that is how bad it had gotten.

At the Zendo, practicing full time, sleep became easy. Too easy. I built a routine around it. I boasted I could sleep anywhere — even a railway platform. In fact I could. Slept soundly for some six months listening to the roar of the Zendo waterfall.

But I could never witness myself falling asleep. Not once. Every morning, waking early for zazen, the same thought arrived — I missed it again. Maybe tonight. After all, I thought Zen is about being aware.

I never was.

This is Ma. Not the pause between the notes. The one who would have heard the pause, switched off for the length of the pause itself. Not smoothed over — gone, for that instant, and back before anyone could notice the absence. The brain does not just hide the gap. It hides the part of you that would have objected to the gap.

How much of a day is like this. How much of a life.

But the moment I notice the lie — that moment is not edited. That much gets through.

So here is the practice, if there is one. Stop trying to catch the gap. Sit with Bhim, look at Perumalmalai. When the tinnitus screams, let it scream. When it goes quiet, let it go quiet. Notice only the one who noticed.

Gasshō.

Passage 5: The Reclaimed Desk: Jinen or just Friday…

Passage 5: The Reclaimed Desk: Jinen or just Friday…

by | Jul 17, 2026 | Change, Harmony, Joy, Meaning, Zen

Three and a half years ago, this nest held most of my waking hours. Then, shukko — and I handed it to Thara. Every visit home to Manthari after, I worked from the dining table. A guest at my own desk.

I left the zendo with half a mind toward the Buddha Way walk. Came home to Manthari instead, for a while. Manthari — a speck of this earth. No one really owns a speck of earth.

No discussion. At the end of the day, the desk was simply there again, waiting. Dana done in silence. Not owed. Given.

I cleared it. Not cleaned — cleared. There is a difference.

The blue Buddha came out from behind a stack of old journals. He did not ask to be dusted. I dusted him anyway.

Books went back to shelves they had left months ago. Six Outliers next to Zen and the Birds of Appetite, no one minding the neighbours. A printer hums where a printer should hum. The lamp bends its neck exactly as before.

A Sennheiser mic sits new on the desk. Last month's Bodhi Sangha book club, Arundhati Roy's Mother Mary Comes to Me — hearing her read her own words aloud, something shifted. Maybe the scribbles I keep should be read too, not just written.

The MacBook took new colours too. And with it, my last rupee. Somewhere between the mic and the machine, the bank account emptied itself out — a shodhana of its own kind, unplanned and unglamorous. Emptiness everywhere now. Some of it profound. Some of it just the statement balance.

Santiago went all the way to the Pyramids to learn the treasure was buried where he started. I took the journey too — shukko, three and a half years moving with the master in a zendo, learning what the desk already knew.

Nothing was planned about  this. It happened the way water finds the low place — no ceremony, just the old shape asserting itself again. Jinen, if you want the word for it. Or just Friday, if you don't.

Natalie Goldberg wrote of freeing the writer within. Something in me came loose at the zendo, I think — freed. But freedom that stays on the desk is only half of it. Jonathan Livingston Seagull did not learn to fly to sit on the rock admiring the flying. Now the mic, the machine, the emptied account. Wings, maybe. Or the wanting of them.

The desk isn't waiting for a masterpiece. It's just a desk. The readiness is not about having the right idea, the right equipment, the right financial stability. It's about showing up. The printer hums. The lamp bends. The keyboard is cool under the hands.

What gets written next? The piece doesn't tell us. It doesn't need to. The writer has returned to the place where writing happens, and that — for now — is enough.

Dharma journey of the ordinary:  Passage 4… Eggxactly! A mindful challenge?

Dharma journey of the ordinary:  Passage 4… Eggxactly! A mindful challenge?

by | Jul 14, 2026 | Compassion, Harmony, Integrity, Joy, Meaning, Zen

This is not about chicken-egg problem. Whether chicken arrived first or egg … That has been resolved beyond any doubt.  Which came a bit late in our civilizational march towards thinking machines. Almost like that cure for common cold.

One of the challenges I faced at Zendo was not at Zabuton or dokusan room trying to present my nonanswers to koan.. But at the dining hall. Especially during breakfast time. There were a few, who still went by their dietician’s menu in a low budgeted zendo. They were proteinmaniacs.  And if they are up ahead in the Q after our Meal Gatha, most often the last ones in the line, ended up as vegans for the day.  After due brain storming with Prakash, our Zendo manager. ( whom I think of very highly. I always tell him, he is at the wrong place. If he is working for a Corporate, he would end up as CEO if not Chairman of that company. And most often, a hearty laugh would be his answer.)  we came up with a koan like note to be placed near the Egg tray.  “You can have as many eggs you want, after everyone else gets their first serving. “

Though many our guest meditators did like that, it did not solve the problem. There were heated exchanges and some heavy armor was called in to quell the egg rebellion.

