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The Art of Living Well: Rehearsing Failure and Symbolic Death for a Successful Life

The Art of Living Well: Rehearsing Failure and Symbolic Death for a Successful Life

by | Nov 21, 2025 | Harmony, Life, Meaning, Meditation, Transformation, Zen

One of the best ways to set ourselves to success in any endeavour in life, is prepare ourselves the best for a potential failure. While it is true, with respect to skills, strengths and ability, it is better to strengthen our strengths than bridge the endless gap of lack of it. That does not work in the area of mindset and attitude.

How much ever we reframe ourselves with positive thinking and paper over those fears with hope, fear of failure, performance anxiety lies in some distant corner of our mind, like that potassium permanganate capsule. And the moment it gets burst in a beaker of water, it colours the water in no time. The same with that capsule of fear of failure / performance anxiety in the darkest recesses of our mind.

And only way we can purge it out of our system is, putting the 1000 lumens headlight of awareness right into it. All human transformations begin with awareness. In management parlance, there is a cycle of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence. Unless we bring out what is there in our unconscious mind to the effervescent light of awareness, we will never be able to transform it.

This is where the ancient practices come alive. The way to do it is those Stoic exercises on death or Jesuit memento mori. While I learnt the Stoic exercise from the annual Stoic Week organised by University of Exeter, Fr. AMA taught me about the Jesuit practice of memento mori. Once we visualise what is the worst that can happen in our endeavour and then survive those torrid feelings in our body, it dissolves itself. The nervous system learns it has already “died” and returned. The capsule loses its potency. This is not just a mental reframing but a physiological release — the body itself learns freedom.

Athletes too have discovered this gate. Sports psychologists train competitors to rehearse failure — missed shots, falls, defeats — so that when the real contest arrives, the body does not recoil. The fear has already been faced. And Phil Jackson, the “Zen Master” of the Chicago Bulls, brought this wisdom to Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and their teammates. He taught them meditation, breath awareness, and detachment from outcomes. In his method, the game was not just about winning but about presence. By rehearsing loss, by facing impermanence, the Bulls dissolved their fear and played with freedom.

I have been a student of spirituality and meditation for some 30+ years. And I did read quite a bit (in fact late Dr. Satish Inamdar, KFI Trustee and Director of The Valley School had said to me once, I will find my “way” when I stopped reading!) and did my quota of channel surfing and spiritual shopping in my life. And the search kind of ended while watching an NBA basketball match on TV in West Haven. Seeds of Zen were planted in my mind in the most unlikely of places. West Haven.

During June 1998. That was my first visit to the land of Baseball and Basketball. Both Greek and Latin games for me as a spectator. In the NBA final, Chicago Bulls were playing against Utah Jazz. What got my eye and attention was Chicago Bulls Coach Phil Jackson. There was an article in NYTimes that he used to make players like Dennis Rodman, who was an out and out rebellious, rule-breaking toughie, and Scottie Pippen and the larger-than-life Michael Jordan, all managed by the Zen Coach, Phil Jackson. I would have read and reread his book Sacred Hoops more than once. He was deeply spiritual with Native Indian and Zen philosophy. In fact, Jackson spent a large part of his life studying Buddhism and its principles, from his mentor Shunryu Suzuki. Jackson wrote, “What appealed to me about Zen practice was its inherent simplicity. It didn’t involve chanting mantras or visualizing complex images, as had other practices I’d tried. Zen is pragmatic, down-to-earth, and open to exploration. It doesn’t require you to subscribe to a certain set of principles or take anything on faith.”

Fourteen years later, in 2012, after my own experiments with truth and lies of spirituality, I did a hard landing into Bodhi Zendo and Zen, and real spiritual seeking started.

AMA Samy and Bodhi Zendo were different. I would compare Bodhi Zendo a bit with Esalen of Big Sur, CA. One of the most beautiful places of learning I had visited. It was not as regimented as a Vipassana session. It did allow a good amount of personal space to oneself. Sometimes a good conversation, a good joke and laughter at the dining table along with some yummy food, is as good as anything else in this world towards one’s spiritual seeking.

Secondly, AMA Samy had one of the best collections of books on spirituality, philosophy, theology and psychology I have seen in my life. (AMA seems to have read most of them.) When I was a full-time student of MA Education at APU Bangalore, I had to write a term paper on Phenomenology of Krishnamurti’s teachings as an assignment for Dr. Kaustav Roy. I was searching for a book of Heidegger at the Zendo library one December afternoon. AMA walked in to keep some book and he asked me what I was reading. When I explained to him my struggle with that phenomenology paper, he spent 15–20 minutes to sum it up for me like a précis. I ran back to my room, and jotted down in my notebook whatever I could remember. That assignment is one of the few for which I got an O grade. And getting it from Dr. Kaustav Roy was almost like a Fields Medal. 🙂

Thirdly and most importantly, no one demanded that the camel got to pass through the eye of needle test of Faith first and salvation later. The Kalama Sutta poster on the wall said it so succinctly: “Don’t blindly believe what I say. Don’t believe me because others convince you of my words. Don’t believe anything you see, read, or hear from others, whether of authority, religious teachers or texts.” And AMA Samy did practice it to every dot in the i and j and crosses in the t. Though he had a tough and rough demeanour as a Zen master, there was an endearing quality of integrity and compassion about the man. He took his spirituality and teaching seriously, not himself. That was absolutely refreshing to my tired seeking mind.

