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The Song of Silence That Remains…

The Song of Silence That Remains…

by | Dec 19, 2025 | Harmony, Joy, Life, Meaning, Meditation, Peace, Zen

The Music Around Me (Inheritance)

Music was always present in the background of my life, though I never claimed it as my own. My late father, Sankara, was a devoted fan of Rafi and Mukesh. In our home stood an old radio, and before that, I remember an even older one—so old it required a license from the post office. Listening to Vividh Bharati and Ceylon Radio was a daily ritual. My father often spoke with fondness about how Rafi would visit Thalassery for annual concerts, and those stories carried a kind of magic, even if I did not yet understand the music itself. 

Around me, others carried the thread forward. A cousin of my father in Mannarkkad was a flutist, his son a skilled mridangam player. Our family friend, Dr. Anju, now balances her life as a doctor and a singer. I still remember attending her very first concert when she was a child—watching her step onto the stage with a voice that has since grown to embrace Carnatic, semi-classical, and even pop.

Even in my own home, music appeared in unexpected ways. My elder son, Many, learned tabla for a while, and though he dropped it midway—as children often do—his teacher at TVS insisted he had talent. My younger son, Rishi, sings, strums the guitar, and listens widely. Yet both of them, true to the Krishnamurti school spirit, resisted any attempt at dictation. For them, music was never about performance or achievement. It was simply part of life, woven into their days without showmanship.

Looking back, I see that they were living out something I only discovered later: music is not about being “talented” or “rhythm deaf.” It is about how it inhabits the spaces of our lives.

The Music I Found (Awakening)

For much of my early life, I was not even a listener of classical music. Perhaps I was rhythm deaf, or perhaps I simply stood outside its circle. But one day, on Church Street in Bangalore, I picked up a CD—Colours by Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan and Ustad Zakir Hussain. That album opened a door. I began to build a small collection of instrumental music, and slowly, listening became a quiet practice.

When I moved to the Zendo, music took on a new role. Each evening, we chose music for meditation. Sometimes, visiting musicians played live. At other times, I curated recordings—Kitaro, Hikari Ōe, Naomi Sogbe, and others. Fr. AMA was particular about the choices, and I learned to listen with care, to sense how sound could prepare the ground for silence.

Through Rishi, I discovered Agam, the Carnatic progressive rock band. He insisted that all music is good music, and I began to hear through his ears. Their fusion of Carnatic depth with rock’s energy felt like a bridge between traditions, a reminder that music is always evolving, always finding new forms.

The Music That Remains (Revelation)

A long time back, in 2015 i guess, i was attending annual KFI conferences in the verdant settings of KFI, Rajghat. And they organised a concert on Kabir, by the side of Vasantha college , under that giant and old peepal tree by the side of ganges. There were diyas around and stars and moon in the sky to give us some light. There were no sound boxes or other artificial enhances. And that atmosphere, kabir dohas, melodious siinging, it was just mesmerising and just seeped into my heartmind.

But then not all music connects. I once heard T. M. Krishna at The Valley School, but something in his manner left me distant. By contrast, Harish Sivaramakrishnan of Agam felt closer—perhaps because of his spiritual intensity, perhaps because his birthplace was near Mannarkkad, perhaps because his music carried both rootedness and rebellion.

I once tried to attend an Agam concert in Bangalore, but the tickets sold out before I could get them. Still, their recordings reached me. Their third studio album, Arrival of the Ethereal (2025), was their most ambitious yet, with a hundred-piece orchestra recorded in Czechoslovakia. One track, The Silence That Remains – Mokshamu Galada, lingers with me.

Its words echo a truth I have come to know in Zen practice:

What is longing but the soul remembering something once held— and lost?

When the body fades, when the curtain falls, what remains?

For those who never sought—emptiness. For those who clung—regret.

For those who fought the tide—fear.

But for those who saw, who surrendered, who walked open handed and unafraid— silence. light. freedom.

 And still, the song remains, whispering:

Did you find your way home,

or are you still searching in the dark?

When the music fades, what remains is not the sound but the silence it reveals. That silence is not empty—it is luminous, alive, free.

