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Half‑Way Up the Mountain: Heights, Depths, and the Twilight Way

Half‑Way Up the Mountain: Heights, Depths, and the Twilight Way

by | Sep 13, 2025 | Change, Harmony, Joy, Meditation, STRESS, Zen

 

John Moriarty  wrote in Dreamtime :

"It is like setting up a ladder against a rock wall by a lake. The lake mirrors your ascent as a descent. And so, thinking that I was ready for the Heights when I wasn’t simultaneously ready for the depths, that was my catastrophe, that was the avalanche I set off, looking ever upwards, on the Mount of Perfection. It carried me down into a Deep below all depths."

And C.G. Jung, put that in better psychological perspective :

"Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light."

Two voices, two views— yet they meet in the same archetypal truth: the vertical axis of human experience is not one‑way. Every genuine ascent carries its shadow‑descent, and every plunge into darkness contains the seed of a corresponding light.

Mariana Kaplan, in her Halfway Up the Mountain  wrote of false claims to attainment. But the phrase reaches further than the problem of fake gurus and faker anti gurus and everyone else in between— it speaks to all of us. We are always, in some sense, halfway up the mountain. The summit is not a fixed point of eternal bliss, as some traditions promise. As we climb, the mountain itself rises.

The Greek philosopher Zeno hinted at this in his paradox: each time we move toward our goal, we can only cover half the remaining distance. Theoretically, we never arrive. The closer we get, the more the horizon recedes.

Buddhist teaching offers a similar lens: everything in this universe — you, me, the tree outside, the big rock near the Kanzeon Zendo waterfall, the distant mountain, the drifting clouds — is a process, not a finished product. There is no final arrival. The moment of arrival is already a moment of departure. In truth, we are always at the twilight of arriving and leaving, like the early morning and evening when sun and moon share the same sky.

And here, the metaphor meets the science: twilight is not when the Sun “shines most.” In fact, the Sun is below the horizon, its light reaching us only indirectly, scattered through the upper atmosphere. It is a softer, more diffused light — the “blue hour” photographers love — neither the full blaze of midday nor the darkness of night. This is why twilight is such a fitting image for the spiritual path: it is a time of transition, of partial illumination, of seeing enough to walk on, but never so much that all shadows vanish.

Many mistake spiritual progress for a straight, one‑way road. We imagine it as a steady climb, step after step, always forward. But the lived truth is far less linear. Sometimes it is one step forward, two steps back. Sometimes two steps forward, one step back. The rhythm is irregular, the pace unpredictable.

When we trudge toward the light, we do not leave the darkness behind; we carry it with us. The shadow is not an obstacle we “overcome” once and for all — it is a companion, a counterweight, a reminder. Light and shadow are not separate territories but a continuous spectrum, each shading into the other.

The movement is often like a pendulum swinging toward the light. But unlike a physical pendulum, the swing is not symmetric. The arc toward illumination may be long and slow, the return into shadow sudden and steep — or the reverse. The asymmetry is part of the work.

Dr. Kaustav Roy taught us phenomenology at APU, and one of the books he insisted we must read was R.D. Laing’s The Politics of Experience. That book held a distilled essence of human nature — a wisdom phrase to cherish in almost every paragraph. But one quote that stayed with me is:

“A good man is aware of what is not good in him, while a bad man is not.”

Awareness of the shadow is not a flaw in the journey; it is the journey. To see what is not yet whole in us is already to stand in the light. To deny it is to remain in darkness, even if our words and gestures point upward.

Moriarty’s mirrored ladder and Jung’s law of correspondence remind us that readiness for the heights is inseparable from readiness for the depths. To prepare for one without the other is to court collapse. The avalanche Moriarty speaks of is not a moral failure; it is the psyche’s way of restoring symmetry.

And so, halfway up the mountain is not a place of shame — it is the only place there is. The climb is endless, the summit ever‑rising, the path a dance between ascent and descent, light and shadow, arrival and departure. The measure of progress is not how far we have climbed, but how honestly we can stand in both light and darkness, in both coming and going, without losing our balance.

Perhaps this is why the old traditions speak of Great Doubt alongside Great Faith. The lake and the ladder, the light and the darkness, the ascent and the descent, the dawn and the dusk — they are not two journeys, but one.