Even then, it took me 3 years to seek to be accepted as AMA’s Zen student. As the saying goes, once bitten twice shy and the cat which falls into a hot water tub will stay even from a cold water one. Heidi, a co-student of AMA in Japan with Yamada Roshi and later AMA’s student, spoke to me and asked me to join Bodhi Sangha.

And I did decide to seek to be accepted as a student of AMA Samy, after reading this passage in one of the books written by him:

“The master cannot give you satori; she/he is there to guide, to challenge, to test, to confirm. In truth, all the world is your teacher, the whole life of birth and death is the training field… Zen, therefore, is a teaching by negation, negating everything that the student supposes Zen to be, hoping that the student will realize that by not being any particular thing, s/he is everything; and that by not being any particular self, s/he is selflessly all selves.”

Coming back to our theme of this note: what emerges here is not just resilience, but antifragility — the capacity to grow stronger through stress and shocks. By rehearsing failure, we do not merely withstand adversity; we integrate it, and in doing so, we gain from it. The process unfolds as a living cycle:

Awareness → Acceptance → Integration → Freedom.

We move fear from the unconscious (where it controls us) to the conscious (where we can work with it). By mentally and emotionally surviving the worst-case scenario, we integrate the experience, and the capsule loses its potency. What remains is not naive hope, but a confident, grounded presence.

As the saying goes, hope for the best and prepare for the worst is the best strategy. Not pessimism, but resilience. In Zen terms, it is living with the certainty of impermanence while still planting seeds of joy and trust.

 

Reclaiming the Temple of Sleep: The Lotus Pond and Night stars.

Reclaiming the Temple of Sleep: The Lotus Pond and Night stars.

by | Nov 18, 2025 | Harmony, Life, Meditation, Peace, Trust, Zen

Sometime back, I asked Fr. AMA what the mark of a spiritually evolved person is. He replied, "They may have reconciled their relationship with money, power, sex, and hunger." Later, when I read Buddha's five Nīvaraṇa (hindrances), when I saw sloth and sleepiness (Thīna-middha) as one of the Nīvaraṇa, I added one more of my own: a sound, deep sleep.  Not as a hindrance but, essential for spiritual evolvement.  If one can’t sleep well, may be how can one be awake well and live well.

Though I don't know where I stand on that list of hindrances, one thing I can say is I am not much bothered about it anymore. But one box I can tick is sound, deep sleep. May be that is why I added it to that list.  Those holy books and enlightenment literature always talk about enlightenment as awakening from sleep. But they hardly realise that one awakens well only when one sleeps well and deep. Our own life is nothing but a spark of light between two eternal sleeps. And without that eternal sleep, before the beginning and after the end, there is no spark of light and life. Similarly, ever good day lived in wakefulness, is between two deep good sleeps.

Animals remind us that sleep is never uniform but always adapted to survival. Bears and bats hibernate, entering long torpor where metabolism slows and hunger waits at the edge of waking. Dolphins and whales sleep with one half of the brain at a time, keeping one eye open to guard against predators. Birds too drift in unihemispheric rest, balancing vigilance with renewal. Even creatures like giraffes or certain fish seem to sleep with eyes open, conserving energy while remaining alert. Evolution teaches that sleep is not a luxury but a covenant, reshaped by environment and necessity.

Humans, by nature, are diurnal beings. Our bodies are tuned to the rhythm of sun and shadow, waking with light and surrendering to darkness. Yet the Industrial Revolution, with its artificial light and endless productivity, compelled many into nocturnal patterns. Factories and electric lamps broke the covenant, forcing us to live against our biology. In this dissonance, sleep disorders multiplied, and the ritual of trust was forgotten. To reclaim sleep is to reclaim our natural rhythm, to remember that we are not nocturnal hunters but beings of day and night, of surrender and renewal.

Mythology too circles around sleep, magnifying its power and paradox. In the Ramayana, Kumbhakarna is cursed to sleep for six months and wake for only one day, a cycle that mirrors the hibernation of bears. His story is both comic and tragic — sleep as abundance, sleep as curse. In Greek myth, Endymion is granted eternal sleep by Zeus, a timeless rest that suspends vitality. Hypnos, the god of sleep, is brother to Thanatos, death itself, reminding us that sleep and mortality are kin. In Hindu and Buddhist lore, sages and enlightened beings are said to transcend ordinary sleep, resting in awareness beyond waking and dreaming. Myth remembers sleep as both vulnerability and power, both surrender and transcendence.