I had almost forgotten about it until , this message from a recent  workshop popped in my WhatsApp.  “When you take eggs for breakfast be mindful of others. Those who come last are not getting.”

So I reckon, Eggxactly problem is not a local one, But a universal one. Especially in programs which tries to instill mindfulness.:) .

Almost 20 years ago, I attended an year long management program at  IIMB. The highlight of it was  the courses taken by redoubtable  Prof . Vaidyanathan. He taught us a course, Investment analysis and Risk management. One of the lessons I remember from that course ( may be the only lesson I remember from that course !) was his inputs on why we should start in a buffet from the desserts side , especially after that course.

Not so sure, Eggxactly mindful problem has any link to that.

Once upon a time, there was a good monthly magazine called Readers Digest. ( This is for Genz)… a mixture ( or avial) of everything.. A motivational story, some lessons/quizzes on words/vocabulary , some features and then a some quotable jokes. This joke as I remember goes like this.  “ In a seminary, during the snacks break, on the dining table , tow trays were kept at both ends.  One tray had biscuits and and another apples.  In the biscuit tray , there was a small note.  Pls be mindful of others and take only one biscuit. God is watching you.”… Sooner, another small note came near the Apple tray..  “Take as many apples as you want.  God is busy watching the biscuit tray”.

Not so sure Meister Eckhart figured in that seminary syllabus.  He said and I quote “The eyes with which you see the God are the same eyes with which God sees you.”

You, as the God, is watching not only biscuits, apples but eggs too. 

And God often uses eggs to crack open the illusion of a separate self who must scramble to get its share. 

Sunlight Through the Gate: Bringing Emptiness to a Metric-Obsessed World…

Sunlight Through the Gate: Bringing Emptiness to a Metric-Obsessed World…

by | Jun 17, 2026 | Change, Harmony, Integrity, Joy, Life, Management, STRESS, Wisdom, Zen

Achievement, metrics and make it count are the buzzwords of our world.

Sometime back, as a Six sigma lead black belt, when I had put in a quote which said “Everything that can be measured is of not value and everything that is of value cannot be measured”, I was met with ridicule and scorn across the room.  That was a long time back.. 20 years or so. Now as a Zen practitioner when I think about it I feel it was kind of prescient. May be I was into Zen in. my previous births too.

The Japanese art of doing nothing is best represented by concepts like Tayutau and Ma.

It is the concept of less is more. and more is less.

These distinct concepts represent the "ways of doing nothing" in Japanese culture in general and in Zen in particular.

 Tayutau (たゆたう). This term describes the act of drifting, swaying, or trembling like a boat on water or clouds in the sky.  It is much subtler than the Zen meditation of Shikantaza.

But, unlike traditional meditation or mindfulness, which involves focusing your breath or controlling your thoughts, tayutau is about letting go completely. You simply gaze at something with an ever-changing flow (like light reflecting on a river or leaves blowing in the wind) without trying to fix, solve, or judge your thoughts.  It allows thoughts to surface and drift away without anchoring your brain to them, enabling your mind to process and sort itself naturally. [

Ma (間) is the space between.

It's one of the most beautiful and untranslatable words in Japanese aesthetics . One can roughly translate it as "the space between," this concept applies to physical gaps, pauses in conversation, or moments of stillness in a day

The character itself shows it: a gate (門) with the sun (日) shining through the opening. Light coming through a gap. That's the image at its root — not the gate, but the space the gate frames.

Ma is the pause between two notes that lets the music breathe. The silence after a teacher speaks, in which understanding arises. The empty space in a sumi-e painting that the viewer's own awareness completes. The gap between two pillars that gives a room its character. The unhurried moment between exhalation and the next in-breath. It isn't emptiness as lack — it's emptiness as the condition for meaning. Remove the ma and the music becomes noise, the painting suffocates, the room loses its proportion.

When  Dogen writing his texts with deliberate lacunae — that was ma. When  the teacher who fills every silence robbing the student of the space where understanding can land — ma. The breath directed to the hara, the pause before the next koan, the gap between the voice that says "skip zazen" and the rising — all ma.