The Teacher’s Voice And Hakuin’s healing ( Integration)

Once, to a question of mine, Fr. AMA said:

“I too had a long struggle with religions, orthodoxy, sexuality and SJ. What I can tell you is it is possible to go beyond them and continue your spiritual journey. It is tough and not easy. But possible. Zen did help me. What I can’t do is to explain to you how to do it. You got to find a way and do it by yourself. But being aware, is a right start. Also remember, Humour makes humans. Animals are not known to have it. Some humans too. That is what makes us not only cope up, but successfully face the absurdity of our life. Please remember Humour and Music elevates the human mind. They are very much part of Zen.”

His words stay with me. They remind me that music and humour are not diversions from the path, but companions on it. They are ways of lifting the mind, of facing the absurdity of life without despair.

During another question and answer, Fr. AMA told us why music . meditation is as important as Zazen, or Samu.

It so seems Zen Master Hakuin, who wrote the Song of Zazen

Zen Master Hakuin suffered from what he called “meditation sickness”—a burning sensation in his chest and mental agitation from overzealous practice. He was healed by a Taoist hermit who taught him the “Butter Method of Meditation”, a visualization practice that soothed his nervous system. Later, Hakuin himself recommended healing practices that included sound and chanting, showing how music and vibration can restore balance when meditation becomes excessive fierce and uncompromising in his youth, once drove himself into collapse. His practice was fire—unceasing meditation, relentless striving, a refusal to rest. The body rebelled. He described it as “Zen sickness”: burning in the chest, agitation in the mind, sleepless nights.

Seeking relief, Hakuin found a Taoist hermit, Hakuyū, who offered not more effort but gentleness. The teaching was simple, almost childlike: imagine soft butter melting from the crown of the head, flowing slowly down through the body, soothing every nerve and bone. This “Butter Meditation” restored him. The fire cooled. Breath returned. Practice became whole again.

The Music of Healing

Though Hakuin’s cure was imagery, the principle is the same as music: vibration, rhythm, and softness that re-tune the body-mind.

Chanting sutras is not performance but medicine—breath and sound aligning with heart.

Temple bells and gongs are not decoration but resonance—waves that settle agitation.

Silence itself is music, the pause between notes, the butter melting into stillness.

When meditation becomes too sharp, music reminds us of roundness. When practice burns, sound cools.

In our own Zendo, music is not entertainment. It is presence. The bell before Zazen, claps before kinhin and meal gatha, the chant that rises and falls, the quiet hum of voices sharing tea—all are therapies for the subtle sickness of striving.

Hakuin’s story is not about weakness but about balance. Even the fiercest Zen master needed butter, needed sound, needed softness. His sickness became his teaching: practice must heal, not harm. And so, perhaps the silence that remains is not solemn, but smiling. A silence alive with laughter and song. A silence that is, in itself, the song of Zen.

Usually at the zendo, we play recorded music.. Sometimes, when a musician visits us, it is live music. Yesterday for evening music meditation, a very accomplished French violinist and composer Chloe Netter performed. And in between , there was a silence.

It kind of transported me back in time to that Kabir concert by the banks of Ganges.

Sound is a path to silence, and that silence, when attended to, is itself a song.

A Celebration for Nothing: Pizza, Zen and the Inner Shrine

A Celebration for Nothing: Pizza, Zen and the Inner Shrine

by | Dec 14, 2025 | Joy, Life, Meaning, Peace, Zen

Perhaps that’s what this is—a long journey brought to stillness in a shared meal, a remembered verse, a slice of pizza in the hills. No reason. Every reason. A celebration for nothing. For everything.

It was a Celebration for nothing… mean no particular reason… per se…

Today morning, I was watching again the documentary An Original Cloud in the Mountain. And after that we, Fr. AMA, Prakash, Sreenath, Robert, Inaki and I, headed for a Sunday pizza at George’s Gourmet Kitchen. George is a Canadian settled in Kodai Kanal… and many have vouched that he makes really good pizza. (That many includes my second son Rishi and many of our guests who have travelled around the globe.)