In the end, the Way is not about reaching the top, nor about avoiding the fall. It is about walking with the mountain as it rises beneath our feet, with the lake reflecting both our ascent and our descent, with the twilight sky holding both sun and moon. Arrival and departure are the same step.

And in that step, the journey is complete — even as it begins again.

 

 

Rampway to Heaven… or Just Another Day in Paradise?

Rampway to Heaven… or Just Another Day in Paradise?

by | Sep 12, 2025 | Compassion, Harmony, Joy, Zen

Here at Kanzeon Zendo, a rampway rises gently from the meditation hall to nowhere— a small, earthly path that somehow feels like it could lead to heaven itself.

“Stairway to Heaven” is one of the few rock songs I’ve listened to many times. Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin released that album when I was just six days old in this world. It still carries some of the most hauntingly beautiful lines in rock:

“There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to Heaven

When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to Heaven

There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings

In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven”

Robert Plant’s lyrics have been read as a meditation on choice, illusion, and the search for something beyond the material. Jimmy Page, who co-wrote it, once admitted to altered states in those days — but even without them, the song’s imagery opens a door to other ways of seeing.

And yet, I find myself drawn just as much to Phil Collins’ refrain:

“It’s just another day for you and me in paradise.”

Chasing Cheese While Seeking Space: Are You the Last Rat in the Maze?

Chasing Cheese While Seeking Space: Are You the Last Rat in the Maze?

by | Sep 11, 2025 | Change, Harmony, Meditation, Peace, Transformation, Uncategorized, Zen

In the hush before dawn, the world is a maze without walls.
Some run, chasing the scent of cheese.
Some pause, listening for the sound of their own breath.
The path is the same, yet the journey is different.
Freedom is not in leaving the maze,
but in seeing it for what it is.

Kanzeon Zendo opened its doors on 22 December 2022. From January 2023 onwards, I began spending time here — thanks to my then boss, coach and mentor, Robert Meir. In those early months, my life was split evenly: fifteen days at the Zendo, fifteen days at home in Bengaluru. By December 2024, I had moved here fully, travelling back to Bengaluru for a week each month so I could be in the office for a day or two. Then, on 15 May, I left my job — or perhaps the job left me — and since then I’ve been here almost full‑time.

Through all these shifts, one refrain kept coming from friends, family, and coachees: “Good for you. At last you are out of the rat race.” At times I tried to explain that no one is truly free in this phenomenal life — the context and scenery may change, but in some way we are all still rats on the same ship. After being on the receiving end of a pay slip for some three decades, it is not easy to live with five or six thousand INR as your pension. Though, Fr AMA does provide me with the basic needs of life — food, shelter, medicines, and spiritual guidance. My words rarely landed. Yet the phrase “rat race” stuck with me. Why, I wondered, is the way modern humans live named after rats — of all animals?

I think, for more than a century, rats have been the quiet partners in our quest to understand ourselves. They are not just convenient lab animals; they are close cousins in biology and behaviour. Around ninety percent of our genes are the same. Their brains are built on the same blueprint as ours, with a cortex, hippocampus, and limbic system that process memory, learning, and emotion in ways strikingly similar to human minds. They live in social groups, form hierarchies, cooperate, compete, and even show empathy. They respond to stress, isolation, and reward much as we do. In the lab, they become mirrors — small enough to study, close enough to reveal truths about our own nature.

Perhaps that’s why rats have slipped so easily into our language as metaphors for human life. We talk about the “rat race” when we feel trapped in endless competition. We “smell a rat” when something feels off. A “pack rat” hoards possessions; to “rat on” someone is to betray them. We speak of “rats leaving a sinking ship” when people abandon a failing cause, and call ourselves “lab rats” when we feel like test subjects in someone else’s experiment. These phrases endure because they capture something raw and familiar: our instinct to survive, adapt, and sometimes, to scramble without asking why.

One story, often told in the spirit of B.F. Skinner’s work ( From Richard Bandler and John Grinder book "Frogs into Princes"), makes the point with a wry twist. Researchers trained rats to run a maze for cheese, and humans to run a scaled-up maze for five-dollar bills. Both learned quickly. Then the rewards were removed. The rats, after a few unrewarded runs, stopped. The humans kept going. Some even “broke in at night” to check if the money had returned. Whether or not this experiment happened exactly as told, the allegory is clear: we often persist in old patterns long after the reward is gone, driven by habit, sunk costs, or the hope that maybe this time will be different.