The Tao Te Ching points at the same truth from another direction: the wheel is made useful by the empty hub, the vessel by its hollow, the room by the space within its walls.

The thing has value, but the emptiness makes it usable.

I work with people on a long drawn programs and not short high energy ones , which leaves high and dry..  In nature too everything has its own rhythms.. and takes its own time… 2 minutes noodles and 30 sec insta reels may be the fashion of the day. But I doubt whether it leaves any lasting change leave alone a transformation in the viewer and reader. They are like sugar spikes for the dopamine system. But they miss out the universal principle. The Highter the initial energy , the faster it dissipates in this world of entropy.

Some time back, I was asked to design a short and sweet program on  what else spirituality. I did give it a long thought , as I was in dire need of Money… $, INR , Euro.. or even Crypto.  The advice was in this world, no one has the time and energy ( and focus) for a long drawn out program. And if one is in the business of transformation, one should cater to the needs of customers.

After due consideration, I realised,  as a connoisseur of good beer — and I say this with full sincerity — am  in the business of fermentation—which takes time, darkness, and stillness. Fermentation cannot be rushed; it relies on the Ma between the stirrings to let the cultures grow. Kokoro-Zen-Do in Action, which is an year long long  program are the koji spores of  real transformation. They are invisible, untraceable by standard dashboards, yet they fundamentally change the flavour of the entire personhood.

In this society of spectacle and current modern digital culture, everything is an "Event"—a launch, a reel, a metric spike. But Zen knows that the event is merely the crest of the wave; the process is the entire ocean.

Those immortal  Tao Te Ching lines we invoked before talks about the empty hub making the wheel useful—is the ultimate rebuttal to the metric-obsessed world. Metrics measure the hub (the tangible output). They cannot measure the emptiness (the clarity, the psychological flexibility and the trust) that makes the Cart move.

The Six Sigma room wanted to measure everything. It had no real ma, though they try to sneak it at the very end. May be in the form of a token mindfulness app or a five-minute breathing exercise tacked onto an agenda—a commodified, hollowed-out version of the real thing.  Twenty years later, I am still in that room — but now I bring the emptiness with me.

There is an old Zen saying: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. To paraphrase that
Before Zen, measure, optimize, present. After Zen, measure, optimize, present—but with the gate open, and the sunlight coming through.

Standing in line and Sitting in silence.

Standing in line and Sitting in silence.

by | May 21, 2026 | Harmony, Integrity, Joy, Life, Meaning

Kerala ex-CM Pinarayi Vijayan waiting for a train at Kannur station… it reminds me of those earlier gestures of ordinariness my father Sankara spoke of—Achutha Menon quietly boarding a KSRTC bus back to Thrissur, EMS living in a small party flat in Thiruvananthapuram till the very end. Power there is not a throne to cling to, but something handed back without fuss.

Kerala, God's own country and devil's too, carries this paradox in its people. Educated, alert, unwilling to tolerate arrogance—even when the government has achievements to show, they vote it out. And those who lose power do not resist returning to ordinary life. They stand at bus stops, railway platforms, in small apartments, blending back into the crowd.

Once, Sandeep Dixit came to APU as a guest lecturer on Policy and Politics. I asked him about his mother Sheila Dikshit—who governed Delhi for fifteen years, who held a capital city of millions in her hands, who oversaw its transformation through the Commonwealth Games years. He answered without performance, without pride or self-pity. She lives in a small apartment, he said. No lift. Knee pain keeps her from going down the stairs, from attending any public function.

That detail landed quietly but hard.

Power is partly logistics—cars, offices, access, priority, crowds parting. The moment it ends, you discover how much of your physical world was organised around that apparatus. The knees that once carried her through rallies and corridors now needed a lift that wasn't there. The radius of a former Chief Minister reduced to the walls of a walkup flat.

And yet—no bitterness in how Sandeep said it. Just a fact. This is where she lives. This is her world now.

It rhymes with the Pinarayi photograph in a way that surprises you. Both images strip away the Monroe mask and leave just a person. One sitting on a platform bench, waiting for a train that will not wait for him. One sitting inside, unable to go down the stairs.

But you don't have to lose power to practice this ordinariness. Some carry it while still at the peak.