Even gods and animals remind us: sleep is not absence, but renewal. Whether in the hibernation of bears, the one-eyed vigilance of dolphins, or the enchanted slumber of Kumbhakarna, sleep remains the covenant between body, mind, and cosmos. To sleep deeply is to trust — to let problems sink into the lotus pond, to let blessings rise and dance in the night breeze, and to awaken renewed at dawn.

During modern times, especially after the advent of scientific management, sleep was looked down upon with contempt. Productivity and efficiency became the new gods, and those who needed more sleep — even the average quota required by the body — were branded lazy, not up to the corporate mark. Higher education institutions, preparing students as future cogs in the corporate machine, began loading them with assignments and work, training them to wear sleeplessness as a badge of honour. To survive on a few hours of rest became a symbol of toughness, a distorted virtue. In the era of social media, even political leaders project this image — sleepless nights as proof of dedication.

Of course, there were exceptions. Winston Churchill was said to take long afternoon naps and then return to work with renewed vigour. And I remember my own corporate days at Wipro in 1995, working on the fourth floor of S.B. Towers, MG Road. The top floor housed the management. Once, passing the narrow corridor that divided the open office from the cabins, I saw Ashok Soota, then our CEO, sleeping on a mat on the floor. A colleague later told me he did this regularly, and everyone knew not to disturb him. Much later, when I tried the same in our EC office, my annual 360-degree feedback carried two criticisms about it. When I shared this with my then boss during appraisal, he laughed and said, “In corporate, the top fellas can do anything. Those who are bonded labourers are not supposed to. And remember, it is not the results, but the perception that matters.”

In essence having a good relationship with one of important needs for our life is as difficult as any other instincts.  Most of the tradition and rituals are developed by societies to take care of those nivarans or to ensure a smooth societal living. Tradition are rituals based on wisdom, and wisdom is always derivative of the knowledge in one particular time. Rituals are not timeless—they carry the imprint of the knowledge available in that moment. When knowledge evolves, rituals must evolve too, or else they become hollow forms. Two points about the wild animals in nature remind us of this evolutionary wisdom. First, they are not programmed for a deep sleep. That is evolutionary. If someone is lost in deep sleep, one may end up as a lunch or breakfast for another. Second, most of the hunting animals, which require speed and faster response, have a higher breathing rate. And they also have a lesser living age. Speed and responsiveness come at the cost of longevity. Evolution balances survival strategies differently depending on ecological niche. Most of the human being problems stem from the fact that though our environment has changed, we have not bothered to reprogram our rituals. Most important of all the rituals is the ritual of sleeping. We all need a long deep sleep to rejuvenate and rebuild our body. Yet we cling to outdated patterns—late-night meals, overstimulation, artificial light—while ignoring the wisdom of renewal. In effect, we have broken the covenant between body and environment.

After we started living in better protected shelters than in open spaces and caves, human beings started evolving their sleep habits and used to follow nature's rhythm. Last meals of the day were before the sun set. And though people used fire as light, since those resources were scarce, it was put out well before our ancestors hit the bed. Darkness itself became the cue for sleep. The body’s rhythm was perfectly attuned to the cycle of sun and shadow.

Today, artificial light tricks our bodies into believing it is still day. Screens and productivity rituals have replaced the ancient ritual of surrender. We have forgotten that sleep is not just biological—it is a ritual of trust. Trust in the shelter to protect. Trust in the rhythm of nature to guide. Trust in darkness to renew.

Our body starts sleeping only when our mind starts sleeping and is still. In modern times, with all those electric lights (white) and blue lights of the screen, music, food eaten closer to the sleep time even after birds have rested and sun had set—all cause our mind unrest. The body cannot rebuild if the mind refuses to yield. To sleep deeply is to allow the mind to bow, to let silence and darkness become the true temple.

In Zen practice, breathing is the most important ritual. One Zen quote says: “You can’t wipe away blood with more blood.” Similarly, you cannot wipe out thoughts with more thoughts. Breath is what unites body and mind. Zen emphasizes focusing the breath into the hara (tanden, lower abdomen), rather than at the nostrils as in Vipassana or at the third eye in other traditions. This shift of attention is a way of stilling the mind. At the end of the day, we often take the brain as the seat of all thoughts. But in Zen, the hara becomes the true seat of awareness—breath anchoring us away from the turbulence of thought into the stillness of being. And moving that focus even from hara to heel is even more effective. Sooner, one will know that the mind is still, all our problems, pains, suffering and challenges of the day have been written, cast away, and sunk deep into the lotus pond. And those blessings of the day will start floating on the surface, dancing in the night breeze. And soon, we would have slept.