In the 1960s, ethologist John B. Calhoun built what he called Universe 25 — a rodent utopia with unlimited food, water, and nesting space. At first, the population boomed. But as crowd increased, social order broke down. Mothers neglected their young, aggression spiked, some withdrew entirely. Eventually, reproduction ceased and the colony collapsed. Calhoun called it the “behavioural sink” — a collapse of social functioning under crowding. It was a haunting image, and many took it as a warning about human cities. But density alone may not be the culprit. Bees live in extreme closeness — tens of thousands in a hive — yet thrive. Ants, termites,  elephants, wolves, dolphins  all live in tight social groups without imploding. The difference is that their societies are hard‑wired: every member has a defined role, communication is constant, numbers are regulated, and the survival of the group outweighs individual competition.

Humans are different. We are not locked into fixed roles by instinct. Our prefrontal cortex — the seat of planning, self‑control, and imagination — develops slowly over decades. This frees us from the tyranny of our genes, but it also means our social order is learned to a great extent and  not pre‑programmed. We can reinvent ourselves, but we can also lose our way. To thrive, we need to balance two deep drives: the need for space — physical, mental, psychological, and spiritual breathing room — and the need for cohesion — trust, belonging, and shared purpose.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar’s research suggests we naturally organise into concentric layers, which we can think of as moving from core to tribe. At the centre is your core — about five people you can call at three in the morning, who know your fears, joys, and contradictions. Around them is your close circle of fifteen — the companions who show up when it matters. Beyond that is an affinity group of fifty — the people you’d invite to a big celebration, who know your story and whose stories you know. And finally, your tribe of about one hundred and fifty — the size of a functioning village, where faces are familiar and belonging is real. Beyond that, ties loosen and the emotional intensity fades.

Social media flattens these layers. It floods our inner circles with hundreds or thousands of weak ties, blurring boundaries and overloading our social brain. We end up with crowding without cohesion — a digital behavioural sink. The result can look eerily like Universe 25: withdrawal, aggression, or the emergence of “Beautiful Ones” who appear fine but are socially disengaged.

So, though “rat race” is most often used in the context of our workplaces — or the way we strive to hoard resources, both real and imagined, to secure a comfortable never‑ending, ‘immortal’ life for ourselves and those we love — it has quietly spread its wings into almost every sphere of our lives. This is, in part, because the layers of Dunbar’s circle have thinned, and the people we believe we love — or feel closest to — shift and change with surprising speed. All too often, our movement toward the inner circles, or our drift toward the outer ones, is shaped less by shared life and more by the fleeting currency of likes and applause within our social‑media cocoons. The compulsive, addictive,  reward-chasing behaviour, “RAT RACE”  isn't confined to our jobs; it has infected our social interactions, hobbies, and personal identities (via likes and applause) or even spiritual highways. Many are absolutely  blind to the sad reality that  their mindset can corrupt even their  quest for meaning and enlightenment.

Rats teach us about our instincts. Bees and elephants teach us about structure. Our own brains teach us about choice. The “rat race” isn’t inevitable — but escaping it means knowing when to run the maze, when to rest, and when to ask if the cheese was ever worth chasing. The maze is not the trap. The belief that the reward still exists — that is the trap. And perhaps the real question is not whether you are the last rat in the maze, but whether you still need to be in it at all.

Only when we see the rat race for what it is — a mousetrap in disguise — do we arrive at the real question. The question that really matters. And that question — not the answer — is our first and last step (infact only step) to freedom.

Freedom, WiFi and the Wheel of Life

Freedom, WiFi and the Wheel of Life

by | Aug 14, 2025 | Harmony, Joy, Peace, Zen

14 August 2025 at Kanzeon Zendo, Perumalmalai. Tomorrow is India’s 79th Independence Day.

A septuagenarian nation remembers its long walk from subjugation to sovereignty — flags will be unfurled, anthems rising, street corners will be washed in tricolour. Freedom for a country is hard won: self-esteem reclaimed, self-made laws, and for the first time in centuries, every Indian a first-class citizen in their own land. But when that same word drifts away from the Red Fort’s parade grounds and into the quiet of the human heart, it grows slippery. A country can win its independence; its people may still live in chains — not of iron, but of craving, fear, the restless greed for more. Laws can declare you free; your own mind can still bind you.

