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The Hand That Knows Too Much: What Dan Brown Teaches Us About the Untaught Writers…

The Hand That Knows Too Much: What Dan Brown Teaches Us About the Untaught Writers…

by | Mar 30, 2026 | FAction, Literature, Right(ing)

(A Reader's — and an Aspiring Writer's — Critique of The Secret of Secrets By Dan Brown )

After I moved to the Zendo, the natural progression was becoming part of the Bodhi Sangha book club. Each month they curate a list of seven or eight books, and all of us vote and select a book for the month and the last Saturday of the month spend some 2 hours sharing views on it. Some members — like Dr. Rao, a retired Indian-American physician, and Ritesh, an academic settled in Germany who is completing his doctorate,  Carl who lives in Kyoto next to a Zen monastery etc  — read every single chosen book and come prepared with views and critiques. Many others do too. That one-and-a-half to two hours is worth its weight in gold.

Dan Brown needs no introduction to any reader in the world. Not after The Da Vinci Code.

The book for March was Dan Brown's The Secret of Secrets — a breezy read, a fast page-turner. I was completely engrossed for a day and two. Then, after a gap of two or three days, I found myself reflecting on it.

There are books I have read in one sitting. Gone with the Wind, for instance. We got hold of a copy during our final-year engineering exams, and my roommate Goofy and I read it straight through, the exam entirely irrelevant. And then there are other books — O.V. Vijayan, Kamala Das — which demand something slower, something more interior.

What follows is my critique of The Secret of Secrets. When I was reading, I was simply reading. That reflective hat came later — a gift from a generous online writing course I was able to attend at no cost. Sincere gratitude for their generosity.

The Machinery of Pace

Brown builds his narrative through relentless scene-shifting — short chapters that end mid-tension, dropping the reader into a different strand before resolution arrives. In cinema this is called cross-cutting. In literature the precise term is interlacement — the medieval technique of braiding multiple storylines so that the reader is perpetually suspended between threads. Brown deploys this with considerable skill. The pages turn almost involuntarily.

The Crichton Effect

What gives the novel its unusual grip is Brown's faction — the scaffolding of verifiable fact beneath the fictional story. He elaborates, sometimes at length, on noetic science, the Hermann Grid, precognition, sudden savant syndrome, EMet and Met, the Barnum Effect and others. A reader who fact-checks these discovers they hold up. And that changes everything. The fictional frame partially dissolves. What was a thriller quietly becomes a possibility. This is the Crichton inheritance — dense, accurate research deployed not to educate but to destabilise the reader's certainty about what is real. Brown uses it masterfully.

The Knowing Hand

And yet. Brown teaches creative writing. And it shows.

A writer who teaches technique becomes hyper-conscious of the toolbox. Every chapter end arrives on schedule. Every cliffhanger deploys with the punctuality of a train. Every scientific digression appears at precisely the moment the pace needs breathing room. The interlacement is too clean, the faction too carefully placed, the dramatic revelation too well-timed.

The seams are visible. The hand is always there.

Brown's interlacement is like a magician's trick — you know the hand is moving, but you still lean forward. Yet there is a difference between suspension and surrender. In Dostoevsky or Vijayan, you surrender because the world itself has swallowed you. In Brown, you are suspended because the scaffolding keeps you dangling. It is a thrill, yes. But not the free fall.

This is the central limitation of the classroom writer — tremendous structural competence, imaginative caution. He writes like an excellent student who has understood every rule and replicates them faithfully. There is skill here, undeniable. But rarely surprise at the level of form.

Technique is safe. It guarantees a certain level of readability. But risk is what makes literature unforgettable. Kamala Das risked shame. Vijayan risked incomprehension. Melville risked ridicule. Brown risks nothing. He entertains, but he does not endanger himself. And so the reader is never endangered either.