First, I became  aware of the sleep rituals when I was deprived of it. I was in deep depression due to tinnitus peaking, and at first another doctor, when my Doctor, Dr. Raja Hiremani was away, prescribed a medicine named Olanzapine in a higher dose and another medicine for sleeping. Before that, for days together, sleep left me. It was a very difficult time. I hardly ate. But there was no hunger. No sleep too. Though I used to feel the effects of sleep deprivation. But after those medicines, though I used to fall asleep, suddenly my legs or hands used to jerk so violently during sleep as if they belonged to another soul beyond my mind's control. And I used to be so startled and scared of that.

So I wrote a lengthy email to Fr. AMA. At that point of time, he had moved out of Bodhi Zendo and was living in a small room in Little Flower School. One of those days I called my family friend, Dr. Radhakrishnan. He was undergoing some procedure in a hospital in Coimbatore and his spouse Usha Aunty took the call. Maybe by listening to my sad tone of voice, she handed over the phone to Dr. He did listen for a few minutes and told me that no one really knows how those neurological medicines act on the human body unlike other normal medicines. Since I am into meditation etc., why don’t I try that out.

And on the same day I got a reply from Fr. AMA saying, though it will take some time to build the new Zendo, there is going to be a two-week Koan Seminar in the school. Till then just do Zazen and focus on my tinnitus at home. Maybe I was on the edge between life and death. And one morning, I just threw away those sleeping tablets into the dust bin though Dr. Raja Hiremani advised me to taper it down rather than stopping it at once. I started sleeping well. Maybe my body was getting back all those deprived sleep. There were days when I woke up during the lunch time. But I never had to go back to those medicines or even supplements for sleep. And that is when my own learning and experimentation with sleep rituals started.

Now I can sleep even on a noisy railway platform in a moment. Some time back, when I shared that in my WhatsApp group, a good friend and ex-Wipro colleague Mukesh wrote back that he could sleep even standing in a moving bus. But then Mukesh was one of the coolest persons I had met in my life.

Last meal of the day at the Zendo is at 6:00 pm. Fr. AMA has his light supper a bit earlier than that. Music meditation ends at 8:00 pm and then it lights out. I do check my emails for 10 minutes and write down the day review. Then laptop and phone are out.

My most important learning was: as times change, we need to gain new knowledge about the environment, revise our wisdom and rituals. This reprogramming became my nightly practice, a three-part ritual to close the day.

First comes the Emotional Catharsis—the Problem Sink. I write a day review, beginning with the most problematic event of the day. The first version is an emotional outburst, pure feeling onto the page. This is the act of "casting away." Then, after a few deep chiposoku breaths, I write it again, this time as a clean, objective problem statement. This is the "sinking." I am telling my mind, "It is noted. It is stored. We will address it in the light of tomorrow." This, I realize, is the modern equivalent of our ancestors putting out the fire for the night—a ritual act of closure, trusting that the shelter will hold until dawn.

Next is the Gratitude Journal—the Blessings Dance. Here, I look for the silver linings, even on days of the darkest clouds. A good message from my better half, a show of affection from Zendog Bhim. This conscious cultivation of trust is the active reprogramming of the mind from turbulence to peace. These are not just words; they are the most potent nutrients for the soul. Truly, this practice has become the best sleeping pill, melatonin, and magnesium supplement, all combined into one.

Finally, I engage the Physical Anchors—the path from Hara to Heel. The last read is the Four Great Vows. Then, on the bed, I begin chiposoku breathing. But now, the journey of attention deepens. I let my tongue touch the upper palate, a subtle Tai Chi cue to connect the body's energy and promote stillness. Then, I move my focus from the breath in the hara, down, all the way to the heels. This is the ultimate act of grounding. By rooting my awareness there, I am no longer in the thinking brain. I am planting myself into the earth, into the primal trust of simply being. I become as solid and unmoving as a mountain, ready for the final surrender.

This embodied practice is the synthesis; it is the theory made truth.

That my Garmin notes a sleep score of 80-90, even on short nights, proves a vital point: sleep is not an absence, but a quality of renewal. The ritual itself is what matters. And the ability to sleep on a noisy platform? That is the ultimate proof that the covenant of trust has been rebuilt. The shelter is no longer just four walls; I carry it within me. The chiposoku breath is no longer just a technique; it is the living bridge that unites my body and mind, moment by moment, breath by breath. When the hara steadies, the heel roots. Problems sink into the lotus pond, blessings rise and dance in the night breeze. Ritual is wisdom reprogrammed, and dawn is the seal of trust.