Long ago, Siddhartha Gautama also won his freedom — not from a foreign yoke, but from the subjugation of his own conditioned mind. The Buddha called these inner chains tanha — thirst — the clinging that warps honest need. At Sarnath, as the Second Noble Truth, he taught that from this thirst springs dukkha — the suffering that binds us more tightly than iron ever could.

Translators have often rendered dukkha as “suffering” and tanha as “desire,” but these terms only scratch the surface. Dukkha comes from du (bad, difficult) and kha (axle-hole), evoking a wheel with a misaligned axle, wobbling under strain. It captures an existential friction — the deep sense that life is “off,” not just painful. Likewise, tanha is more than mere want; it is the thirst that distorts our clear impulses, contrasting with chanda, the wholesome impulse toward what sustains life. To tell them apart is to find the axis of freedom.

The day before yesterday, a senior corporate leader from Chennai rang about staying at the Zendo. His needs were crystal clear: a corner room facing the mountain, no distractions (he absolutely wanted to be left alone), and very fast, reliable Wi Fi. He might join zazen. Or not. One last question: the menu.

I mentioned another place nearby — Tamara. “Is it a Zendo?” he asked. “A five-star resort,” I replied. Silence. Then dead. I set the phone aside. This is how tanha dresses itself today — the hunger for silence braided with the hunger for control, retreat tethered to a seamless data stream. Not wrong. Not right. Simply the wheel, wobbling under many pulls.

In the original list of primal instincts, before hunger, there is breath. The first gasp in the delivery room, the last sigh at death. Breathing is the body’s oldest rhythm, the metronome that plays even in dreamless sleep. Honest breath is like chanda: clear, necessary, free of ornament. But the mind can grab it, pose with it, chase exotic pranayamas for performance.

Hunger has its own manifesto of truth too — until the mind twists it. Self-made billionaire and Thyrocare founder A. Velumani maps it in rupees most beautifully:

  • Eating for the stomach — fifty to hundred rupees: true need
  • For the tongue — two hundred rupees or more: craving enters
  • For the eyes — a thousand rupees: plating as theatre
  • For the nose — three thousand five hundred rupees: perfumed status
  • For the "likes" in Social media — an invisible currency, yet spent in restless scrolling

The higher the climb, the farther from the honest growl of the belly.

Schopenhauer caught the paradox: “You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.” The Buddha went further: awareness doesn’t kill desire; it clarifies it. Discipline is the alchemy. When breath shortens or hunger whispers — pause. Ask: is this chanda’s call for life, or tanha’s cry for comfort? Watch craving rise like steam from a five-star dish. Don’t judge it. Don’t become it.

“When you eat,” said Dōgen, “just eat. When you breathe, just breathe.” A 100-rupee limited thali, honest breath, meeting the sensation raw. Here, tanha starves. Chanda breathes deep.

Every single morning after our zazen, we chant the Meal Gatha in the Zendo dining hall before breakfast:

This food is the gift of the whole universe:

self-giving of the earth and sky, sentient and insentient beings.

Many are labouring to feed and nourish us in the mutuality of love and caring.

May we enjoy this food in love and gratitude,

May we become a blessing for the many.

From this scorched earth, patience grows. Focus sharpens. The zen monk’s mindful bite of bread, the jivanmukta’s sip of water, the Zen master’s easy gait — all move with life, not against it.

True freedom isn’t the death of wanting. It’s seeing the feast in the frugal, the vastness in a single breath. The wheel turns true. No wobble. No scrape. Just the smooth roll of a life aligned. Hunger remains. Breath remains. The suffering ends.

In the half-dark before dawn on this eve of  Independence Day, my 90-year-old Zen teacher walks toward the Zendo altar. The air is cool and still, the mountain’s mist-clad silhouette behind the altar plays hide and seek, a few birds already had begun their sutra chanting , floorboards creaking under slow, certain feet.

Is it tanha that moves him, or chanda?