At Wipro, I saw Azim Premji walk into the cafeteria many times — then Chairman of one of India's great corporations — and simply join the queue. No aide holding a tray, no table reserved, no subtle parting of the crowd. He would stand and wait his turn like everyone else, and he always chose the Healthy Menu. Now, I was never entirely sure whether that was a genuine commitment to nutrition or simply the wisdom of a shorter queue — and I say this having tasted it once, it was not particularly appetizing. But there he was. The chairman. Waiting. Choosing the simpler thing.

There is something in that image that belongs alongside the railway platform and the walkup apartment. Not loss, not limitation — but choice. A daily, quiet, almost stubborn insistence on not letting the Monroe mask harden into the only face you have.

And then there is Fr. AMA — our Zen Master at Kanzeon Zendo. His ninetieth birthday was not a different day. As usual, he was there for early morning zazen, sitting in silence as he has through decades of dawns, as if the years themselves were just passing weather. After the sitting, we all joined together to cut a cake and wish him. Before that I asked him — how does it feel to be ninety?

He smiled. And said: "Tired and peaceful."

Not grateful. Not blessed. Not the performance of a milestone. Just two words carrying the honest weight of ninety years, with nowhere left to hide and no desire to hide anywhere. A man who never put the Monroe mask on in the first place — and so had nothing to remove, nothing to hand back, nothing to prove by standing in a queue or sitting on a platform bench.

The cake came after the silence. That detail is everything.

There is a teaching here: roles dissolve, presence remains. The train platform, the bus seat, the cafeteria queue, the apartment without a lift, the zazen cushion on a ninetieth birthday morning — these are not falls from grace, but reminders that masks cannot last forever. Kerala's greatest gift may not be its backwaters or greenery, but this democratic ordinariness — where even ex-Chief Ministers wait with the people, unadorned, unafraid. And perhaps Delhi's most honest image is not its monuments or its power corridors, but a former CM quietly watching the city she built from a window she can no longer easily leave. And perhaps corporate India's most quietly radical image is a billionaire chairman holding a cafeteria tray, wondering, like the rest of us, whether the healthy option is really worth it.

And perhaps the most radical image of all is a Zen master on his ninetieth birthday, sitting in the same silence he sat in on every other day — because for him, there was never a mask to slip.

It is both God's country and devil's country because it refuses to sanctify power. What it sanctifies instead is the ordinary pulse of life.

The train platform, the apartment without a lift, the cafeteria queue, the zazen cushion — all say the same thing.

You were never the chair. You were always just yourself.

Dilbar Coffee

Dilbar Coffee

by | Mar 17, 2026 | Harmony, Joy, Life, Meaning, Zen

 

Some of the most remarkable insights in life have not come from self-made billionaires on Forbes covers. Or spiritual gurus on mountain tops. The most unexpected people, in the most ordinary moments taught me those wonderful life lessons.

This is one of those.

During those days, post covid Corporates were trying to get out of work from home rule. My boss was in faraway Zurich gave me the freedom to decide. But one jealous senior colleague, with whom I had an argument, did not like that. He made sure that I had to visit my work office in the United States of Sarjapur at least on once in a week. Corporate office was in the United States of Sarjapur, northeast of normal Bangalore. Every second Thursday I would drive cross-country very early in the morning. The reason was simple. To avoid an hour of meditation at the infamous visa and passport check at Silk Board junction. 😄

An early morning breakfast at TRC was a routine affair. That's where I first met Dilbar. The quiet, friendly barista at TRC, brewing that perfect South Indian filter coffee like it was the most important thing in the world.

And in a way, it was.

Now let me tell you a little about Dilbar. He is from Assam — a young boy who failed his 10th standard, with no degree, no diploma, no connections. Just a quiet desperation to support his family. So he did what many young boys from smaller towns do: he packed whatever little he had and came down to Bangalore in search of a job. Any job.

And somewhere along the way, he found coffee. Or perhaps coffee found him.

I was seeing him after some time when I asked whether he had been on leave. He, self-effacingly, replied that he had been in Mumbai. When I persisted, he said he had been at Mota Bhai's house. He was one of those who went with the TRC team for Mota Bhai's son's wedding. And it so seems Mota Bhai and another family member had taken a liking to his South Indian filter coffee .

Now here is where the story gets interesting. In India, no one says no to Mota Bhai. So when his managers spoke to Dilbar's employer, there was no notice period. Dilbar was now working at one of the most prestigious addresses in India — may be beyond India too.