Vedanta speaks of four states of consciousness: waking (jagrat), dreaming (Svapna), deep sleep (sushupti), and the fourth, turiya—pure awareness beyond them all. Though this suggests metaphorical sleep  (ignorance, delusion)  and separate it from the biological, restorative sleep (renewal, trust). In my lived experience biological restorative sleep is not an obstacle to the former but is , in fact it’s essential prerequisite.  To me, my nightly ritual feels like a conscious reprogramming of these very states. The Emotional Catharsis clears the residues of the waking world. The Problem Sink dissolves the forming fragments of dream. The Gratitude Dance prepares the mind for the pristine stillness of deep sleep. And in the Hara-to-Heel grounding, there is a hint of turiya—that steady, unwavering awareness which remains, whether awake, dreaming, or asleep. In this way, the ritual is not merely about sleep, but about touching the very substratum of consciousness itself, where renewal and awakening are one and the same. Moving on to other  spiritual traditions, including the Buddhist nīvaraṇas and certain strands of Christian asceticism, sleep/sloth is framed as a hindrance. The goal is to overcome it, to reduce attachment to the body's need for rest to pursue higher states. The metaphor of "awakening from the sleep of ignorance" is ubiquitous.

Conventional wisdom often places "spiritual practice" (meditation, prayer, study) above "biological maintenance" (sleep, diet).  Zen reframes and  flips this hierarchy. Hakuin Ekaku, one of the most radical and influential Zen Master ever lived, in his song of Zazen says “At this moment , what are you seeking ? Nirvana is right here before youer eyes: This very place is the lotus land ! and This very body, the Buddha!”

I reckon  that deep, ritualized sleep is itself a high form of spiritual practice—a "ritual of trust" and "surrender." It is not the lowly ground crew that enables the spiritual rocket to launch; it is part of the rocket's fundamental engineering. By making sleep a conscious ritual, we can elevate it from a passive state to an active one, from a biological necessity to a spiritual discipline.

 

Komorebi: Perfect Days in Shadow and Light

Komorebi: Perfect Days in Shadow and Light

by | Nov 13, 2025 | Harmony, Integrity, Joy, Life, Peace, Zen

At our Zendo, Sunday evening movies were once a quiet tradition.

After the reopening, that rhythm slipped away, as if waiting for the right conditions to return. When the new kitchen and dining hall were built, the old dining space by the Zendo hall transformed into a reading room and library—a place of books, silence, and study. We named it as Yamada Koun Library, after Fr. AMA ‘s  Zen Master. 

It was only last year, when Dr. Meath Conlan, a Sangha member, visited and wished to share his film on the Benedictine monk and guru Bede Griffiths, it got reignited. Btw we can’t move on without mentioning about Dr. Meath Conlan. He is one of the persons enriched my life on the way of spiritual seeking immensely. By any yardstick, Meath is an extra ordinary person and lead so far, an extraordinary life.  His great grandfather T Conlan was once a VC of University of Allahabad. Once means a long time back. 1894-98 … And Meath as a spiritual seeker would have read about various traditions and travelled around the world in general and India in particular than most of the people whom I have met. He is a retired diocesan priest who once was the Vatican’s representative in China. He is a polymath, knowledgeable in so many areas, a writer and teacher himself.  His elegant film “The Human touch” on Bede Griffith was broadcast on ABC. And another connection I have with Meath, in addition to being fellow disciples of Fr. AMA and Bodhi sangha members are he knew Tony De Mello in person. And I was / still am a big fan of Tony De Mello’s writing.

Then Sr. Chitra offered a gift to Yamada Koun Library —a large Panasonic screen—and suddenly the Zendo had a new way of gathering. Zen Master Olaf Muyoju suggested Perfect Days for the following Sunday.  And so, the tradition was reborn. To ensure that we don’t regress, Wolf a Sangha member from America, gave me a hard disk with some 200 of the best movies from his collection.

May be the move Prefect days was a perfect restart.  Perfect Days is a more of a film of shadows and silences.

 Hirayama, its hero, if  the current and lofty success standards of our “clean and mean” society permits us to  call a toilet cleaner/janitor as a hero,   speaks very little. Indeed, so very little that one can count the number of his dialogues. But Hirayama’s life unfolds not in dialogues, but in the stillness of  his daily rituals: folding his bed sheet, watering plants, cleaning toilets, listening to cassette tapes,  a lonely lunch under the same tree in the same park day after day, photographing the play of light through trees. At first, I thought whether I could sit through this. But then what seemed monotonous and boring instead came out as  so lively and luminous. Each act is performed with care, with presence. The film does not hurry, does not hurry at all and  does not bother to explain. It simply shows us that even in the smallest gestures, there is a wholeness, a completeness.

In a way this is the rhythm of Fr. AMA and Zendo life too. Early morning Zazen, breakfast, Samu, Sweeping the floor, bowing, walking the Dog. Each act, when done with attention, becomes sacred. And for some mysterious reason this life doesn’t feel boring at all. It feels peaceful. Sacred even. Like there’s something holy in how he takes care of the smallest things.