Perhaps neither.

Just the feet, moving.

 

The Sutra of Wings …a single wing that carries all the flights.  

The Sutra of Wings …a single wing that carries all the flights.  

by | Jul 27, 2025 | Change, Harmony, Peace, Transformation, Trust, Zen

16 May 2025. Early morning at Namma Bangaluru.

 In many many years, I woke up as an absolute master of my time.  May be 3/4 Master as I had to still drive all the way back to Republic of Sarjapur or Republic of Kodathy to return the “mainframe” computer, through which my “employer” controlled my life. Though at a price.  A handsome one that.

Modern work systems are the most sophisticated prisons crafted by the ingenuity of human beings. A paycheck can be both a lifeline and a leash are a paradox that many of us to live with. On one hand, it provides security, stability, and the means to survive (or even thrive). On the other, it can trap you in a cycle of dependency, where your time, energy, and identity become tied to a system that may not align with your deeper values or aspirations.

Still the crimson Sunshine rays was on the horizon.  And I thought II saw an Eagle flying in the far east.  Though umpteen times, Manu and Thara had told me that, the ones we get to see in the skies of Bangalore are Brahmani kites and not real eagles, I still called them eagles.

Human world is constituted by linguistic and symbolic images and concepts.

Don’t remember, when Eagle seeped into my heartmind as an osmosis of a metaphor. May be after I read and reread Jiddu Krishna murti’s “The Flight of the Eagle”. That was the second book of Krishnamurti I had read after “Freedom from the known”. The metaphor of the eagle in flight represents absolute freedom—soaring beyond limitations, seeing with clarity. Krishnamurti uses this imagery to emphasize the importance of awareness and living without fear.  Much later though I read Richard Bach classic “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”.  Eagle remained.  As my metaphor for thriving in life.

It won’t be an overstatement to say analogies and metaphors run our life… They shape how we think, communicate, and even perceive reality. 

It took some effort to return the official company laptop.  On 15 May I walked out of office not with a severance package but with a corporate corpse in my bag- A laptop cold and closed. The persons in charge, insisted that as per their Asset Management Database, that computer is still in their stock and not allocated to me. When I started working in the ancestorial version of the same company some 30 years back, there were no personal computers allotted to anyone.  There were no emails leave alone other fancy systems.

The person with whom I spoke to told me, he will be there at the office only at 11:00 am. Yesterday 15 May 2025 was my curtain raiser day for the next act of my life after a livelihood mission spanning 3 decades. Almost 11,000 days.  1500+ weeks, 262980 hours and 15778800 minutes!!!!  March 1995- 15 May 2025 will be marked on the tombstone of that.  I considered making a French exit on my last day at work.  (Ironically French calls it English exit!).  But Rajdev and Wipro Travel team and my team had other ideas. May be born out of sheer compassion for me.  Travel team organized a warm sendoff full nice words, tasty cakes, crispy samosas and sandwiches with Amul cheese slices.  When I used to visit office on Thursdays, almost always I used to carry some eatables to be shared.  That good habit (though did not make it to the Covey list) was imbibed in me by my first boss R Bala. (& currently my Advaita teacher and a CEO of IT company based in London). Bala used to keep a jar of chocolates at his desk.  May be that act, helped me to one of the Travel team members.  They did consider me as one.  Even when they went to Pondichéry for team building, Rajdev ensured I was there for that trip.   It was one of the best team I had worked for in my career.

  As I looked at the flower arrangement for one last time (may be that is one of the things I am going to miss other than the monthly transfer to my parched and dry bank account.)  Komal Jain had called me. I knew he was on a pilgrimage to Kailash Manasarovar.  I thought he is back at Delhi. HE told me for some reason; he is not able to do a video call and asked me to call back.  I parked just outside Wipro SJP Corporate office gate and called back. On the small iPhone screen, Komal appeared.  He looks so serene and peaceful.  HE sidestepped and pointed to the majestic ice clad trapezoidal rock.  Kailash Manasarovar was absolutely glistening like a piece of 24 carat Gold in the evening sun.   A few seconds would have passed without me realizing it.  Unaccounted for. When he said, he got to go to the camp woke me up from my reverie.  My parents belong to Lingayat Community. So they named my elder brother Sasidharan, one of the names of Shiva. And me as Viswanathan after Kasi Viswanathan. Along time after that once I went to Varanasi for a Krishnamurti Foundation India annual get-together and seminars.  Prof Krishnanath told me I got to go and visit Sarnath. Instead of attending those “dialogues”, I used to French exit  to visit various places. Sarnath, Kabir etc.   The closest I went to Kasi temple was when I searched for a good silk saree for Thara.