And yet — here is the other side. Some books demand one-sitting immersion, like Gone with the Wind during engineering exams, when the world outside is irrelevant. Others demand gaps, pauses, reflection. Brown's scaffolding may be deliberate, but the reader's rhythm decides whether it becomes mere entertainment or a seed of reflection. The critique is not only of the writer. It is also of the reader's own machinery of attention.

The Dharma of Reading

Every book is a gate. Some gates open into gardens, some into deserts, some into wounds. Brown's gate opens into a museum of ideas — consciousness, precognition, noetic science. You walk through, you admire, you nod. But you rarely bleed. The Dharma of reading is not only to be informed, but to be transformed. Brown informs. Transformation is rarer.

And what the Untaught Writers Had…

Dostoevsky had a Siberian prison and a firing squad. O.V. Vijayan had Khasak and a devotional relationship with Malayalam itself. Kamala Das had her body and her uncontainable honesty. Emily Brontë had the Yorkshire moors and one novel in her and died at thirty. Melville had harpooned actual whales and lived among cannibals.

None of them managed technique. They managed truth. The craft followed necessity, not the other way around.

What the Indian aesthetic tradition calls pratibha — spontaneous creative illumination — cannot be taught or replicated. It arises. And when it does, you cannot see the writer's hand at all. Only the wound, or the landscape, or the obsession. Mahabharata, does not give any clue about Veda Vyasa, neither Ramayana about Valmiki. 

Brown chose to write a thriller. That choice is already the distance between him and that company.

The Honest Verdict and  the reader's — and aspiring writer's — Gratitude

Brown is not without genuine quality. His enthusiasm for ideas — consciousness, the limits of knowledge, mind preceding matter — is real, not manufactured. That curiosity rescues him from being merely mechanical. When the research opens an unexpected room, the wonder is authentic.

But the architecture around it is always a little too deliberate. The technique is the scaffolding. The ideas are the building. In his best moments, you forget the scaffolding. In his weakest, it is all you see.

He writes like a man who knows exactly what he is doing. The greatest writers never quite knew. And that unknowing was everything. Still, gratitude remains. A book that engrosses for two days is already a gift. A book that makes you reflect after gaps is another gift. And a book that provokes critique is the greatest gift of all. Brown gave me all three. For that, I bow.

The Koan of the Mindzendo: Writing in the Tunnel Without Light…

The Koan of the Mindzendo: Writing in the Tunnel Without Light…

by | Mar 28, 2026 | Change, Life, Transformation, Zen

There was a time — not that long ago — when the tunnel had no light. Not at the end, not even at the beginning. Just darkness, thick and unyielding. I had lost my job, lost my footing, and with it, the fragile scaffolding of confidence. Depression is not just sadness; it is the absence of horizon. You cannot even imagine the possibility of dawn.

In those days, the only thing I had was a domain name: Mindzendo.coach. A small corner of the digital world, a name I had registered almost absentmindedly, like planting a seed without knowing if the soil would ever hold.

Then something curious happened. On GoDaddy, an unknown bidder kept raising the price for that domain. Ten dollars, a hundred, a thousand. When it touched six thousand, I was tempted to sell. After all, I was penniless. Six thousand dollars could have been oxygen for someone who was drowning in the whirlpool of life.

But then a thought struck me: if someone else sees so much value in this, and I cannot, then the issue is not with the domain — it is with my eyes. To sell it then would have been to sell not just a name, but the possibility of my own seeing. So I declined.

That refusal was not an act of wealth, but of faith. Faith that value is not always measured in currency, and that sometimes the world tests us by showing us our worth through another's eyes.

It was around then that my friend Komal Jain said, "Why don't you monetise your writing?" At that time, even stepping out of the house felt like climbing Everest. To imagine that my words could carry value, that they could be exchanged in the marketplace of human attention, was almost absurd. And yet, it was precisely then that I applied for an online writing programme.