There’s no big drama in Hirayama’s life. No loud pain. No chase for wealth or attention. But you can feel it. The loneliness he doesn’t complain about. The joy he doesn’t announce. The kindness he gives without asking anything in return. A recurring motif in the film is the canopy of trees. Hirayama photographs them daily, capturing the subtle shifts of light filtering through the leaves. In Japanese, there is a word for this: komorebi—the quality of sunlight as it passes through foliage. Komorebi is never pure brightness. It is light and shadow together, inseparable. Hirayama’s life is like this. (to an extent my life too!)  He carries his past, his pain, like the rings of a tree—silent cassette tapes of storms and seasons. Yet he continues to move quietly, toward the light. When he finds a struggling seedling, he gently scoops it into a folded paper pouch, carries it home, and nurtures it among his saplings. The trees are his companions, his mirrors. They remind us that life is both rooted and reaching, both scarred and vital.

Yet the Director of the movie does not give us an oversentimental portrait. Beneath Hirayama’s serenity, shadows flicker. A niece tells him a disturbing story about a boy who stabs his parents after they cook and eat his pet turtle. His estranged sister appears, brusquely reminding him of their father. In these brief encounters, we glimpse a past marked by rupture, perhaps even trauma. And these scenes come and go in a flash. I missed it the first time. And the second time, I had to rewind and watch again.  The director of the movie does not care to explain. Neither does the hero, Hirayama. He simply nods, accepts, and returns to his life. His quiet routines are not naïve simplicity—they seem to be deliberate practice of turning toward presence, a way of living with shadows without being consumed by them. His “perfect days” are not perfect because they are free of suffering, but because they hold both shadow and light—komorebi itself.

One of the most striking aspects of the film is Hirayama’s devotion to cleaning toilets. His young assistant mocks him: “Why spend so much time and energy? They’ll just get dirty again.” But Hirayama’s effort is not about permanence. It is about presence. Each act of scrubbing, polishing, and restoring is a gesture of respect and compassion—for the space, for the people who will use it, for life itself. In Zen, this is Samu: work as practice, labour as meditation. The point is not to achieve a final state of cleanliness, but to embody care in each moment. After seeing the movie, one of the things I did was to create a few posters on the art of dishwashing.   I took a lot from an article of Thay. ( I will share those )

It has been a recent practice in LinkedIn to list down the cultural practices of Japanese. Most of them repeat the most famous ones. Like kaizen or kintsugi etc. It was quite fascinating for me to learn about komorebi which is the central metaphor of the movie. Life is not about achieving pure, unadulterated light (joy, peace, bliss or perfection). It is about learning to appreciate, even cherish, the dappled and understated pattern where light and shadow are inseparable. Hirayama's past, his loneliness, his trauma—these are the shadows that give depth and contrast to the simple joys of his music, his plants, and his work. His "perfect days" are perfect because they hold the whole of it, without denial or despair.

By the way this spirit is not confined to cinema. A recent news report from Tokyo said, Koichi Matsubara, a 56‑year‑old man, earns over 30 million yen (nearly ₹2 crore) annually from rental properties and investments. Financially, he has no need to work. Yet he chooses to spend his days as a janitor, cleaning common areas and doing basic maintenance in a residential building.

He works only part‑time, earning a modest 100,000 yen a month—far below Tokyo’s average salary. Why? Because, like Hirayama, he finds meaning in simplicity. The work keeps him active, grounded, and healthy. It gives rhythm to his days. It is not about money, but about living fully in the ordinary.

Matsubara’s story, like Hirayama’s, is a reminder that dignity is not measured by status or wealth, but by the spirit we bring to our actions.

When Wolf, another ultimate polymath and spiritual seeker, I have seen in my life, handed over his collection of movies , I was thinking the way  the Zendo movie tradition slipped away and was reborn is a good lesson. Things in life and practice fall away, and we don't force them. We wait for the "right conditions," for the gift of a film, a screen, and a suggestion from a teacher to allow it to return, renewed. This is not regression, but a natural cycle.

 In a way that movie taught that one could live a quiet life and still have a beautiful one.

That’s what I felt while watching Perfect Days. This movie made me realize something. That maybe we’ve been running too fast. Wanting too much. Comparing too often. Reflecting too much on the past.. “It could have been” stuff.  But life doesn’t always have to be loud to be meaningful. Sometimes, it can be found in small routines and stillness.  Decibel levels, the number of likes one gather, the model of the iPhone, the place we went for the last vacation, or the fancy food in that Michelin star restaurant in our Instagram post, or even that AI written intellectual sounding article…. We hardly realise all these chips away parts of our soul one chip at a time.