  And when I saw Kailash in that iPhone screen it was as if, if you don’t go to see the God, he comes to you by himself. In the form of pixels across vast emptiness.

The laptop handover ceremony is at 11:00 am. Then Mankeerat, Kedar and Neha told me they are buying me to beer and chicken wings. Vijay won’t be able to join today.

Instead of the usual breakfast at The Rameshwaram Café, I chose Café Amudham in Koramangala.  Usually, I drive very early to beat the traffic.  And it was important to be on the other side of Bangalore separated by the great Gulf of  Silk Board junction. After the breakfast I walked across and sat on that stone bench in that park adrift between identities.  Suddenly I became aware of the swarm of butterflies... All of them had a blue and back tinge on their wings. And there they were… like a river of blue butterflies. An elderly morning walker told me that they are known as blue tiger butterflies and they are escaping monsoon – western ghats to eastern ghats.  I felt they are not fleeing rain, but dancing with it.  Not lost but on pilgrimage.  In that moment the Eagle in me - the old symbol of solitary power, talons clenched against the sky- fell like a stone. Here was a truer teaching: fragile wings moving with the storm, not against it.  A surrender that was not defeat, but sacred alignment. 

Later, I learned: Tirumala limniace. Blue tigers. Every year, millions lift off from the Western Ghats just before monsoon hits. Not fleeing rain—but riding a current older than concrete, older than corporations. They fly east, 400 kilometers or more, to the drier Eastern Ghats. No leader. No map. Just pure, soft-bodied instinct. Think of it: wings thinner than a corporate promise, carrying them across highways, cities, and droughts. They rest on wet roads. They drink from mud puddles. Some die. Most push on. Not as individuals—as a river of blue. When they arrive, they wait out the rains. Then, when the wind turns, they fly back west. A round-trip pilgrimage few ever see. Fewer still understand. That day on the bench, with a dead laptop in my bag, I didn’t just see them. I felt it in my ribs: This is how you move when you trust the body of truth more than the mind of fear.

May be a sheer coincidence as i reached back at Kanzeon Zendo on 17 May Saturday morning, was climbing down the stairs toward my room, i saw a huge butterfly... A yellow golden one with intricate design on its wings... I shared it and my spouse Thara told me it is a moth. and Google told me it is a Golden emperor.   Thara called it ‘just a moth.’ Google called it ‘emperor.’ I call it a confirmation.: When you finally lay down Christ’s thorn crown— the one you wore through exiles, firings, and the desert of dead dogma— the true kingdom appears on the step beneath your foot. So instead of rushing to have my breakfast, I was googling on what else butterflies... IT was so fascinating.  There was a great documentary on Monster Butterflies.  They migrate all the way from Canada, across Trump’s America, without passport of visa to Mexico and then back.  I chose that documentary for our Sunday evening movie at Zendo.  Everyone seems to have so much into this.

Then I thought all my exiles -from jobs, gurus and tribes- and realized. I was never cast out. Rather I was migrating. Transforming on the way like those butterflies.  We, butterflies, move when the ground drowns. We trust the inner compass that knows storm will end. New blossoms wait. So now when I think, I no longer visualize eagles – I become one of the millions of butterflies.  Vulnerable, persistent, carried by the greater than “I”. Power is not in the fist. It is the wings that bend, body that trembles but still fly.  So celebrate butterflies over eagles.  Because the world already worships force. The butterfly teaches us that resilience is softer, stranger, and more miraculous—a dance of patience and trust in unseen currents. 

The eagle rules the sky.  The butterfly enchants it. 

Eagles see from above. Butterflies feel the storm in their bones.

This time, no French exit. I stay. With wings.

Would you rather be the storm… or the wing that rides it ??

A maskless face in a boundless stage..