His entire job there was to make one or two cups of coffee. Every single day. For Mota Bhai. And the ritual was something else. When Mota Bhai arrived for breakfast, his personal butler would radio the kitchen manager. Only then would Dilbar begin his work. He would brew that perfect cup, hand it to the kitchen manager, who would walk it to the butler, who would then serve it.

A relay of respect, for one cup of coffee.

But here is the twist in the tale.

After a few days, Dilbar got bored. Not even the other kitchen staff drank coffee — they were either tea drinkers or badam milk people. 😄 A coffee maker with no one to make coffee for.

Think about it: a musician without an audience. Sanju Samson batting in front of an empty stadium. A writer without a reader (like me?). Or a barista without that beautiful chaos of steam, clinking cups, and a queue of sleepy people waiting for their first hit of caffeine.

Making two cups in a palace, how much soever prestigious in LinkedIn — safe and secure, but not alive. So after a few days, he walked up to the kitchen manager and said he wanted to leave. Word reached Mota Bhai. He did not meeting him in person. Through the kitchen manager he enquired and offered to double his salary.

Some one who as a master communicator thru Coffee, Dilbar had to struggle to explain: it is not about the money. This is a society of spectacle where increments on a payslip, or designations in LinkedIn profile are success barometers. In this world, Dilbar's quiet "no" was nothing short of a revolution. Corporate workshops spend millions trying to teach Corpoarzens this: "purpose over package".

Because how do you explain to the richest man in the country that a craftsman needs his crowd? That a barista needs his rush? That making two cups a day, how much soever prestigious, is not living — it is mere existence?

Think about what happened here. A boy who failed his 10th standard, from a small town in Assam, was being offered a doubled salary by the richest man in India — and he said no. Not out of arrogance, not out of foolishness, but out of a deep, unshakeable understanding of what truly fulfils him.

How many of us — with our degrees, our MBAs, our LinkedIn profiles — can say that with such clarity? Sooner than later, he was back. To TRC. To his station. To his thousands of coffees a day (including the one for yours truly 🙂). Back to the chaos, the steam, the noise, the orders. Back to where he belonged.

No fanfare, no Instagram post, no "as seen at Mota Bhai's house" badge on his apron.

A man, his coffee, and his calling.

And this story dismantles a myth we all grew up believing — that success is a linear ladder, always pointing upward. For Dilbar, success was a circle that led him right back to his station at TRC. He didn't see working for India's richest man as a promotion. He saw it as a detour.

Think about it. In one of the most discussed wedding where everything was curated to perfection. In that world of million dollar wrist watches and Michelin-star menus, what lingered was a humble cup of South Indian filter coffee. Brewed by a boy who failed his 10th, who travelled from Assam to Bangalore with nothing but hope.

That's not luck. That's mastery.

And mastery, I have come to believe, has nothing to do with where you studied, or where you come from, or what certificate is framed on your wall. Mastery lives in your hands and heart—not in your head. And in the way you show up for your craft every single day in an honest manner.

In a city like Bangalore, which runs on ambition and caffeine, Dilbar is as essential as the morning news. Some people don't chase the spotlight. The spotlight finds them. And some people — after standing in the spotlight — quietly walk back to where their soul sings ☕.

Now here is the part that gave me goosebumps. I looked up the meaning of his name. Dilbar, in Urdu, translates to one who fills the heart. A boy named Dilbar, who fills hearts for a living, with a cup of coffee. You can't make this up. He doesn't only serve coffee. He administers a small dose of warmth, and a quiet sense of normalcy, to hundreds of strangers every single morning. He brewed a life lesson. And yes, some coffee does fill the heart. Especially when someone whose heart is already full makes it. The boy from Assam taught me more about purpose, mastery, and self-awareness than most books I have ever read.

Some people inspire me. Some people remind me that purpose is brewed, not bought. And yes—there are things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.

P.S. When I first shared this story with my near and dear over WhatsApp, I did include his photograph — taken with his permission. After his narration, over a second cup of coffee, I told him I was going to share this in my group, and he said okay. But as I write this for reach, I realise the story's soul is that this man walked away from the spotlight. As a coach, the most empathetic thing I can do is not drag him back into one without his full, informed blessing. So Dilbar's face remains, in a befitting manner, between the steam and the silence

Dilbar taught me that purpose is brewed, not bought. But if you'd like to help me keep brewing these stories, you're welcome to buy me a coffee — every cup fuels the next.

☕ buymeacoffee.com/vishysankara.     

Or simply click the coffee cup on the right side of this page — it's always warm and waiting. 😄

 

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