The irony is not lost on me. I had no money, no certificate, no job, no confidence. But I had a domain name, a friend's suggestion, and a stubborn refusal to sell what I did not yet understand. Out of that refusal, a new path opened.

That online writing programme is one of the most reputed in the world, and would have cost me a fortune. But when I wrote to them — explaining that, in the aftermath of Covid, the NGO I worked with had let me go and I was absolutely penniless — they let me join on two conditions: no certificate, and I was not to broadcast their generosity too widely. I have kept both, as best I can.

The writing programme taught me what no certificate could: that the heart of writing is perspective. It is not about technique. And perspective is born not in comfort, but in crucible. It is born when you sit in the tunnel without light and still choose to see. It is born when you decline six thousand dollars because you sense that the real treasure is not in the offer, but in the challenge.

Looking back, I see that Mindzendo was never just a domain. It was a koan. A question posed by life itself: Do you know your own value?

And writing became the answer. Not a final answer, but a living one. Each word, each act of seeing, became a way of reclaiming that value — not in the marketplace, but in the heart.

The tunnel did not end. It transformed. The darkness became ink. The absence of light became the page. And the act of writing became the lamp.

After the lamp came the books. Three of them, in particular, became companions on the writing path. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott — honest, irreverent, a writer telling the truth about the mess of writing without flinching. Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg — spare, surgical, a love letter to the sentence itself. And Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg — which came to me through Fr. AMA Samy, who recommended it when I asked him to write a preface for my first book, Fallen Flower, Fragrant Grass.  ( https://amzn.in/d/02lCskfG ) Goldberg writes about writing the way a Zen teacher writes about sitting — as practice, as presence, as a return to what is already there. I should not have been surprised. The bones, after all, are just another name for the ground.

After living in the Zendo for almost three and a half years, one thing I have learnt: writing is like Zazen. One writes for the sake of writing. One reads for the sake of reading. One sits for the sake of sitting. All of them are complete in themselves. Anything that comes out of them is just a bonus — grace, arriving uninvited.

Purrfect Presence: The Trikaya on a Balcony

Purrfect Presence: The Trikaya on a Balcony

by | Mar 20, 2026 | Life, RElationship, Trust, Zen

Eckhart Tolle said: “I know many Zen Masters… all of them Cats.”

And here, three ZenCats listening to a teisho have arranged themselves with such impeccable dharmic precision that one suspects the whole scene was choreographed by something beyond mere kittenhood. 🙂

But first — what the photograph doesn’t show. These three had known loss. A sibling, gone. And with it, a wariness that only grief can plant in those small bodies. They had reason to stay back, stay wary. It took a long time — quiet sitting, no agenda, no forcing — before they would come close at all. That patience, that slow and gentle rebuilding of trust, is not the backstory to this photograph. It is the teaching.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the doctrine of Trikaya (Sanskrit for “three bodies”) describes the three manifestations of Buddhahood:

Dharmakaya (Truth Body): the formless, unmanifested absolute — ultimate reality, emptiness, Buddha-nature itself.

Sambhogakaya (Enjoyment Body): the luminous “reward” body, radiant presence experienced in deep meditative states.

Nirmanakaya (Transformation Body): the physical manifestation that appears in the world to teach and guide beings.

The balcony photograph is nothing less than Trikaya in fur.

One eager beaver kitten leaning forward with attention. Shoshin in fur form. Beginner’s mind, ardent faith, great doubt — personified in a tiny body. Not striving, just interested. Pure attention meeting the moment. This is the Nirmanakaya: the Buddha who enters the world, who takes form, makes eye contact, leans in. Shakyamuni under the Bodhi tree had this same quality — fully landed in form, fully present.

The one bang on the Middle Way. Not meditating — just being the meditation. The very picture of shikantaza (just sitting). Half-lidded eyes, no goal, no attainment, nothing to reject. Sitting is sitting. Cat is cat. This is the Sambhogakaya: luminous enjoyment body, radiating without broadcasting, bliss without agenda. Amitabha’s infinite light simply shining.