Some might say Hirayama’s life is simple. But to my uninitiated eyes it looks wholesome. This is the great secret that so many miss in their frantic search for more. A life can be quiet, simple, and utterly, profoundly beautiful. It is a life where every action, no matter how small, is performed with care and presence. It is a life where we can live with the shadows and traumas of our past without being overwhelmed and consumed by them. As the saying goes every saint has a past and every sinner a future.  A sinner gets is present moment and future when one accepts one’s past.

And most importantly we don't need to be seen by the world to feel alive, and that a folded bed sheet, a clean toilet, or the light through the trees can be more than enough. It can be everything.

And it recalled a question from long ago, from Prof. Indrani Bhattacharjee’s Epistemology class in Azim Premji University on Dharmakīrti: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it happen? I think I understand it now. Though, she may not upgrade my low grades in that Epistemology course.  And that answer is not found in a textbook, but in a life like Hirayama's. The reality of the fallen tree—like the reality of our own pain, our joy, our past—does not depend on an external audience. It becomes fully, wholly real when we ourselves can turn towards it with unwavering attention and acceptance. Hirayama’s practice is to be the ultimate witness to his own life. He hears every falling tree in his soul, the shadows and the light, and in doing so, he makes his days perfect.

The final lesson is that “perfection" is not a flawless state or ever bliss, but as the courageous, equanimous and attentive embrace and acceptance of the whole of one's experience. It brings to mind why I named my own book Fallen Flower, Fragrant Grass—that even a flower which has fallen unseen upon the grass, far from the costly vase of an ikebana arrangement, can still offer its fragrance to the world. Its beauty and purpose are not diminished because they go un-witnessed by the crowd.

The Fulcrum in the see-saw of your life : when your first life truly begins…

The Fulcrum in the see-saw of your life : when your first life truly begins…

by | Nov 6, 2025 | Harmony, Joy, Life, Peace, Zen

We are told: “We have two lives. The second begins when we realize we have only one.”

The sooner we realise, our first and only life is going to be lived as it could be lived... For many that realisation comes very close to their end. Though, some philosophers say we are all born equal. I beg to differ. We are born unequal... Some with silver spoon in their mouth, some golden ones and some no spoons at all... Many of us have to struggle and suffer a lot more than others... But in Death more or less we are equal. At the end of it all, it is 6 ft of earth or a handful of ashes.

A long time back, I worked as an Org change and transformation consultant at KAUST Thuwal, Jeddah... Btw full name of KAUST is King Abdulla University of Science and Technology... It is apt to say, it is more of a modern showcase monument than a university. Started by the King of Saudi Arabia in his name and well-funded by Aramco, it is said to be the second richest university in the world after Harvard, in endowment holding. That riches and opulence was there everywhere. I don’t know which other university in the world has its own harbour, lighthouse and a long beach that too facing the verdant Red Sea... And inside, all of us had the big screen Macs in addition to the latest and top most versions of MacBook Pros...

One of the humorous anecdotes I heard there was about its inauguration... It was shared by many. So I reckon it as true. It so seems, during the inauguration, many a times, King Abdulla happened to hear the word KAUST... and he summoned the Aramco sr. exec, who was also the de facto “RULER” of the university to clarify. And that exec replied it stands for King Abdulla University of Science and Technology. It is said, the king got into rage, how dare you shorten my name like that... Better you change it or you had it... And the very next day, they put up the name board in full...

And King Abdulla did pass away, when I was still working there. To my surprise, he was buried in an unmarked grave. This is in accordance with the austere Islamic tradition of Wahhabism, which opposes public displays of wealth and mourning to emphasize equality before God. His grave is located in the Al Oud cemetery in Riyadh and is marked with a simple, plain stone.

So I thought, at the end of the day, death makes us equal in one way or other. Though there was a Shah Jahan who built at a great cost and cruelly a mausoleum and modern day Shah Jahans do that, most of us don’t get there. Though there can smell a bit of inequality there, there is another aspect of death, where we are absolutely equal. No one. Absolutely no one can predict the time of leaving. You can be a prince or pauper. If Alexander had to leave behind all the kingdoms he conquered at an early age, that points to just that.

And here, the philosophers join in like a chorus. Seneca reminds us that the problem is not that life is short, but that we waste much of it. His words sting, because they are true—we squander hours, days, years, as if they were endless. Marcus Aurelius, the emperor who wrote to himself in the quiet of his tent, whispers: “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” His is not a lofty abstraction but a practical tool, a way to live with integrity now, not later. And then Tagore, with the gentleness of a poet, offers another measure altogether: “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” A life is not weighed in years but in the intensity of its moments, in the beauty of its flight.

Albert Camus, who wrote of the absurdity of existence, died suddenly in a car crash, with an unused train ticket in his pocket. That unused ticket is the perfect symbol of all our plans, our “later,” being rendered null by the absurd randomness of fate. His death is the brutal proof of what the philosophers intuited: that the second life cannot be postponed.