A maskless face in a boundless stage..

by | Jul 23, 2025 | Communication, Compassion, Harmony, Joy, Peace, Transformation, Zen

All the world’s a stage, thus wrote Shakespeare in his romantic comedy play “As you like it”. It is one of the most used Shakespearian quote after; “To Be or Not be “  and “Et tu Brutus” .  

From the moment we arrive in this world stage, as tiny actors, we are  made to memorize   dialogues from scripts ((often written by playwrights far less renowned than Shakespeare) we never chose and made to enact in our respective lives.  We begin crafting masks to our faces—one for home, one for school, one for the workplace, another for the market—each mask a story we tell so well that soon it ossifies around our facial bones, and we forget the face that wore it. In that crowded wardrobe of souls, our true self is often left behind, waiting like a silent guest in the corner until some social slip reveals we wore the wrong role in the wrong scene and life exacts its toll.

Erving Goffman (1922–1982), whose seminal work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) pioneered dramaturgical analysis, taught us that every interaction is a front-stage performance of polished gestures for an audience, with a backstage realm where we sigh, fumble, and slip the mask. It remains, for me, one of the most powerful sociology texts encountered at Azim Premji University, alongside Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and R.D. Laing’s The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Goffman’s explorations of stigma peeled back layers of our everyday theatre, revealing the frames that shape our roles.

Many may remember  Second Life which was the most popular metaverse / digital other life world in early 2000s. By the  time (  2013 ) I had created an avatar among over a million others, all seeking a moment’s authenticity beyond daily facades—beckoning us to explore the face we buried beneath our masks. This digital alias echoed a naming that began much earlier. No one called me “Vishy” before I joined Wipro Systems in 1995–96. My friends in GE’s Central Pension Accounting System began calling me that, and when email addresses arrived—short names being essential in an era of pricey storage—I chose vishy@wiprosystems. That name stuck. In Second Life, I christened my avatar Vishy Sankara. Today, more or less, I am that name; the original one from my parents seems to have vanished into that “crowded ward robe of souls”.

Now a days,  scroll through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or your WhatsApp groups and you’ll sense a second act of that second life unfurling: curated personas chasing applause, a polished script of likes and shares. Emojis become our tribal currency or social tax—tiny tokens of belonging we exchange to grease social gears, to murmur agreement without risking real words—yet Truth remains as elusive as Emptiness, unbought by any cascade of reactions.

As a bystander—an “adventurer” in Peter Drucker’s phrase—I drift through these currents, watching debates swirl, hidden anxieties surface, and group norms crystallize, noticing how charisma often drowns out content. Maslow’s hunger for esteem and belonging weaves an unspoken contract that steers our attention to familiar names instead of fresh ideas. The same impulse that flusters us into rushing past that janitor and  ikebana artist who creates those wonderful floral arrangements at the reception  to greet the chairman, as if status alone renders one worthy of our bowed head.

A long time back, during Six Sigma’s hey days, when GE was the “neighbour’s envy” in other corporate board rooms,  I too was one. A Six Sigma Black Belt.  During those days, we used to have a quarterly brain storming session often conducted in one of those resorts outside Bangalore.  I remember our Chairman came to address us in one of those sessions, during his speech he had asked a question to a front bencher and that unexpected question got him quite tongue tied. After our Chairman left, our Head of Mission Quality gave a rather long , boring lecture on being prepared with an elevator pitch.  That is when I first heard the word elevator pitch.  The idea that you happen to meet your CEO  in the elevator on your / his way to office and he asks you “What do you do in his company “ you may have  a few seconds to answer and make an impact. In other words, be prepared with your 30 sec mass dialogue for an act in play who never know when it may happen and on what stage you may be pushed into.  