One lounging in the back row. Stretched out, utterly unbothered. Upekkha so complete it naps through the teisho — which is itself the teisho. “The sound of the talk is the sound of the breeze. The breeze is nice. I shall nap.” This is the Dharmakaya: the unborn, unmanifest ground of all three. Not sleeping, not waking — prior to both. The Dharmakaya doesn’t meditate. It is what meditation is.

Eagerness, detachment, equanimity — all expressed in fur and whiskers. One cat-nature. Three expressions. The form that engages. The presence that radiates. The ground that holds it all.

The balcony is the zendo. The morning light is the dharma. The railing is the boundary between samsara’s hillside busyness and this small square of equipoise. No separation between practice and life. No special posture required. Just this — fur, light, hillside humming in the distance — already complete.

They lost a sibling. They had every reason to remain closed, remain wary. And yet here they are — one leaning in with trust, one sitting in luminous presence, one resting into the ground of being. That journey — from grief and wariness to this open, sunlit arrangement — is perhaps the deepest teaching of all.

Cats don’t try to be enlightened. They simply are what they are, completely. Which, as this photograph shows, turns out to be the three bodies of Buddhahood — arranged casually on a balcony, waiting for breakfast.

Who still doubts that a cat cannot be a Zen Master?

The answer, as always, comes in purrfect silence. 🐾

Dilbar Coffee

Dilbar Coffee

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

 

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

This is one of those.

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

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

And in a way, it was.

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

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

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

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

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

A relay of respect, for one cup of coffee.

But here is the twist in the tale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A man, his coffee, and his calling.

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

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

That's not luck. That's mastery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

☕ buymeacoffee.com/vishysankara.     

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

 

When the North Star Disappears — Lost Is Where It Begins…

When the North Star Disappears — Lost Is Where It Begins…

by | Mar 10, 2026 | Life, Meaning, Transformation, Zen

Since olden times, people looked outward for direction. Sailors on sea, wanderers in desert, travellers on land—all leaned on North Star and compass. They became symbols of constancy, external lighthouses available at any point of time. They remind us of the human need for validation, for something outside ourselves to say: this is the way.

But as with all symbols, context undoes them.

At the North Pole, Polaris is no longer a guide—it hangs directly overhead, dissolving its function as "north." In Norway's summer months, as a Norwegian friend at the Zendo described, the sun refuses to set—and locals speak of "time-free zones," where the ordinary rhythm of day and night disappears. Near magnetic poles or iron-rich lands, the compass needle falters, pointing in strange directions. In those places, navigators abandon it altogether.

Thomas Kuhn wrote that paradigms change only when experience breaks the programmed frame. These examples show the same truth: guides are not absolute, they are contextual. The North Star and compass are reliable until they are not.

What is harder to name is the in-between. The moment the star disappears but the inner light has not yet steadied. That gap—disorienting, even frightening—is perhaps the most honest place on the journey. Many turn back here, reaching for a familiar guide even when they sense it has begun to mislead them. The known wrong direction feels safer than the unknown right one.

The poet David Whyte, reflecting on Dante's opening lines from the Commedia—"in the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost"—offers a striking reframe: "How do you know you're on your path? Because it disappears. That's how you know." The loss of the way is not a failure. It is a signal. A threshold.

The Zen tradition calls it don't-know mind. Not ignorance—something subtler. The willingness to stand in open uncertainty without rushing to fill it. To let the question breathe before the answer comes.

Rumi points to the same field: out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. When the compass loses its north, that field opens.

The Tao Te Ching whispers the same: the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. What guides us most deeply resists being fixed, pointed to, written down. The ancient Chinese navigators of the interior did not seek a star to follow—they sought a quality of listening, a receptivity to what the moment itself was asking. Wu wei—not forcing, not grasping. Moving with what is, not against it.