And so we return to the fulcrum. We often assume our first life begins with a cry in a delivery room. But is that truly the start? For decades, we may only be inheriting a life—a script written by others, a path laid down by circumstance, a collection of expectations and conditioned responses. We accumulate a name, a history, a personality, a set of possessions. But is the person living this existence truly awake, or are they a custodian of a pre‑fabricated self?

Life is a see‑saw, the fulcrum never quite in the middle. Sometimes the shorter side sinks, not because of weight, but because of where awareness rests.

This inherited existence—the one of silver spoons or none, of struggle and societal metrics—is the prelude. It is the raw material, the long, often‑unbalanced side of the see‑saw weighted with the past. It is a reaction, not a creation.

Your first life begins at the fulcrum.

It begins not when you are born to the world, but when the world is born to you. It starts in the silent, seismic shock of realization—the same one that marks the beginning of the so‑called “second life.” This is the paradox: your first life and your second life are the same life, born in the same instant.

The moment you realize you have only one life is the moment you become truly alive within it. It is the moment you shift from being a passenger to the driver, from a custodian to the author. The fulcrum point is where unconscious inheritance ends and conscious living begins.

Before the fulcrum, you had a biography. After the fulcrum, you have a story you are actively writing.

So, when does your first life begin?

It begins when you trade Seneca’s “waste” for Aurelius’s “purpose.” It begins when you stop counting months like a mortal and start counting moments like Tagore’s butterfly. It begins when the nightmare of the unmarked grave no longer frightens you, but focuses you on the vibrant, fragile ordinariness of the now.

Your first life begins when you choose to place the fulcrum of your awareness in the present and finally, deliberately, begin to balance the weight of all you have been with the possibility of all you might yet be.

Author’s Note These reflections came up during a memorial service for All Souls’ Day 2 November, observed at Kanzeon Zendo. The names of the departed, the scent of incense, and the silence between thoughts were the first drafts of this chronicle. This is the day the veil between the living and the dead is considered thinnest. And so, behind this thin veil, Camus and Alexander, King Abdullah and Karen, Ann Marie and Sheela, and my late father, Sankara—all find their place on the same altar of remembrance, embodying the very equality I sought to describe.

And perhaps the altar itself is a see‑saw of memory and presence: the weight of absence pressing one side down, the lightness of gratitude lifting the other.

 

Vanaprastha for Our Times: On Burnout, Busyness, and the Third Path

Vanaprastha for Our Times: On Burnout, Busyness, and the Third Path

by | Oct 12, 2025 | Career, Change, Harmony, Joy, Life, Peace, STRESS, Transformation, Zen

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.

The Window and the Wall: When the World Is the Storyteller

The Window and the Wall: When the World Is the Storyteller

by | Sep 23, 2025 | Harmony, Joy, Peace, Zen

Have you read that story title the "The Window" ? "In that hospital story, two men share a room. One’s bed is next to the window; the other is confined to his bed away from it. Each day, the man by the window vividly describes what he sees — children playing, lovers strolling, swans gliding on a lake, the beauty of changing seasons. His words become the other patient’s lifeline, lifting his spirits and giving him something to look forward to. One day, the man by the window dies. When the surviving patient asks to be moved to the window, he discovers that the “view” is actually a blank wall. The scenes had all been imagined — a gift of hope and beauty from one human being to another."  

Now, at Kanzeon Zendo, I write in a room without windows, where the sky itself is the roof and the mountains stand as steadfast walls. Here, there is no need to invent and imagine the view — the horizon is already an open page, and the still mind rolls on like the wheel. What was once a story of vision born in absence becomes, in this boundless chamber, vision born in presence. The same generosity of spirit flows, but now the world itself is the storyteller.

When the mind frees itself from the shackles and botheration of likes, reposts, eyeballs, and LinkedIn’s restless algorithms, it settles into stillness. In that quiet, there is no striving, no audience to please — only the open space where the pen moves of its own accord, writing what needs to be written.

And in the same moment, seeds of ideas are sown, sprouts are tended, branches are pruned, and the harvest is gathered — the entire cycle of creation unfolding in a single breath.

And that is the gist of Zen teacher Natalie Goldberg’s. “Writing to the bones, freeing the writer within. “.  

All the modern wants and greed  dictated by the social media are really shackles.  Only when one becomes aware of it, only then the writer within frees himself.   Almost all the great literary works , they wrote for themselves.

Every writer must choose where they sit: by the imagined window, in the room with a view, or beneath the sky‑roof with mountain walls. The choice is never about scenery, but about freedom. Free yourself from the shackles of metrics, and the work will grow — seed to sprout, branch to harvest — without needing permission from the world.

The window is a wall. The wall is a window. The horizon is neither. When the mind stops looking for a view, the view appears. When the pen stops trying to write, the writing is already done.

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