On last  May 15, on my last working day at Wipro , I looked for Lakshmi and Sachin the  unsung artists of Wipro’s daily grace. Laksmi is janitor and ikebana artist who takes care of that wonderful floral arrangement at the reception. And Sachin who makes those tastiest ginger teas in that Corner café. It was another routine for me to have a tea with my Wipro travel team friends,  Zia, Prabhu, Hema , Bala , Denesh etc on Thursdays.  Zia and Prabhu  always paid for all of us.  Usually by the time,  we arrived at office,  the floor were clean and flower arrangement was done.  Once I asked the receptionist and she shared her name.  Lakshmi.  She was also a janitor who took care of that portion of the office. I left a thank you note for her with the receptionist.   Laksmi  told me I was one of the few  who walked into our office and who had the time to look at that flower arrangement. Everyone else either seems to be too busy or was on their cell phone.   And I was the only one who left a thank you note for her for the flower arrangements.  Probably that is the best compliment I ever got in my career. That moment taught me a quiet truth: when you really let go of yourself — your goals, your fears, your insecurities and complexes, your egoistic ways — you find yourself again. It could be in those flower arrangements, or a quiet joy kindled in the heart of someone you see truly. In that release, the mask falls away, and your very being becomes elevated beyond any rehearsed performance.

Even as children, we rehearsed these impulses. In our neighbourhood Monopoly games, choices revealed hidden scripts—those afraid of losing or being paupers often rushed to become the banker, clutching that role like a lifebuoy against imagined scarcity. We learned the dance of status through plastic houses and paper currency, mimicking adult hierarchies with startling precision. Facilitators of experiential learning in corporate training halls, know that very well.  Beneath our tailored adult masks, that inner child still peers out. So they recreate those games of fish bowl circles, mirror exercise,  blindfolded labyrinth etc , trusting that behind the professional polish, someone still fears loss, still longs to belong, still performs an old script from childhood.

They think this will shine light on blind spots we cannot see ourselves—each exercise a moving koan, an invitation to unmask in action, letting awareness dawn like first light across our faces.

Yet beyond these structured plays lies Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, born in Brazil’s political crucible, where actor and audience dissolve into “spect‐actors” who freeze scenes of injustice and step in to rewrite power

While I was a student at  APU, Prof Benson Issac conducted a program of  Theatre of the Oppressed for members of   APU Counselling team.  Sooner, I almost gate crashed into a  TO facilitator program conducted by  Radha of CCDC.  In TO, facilitators are called Joker as it mirrors the Joker card in a deck of cards. it's a neutral, impartial position that can move freely between different situations and perspectives. Like a playing card Joker, the facilitator isn't bound to any particular suit or role. They act as an impartial guide, helping participants explore different perspectives without imposing their own views.  I found TO to be the most powerful way of unmasking ourselves.  Image Theatre sculpts our bodies into living portraits of joy, fear, dominance, and despair; Invisible Theatre stages public interventions that provoke genuine reaction; Newspaper Theatre, Legislative Theatre, and the Rainbow of Desire weave analysis, action, heart, and mind into one seamless practice. Unlike corporate role‐plays that replay the same protocols, Boal’s methods pry open power’s machinery, surface systemic constraints, and invite us to co‐author new scripts of agency—cracking open walls so ripples of insight carry into everyday life, long after the final curtain. In that praxis I became aware of my own oppressive ways, even when I believed I was fighting others’ oppression and playing the victim.

Yet beneath these performances lives Maslow’s pyramid. Clinging to its base tiers – scrambling for security and approval – anchors us in scarcity loops. Paradoxically, some vault to self-actualization through creativity springing from unmet need. Late in life, Maslow pointed toward a realm beyond his famous schema: self-transcendence. Yet that truth had struck him decades earlier in 1938, among the Blackfoot Nation — where he witnessed communities thriving not on scarcity, but sacred reciprocity. Fulfilment flowed from collective harmony, not individual ascent. His hierarchical model, built years later, could never contain that revelation. Today, corporate workshops still peddle the pyramid — blind to the fact that Maslow himself transcended it. We remain trapped on its lower rungs, mistaking survival for meaning.

After leaving his Zen master, Tozan saw his reflection in a pond and whispered: “Even now he is not what I am, and I am what he is.” In that moment, roles fell away. The mirror returned the original face – not given, but uncovered.

From Goffman’s stages to Shakespeare’s eternal echo, we return breathless to the truth: all the world’s a stage, and we are only ever rehearsing our way back to presence.

And how in their removal, we sometimes glimpse the sliver of sacred angel flickering in between. in Us. That is when we all become truly human. Humane ones.

We are never just one thing—and perhaps that awareness is the most honest mask of all. When I stopped climbing Maslow’s pyramid, I became the ground it stood on at Kanzeon Zendo.

 

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