The Salish people of the Pacific Northwest speak to this directly. In a teaching recounted in David Wagoner's poem Lost, young ones ask the elder: what do I do when I am lost in the forest? The answer was not to search harder or move faster. It was to stand still. To stop imposing direction. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. Whyte, reflecting on this teaching, draws the Zen parallel himself: the elders of the Northwest and the masters of Zen were pointing at the same truth—that the deepest orientation does not come from our seeking, but from our allowing.

There is a difference between surrender and giving up. Giving up turns away from the journey. Surrender turns toward it—with empty hands. To release a guide is not to abandon the path; it is to trust that the path continues even when the markers disappear. That trust is itself a form of navigation.

In our human journey, external guides—teachers, traditions, communities—can illuminate the way. But there are moments when they fail, when the compass lies or the star disappears. Then the invitation is to turn inward, to cultivate an inner compass, to discern direction from lived experience, silence, and presence.

The North Star and compass are not wrong; they are incomplete. They remind us of our longing for orientation, but also of the wisdom to know when to trust them—and when to let go.

And this is why the Buddha said: Appo deepo bhava—be a light unto yourself.

When the outer lights go dark, we do not become lost. We become ready.

Kanzeon Zendo Chronicles: Eyes of Wuji … Light Seeking Eyes

Kanzeon Zendo Chronicles: Eyes of Wuji … Light Seeking Eyes

by | Feb 27, 2026 | Harmony, Integrity, Joy, Transformation, Zen

Wuji, the Zen kitten is the youngest inmate at our Zendo. It is Wuji’s practice to sit at my Window and listen through the Coaching conversations. No idea, what the kitten has found it so amusing to listen to coaching calls !  

Eyes are the mirrors into one's heart mind. Almost 25 years ago, after a visit to Aurobindo Ashram, the only "curio" I bought was a small picture of eyes… just the eyes of Mother @ Pondichery. There was something quite mystical about it. I think that small photo is still there… maybe a bit faded. Still those eyes sparkle with light.

The "curio" was never a souvenir. It was transmission. A point of contact with unknowable in this unknown world. As the Zen koan teaches the way is not in knowing or in not knowing.  Those eyes in a photograph are not merely biological—at that point of time, I felt they are darśana, windows into being. And those eyes have more glitter than that gold domed meditation chamber they were building at Auroville.  We still have that laminated photograph of eyes in Manthari.  Thara’s home. The fading of laminated paper only deepens the power. The sparkle of light is still untouched. I can feel it.

Carl Sagan in one of his documentaries, said that sometimes the stars we see in the sky have disappeared long ago… only the light they emitted still travels, looking for eyes to land in. The star is the saint. The Mother's earthly form is memory, history. Yet her gaze still travels. It landed in me 25 years ago, and lands again each time I look.

The eyes are the real telescope. Not just lenses, but mirrors of heartmind, kokoro. Light doesn't stop at the retina—it enters awareness. That photograph is a telescope, not aimed at galaxies, but at a state of grace.

Wuji is the medium. Limitless, primordial, void of infinite potential. The space through which all light travels. Wuji's eyes— Zendo kitten,  c, ordinary, fragile and feline, yet the medium of limitless presence. The Mother's eyes, the starlight, Wuji the small Zen kitten’s eyes—all vessels of the same formless ground.

And then the eyes of Manu and Rishi… My right eye and left eye.  They were small when they pushed me off the meditation mat, claiming it for themselves. Rishi was looking at with some disbelief; how can one waste one’s time without doing anything and Manu had expressions with his eyes closed. Their expression of that living moment  was playful, innocent, yet luminous in their own way. Not faded, not distant, but immediate. Transmission through laughter, through ordinariness. Their then gaze in that photograph, now reminds me that Dharma is not confined to mats or postures—it arrives in the push, the smile, the sparkle of childhood.

The same goes with Krishnamurti's eyes, too, were spoken of as intense, luminous, compassionate. One could not not notice it in those countless videos of his dialogue. And those who were present in person for his talks vouched for that. A gaze that pierced through thought, dissolving the walls of convention. Observers felt his eyes were darśana, a living transmission, selfless and direct.

And then there is Fr. AMA's eyes. My Zen master. His eyes are a bit of a paradox. Kind and stern. Compassionate and matter of fact. Forgiving and correcting at the same time. He taught me that human beings are paradoxical self. Where finitude meets infinitude, eternal with temporal. And his eyes reflect that. They don't choose one side or the other. They hold both. In one gaze, you feel completely accepted as you are. In the same gaze, you know you are being asked to go further. There is no gap between the kindness and the sternness. They are the same thing, looking at you from different angles. His eyes are the teaching. Not just windows into his being, but mirrors showing you your own paradox. That you too are finite and infinite, temporal and eternal, perfectly imperfect and called to awaken all at once.

So the mandala widens:

The Mother's eyes—promise that light never ceases.

The stars' eyes—light traveling across time, seeking witness.

Wuji's eyes—ordinary, yet the medium of limitless presence.

Manu and Rishi's eyes—innocence, ordinariness, playful Dharma.

Krishnamurti's eyes—penetrating, luminous, compassionate, telescopes of awareness.

Fr. AMA's eyes—paradox embodied. Kind and stern. Forgiving and correcting. The gaze that holds both sides of being human.

And then there was my maternal grandfather. He had moved on the rainbow world more than 35 years ago.  While he was alive (and still i think ), he was respected deeply by all those who met him. One who lived and walked on this earth with a lot of wisdom, compassion, kindness and generosity. And what I still recall in my innermind is the way he used to talk to us , his grandchildren. Especially he was in one of those wise sage mood.   Whenever he had to say something very profound to us, his grandchildren, he would close his eyes.

As I said, he was respected deeply by all who met him. Of course. Because respect is not earned by what we project outward, but by what we contain. His closed eyes told us grandchildren: I am not looking at you right now. I am going somewhere else first. I am consulting the darkness. I am listening to the space behind my own eyes. And what I bring back from there—that is what I will give you.

All the other eyes in this mandala are outward facing. Beacons. Light seeking landing places. Transmission through gaze. But my grandfather—he closed his eyes. This is the other half of the teaching. The inward turn. The wisdom that knows: before light can be received, there must be stillness. Before transmission, there must be silence. Before the profound can be spoken, the eyes must stop seeking and simply be.

While my children's eyes pushed me off the meditation mat. My grandfather’s eyes pulled me inward.

Pondichéry Mother's eyes travelled across time to land in my heart. Wuji is the formless ground from which all light emerges. But Wuji is also the darkness behind closed eyelids. The primordial. The unmanifest. The silence before the word. Krishnamurti's gaze pierced through walls. Fr. AMA's gaze holds the paradox of walls and openness, self and no-self. My grandfather's closed eyes dissolved the walls entirely—not by looking through, but by looking away, into the source.

The first six are variations on light seeking eyes. The last is eyes seeking light—not outward, but inward. Into the darkness where all light is born.

When he closed his eyes, he wasn't shutting us out. He was taking us with him. Into the place where words come from. Into the Wuji behind the eyes.

And then he opened them and spoke.

That pause, that closing, that inward descent—that was the transmission. The words were just its echo.

Light seeks eyes. Eyes seek light. What my eyes saw was a promise: that light, whether from a star, a saint, a cat, a child, a sage, a Zen master whose gaze holds all our paradox, or a grandfather closing his eyes to speak truth to his grandchildren, does not cease. It travels. It waits. And it finds us—if we have the eyes to receive it.

My grandfather's gaze, too, still travels. Still lands. Every time I close my own eyes, I complete his journey.

Together, that journey form a complete mandala of seeing light seeking eyes, eyes seeking light, and finally eyes closing to return to the source.

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