On the way, Jill Mistry, who is the Director of the movie, stopped our vehicle for a lift… She was on her way to Kodai town for a haircut. She was asking me to visit her and Cyrus. While Cyrus Mistry is a well-known award winning author and playwright, she is into films. And Rohinton Mistry (who wrote those best sellers A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey; who got nominated for the Booker Prize thrice and even made an appearance in Oprah Winfrey’s talk show) is Cyrus’s younger brother. And to add to all that, Jill’s and Cyrus’s son is into Psychology and Counselling. So whenever we meet, endless talk on movies, books and psychology. She was also telling me that she was into shooting a documentary on the lives of tribals. There is a tribal hamlet a bit far off from Kodaikanal, where they still live their ancient ways, closer and in alignment with nature. Jill was telling me that they are more spiritual than many others in the modern world.

And during the pizza lunch, I was telling Fr. AMA that just today morning I was watching the documentary, here she is…

Sometimes life is like that. It is wonderful as it is. Hence the Celebration for nothing…

Please do watch that documentary at Kanzeon Zendo you tube channel. ( if you can spare some 50 minutes.) It is on Zen. Some of the scripts I remember from that movie are from Fr. AMA on his Zen vision… and that wonderful and most spiritual poem of Tagore from Gitanjali.

From Fr. AMA:
“I am often asked to what religion I owe my allegiance. I say I stand in the in between of Advaita Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. My vision of Zen is dynamic and liberative though I am rooted in the Buddhist tradition I have gone beyond its approach and yet differs in varying degrees from that are many Buddhist teachers…..

The mind is emptied so that the world can be received as it is. It reflects the world as it presents itself. It is consciousness becoming conscious of itself like a mirror that reflects whatever comes before it, itself being empty of colour or form. Now it’s a universe becoming conscious of itself, stepping forth and manifesting itself…..

You are the universe and the universe is yourself. When you sit in meditation it’s Earth sitting, it is a mountain sitting. When you breathe it’s a universe breathing and when you walk it is a universe that is walking….

The heart is a mystery here where the Divine and the human meet. The way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things….

In Zen there is no why. Zen does not try to explain suffering or evil or any of the ultimate realities of life. Why is there suffering? So that you may respond to it. Why do I suffer? So that I may bear it. You are called and you respond to the call. You become yourself only in this call and response.
You are Buddha, become Buddha. To use Christian terms in the light of Zen you are Christ and you are called to become Christ who bears and suffers all. There is no God outside of you. The only answer is to respond in your compassionate action to the suffering and the broken. When you pervade the world with the consciousness of compassion and love, you are the awakened Bodhisattva.”

Tagore’s Gitanjali
“The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light,
and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds
leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,
and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,
and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said “Here art thou!”
The question and the cry “Oh, where?” melt into tears of a thousand streams and
deluge the world with the flood of the assurance “I am!””

Some 40 years back, I had read an old Malayalam novel written with the background of Kodaikanal Astronomical Observatory—Pullippulikalum Vellinakshathrangalum (Spotted Leopards and Silver Stars). It was serialized in Mathrubhumi Weekly and I might have read it when I was in high school. Written by C. Radhakrishnan, a famous Malayalam novelist known for his wonderful fiction work with a lot of metaphysical background.

Last time, after the sesshin got over, we went to a pizza at George’s Gourmet Kitchen and on the way back, I saw that Kodaikanal observatory. I did share with Fr. AMA about the novel I had read some 40 years ago, written by a scientist who worked there and with a lot of metaphysical underpinnings. And laughingly but very affectionately, Fr. AMA told me: no wonder you have reached the same place.
And today before our sesshin starts, we went again for a pizza at George’s.

And as Tagore wrote so wonderfully:
The time that my journey takes is long, and the way of it long… The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own… and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

Perhaps that’s what this is—a long journey brought to stillness in a shared meal, a remembered verse, a slice of pizza in the hills. No reason. Every reason. A celebration for nothing. For everything.

The Paradox of Ego, Desire, and the Shifting Self

The Paradox of Ego, Desire, and the Shifting Self

by | Nov 28, 2025 | Life, Transformation, Zen

A few days, happened to write in response to a WordPress prompt: What historical moment fascinates you the most? I said the most historical moment for me was my own birth.

A kind response to that reflection wondered aloud if such a statement was egoistic. That question itself opened another gate for me—into the paradox of ego and desire. Perhaps that concern comes from a certain religious conditioning—that moksha or mukti must mean the annihilation of ego, the killing of all desire. I do not know if that hypothesis is true. What I do know is this: for human beings to live a good, functional, phenomenal life, a healthy ego is a must.

Our existence is paradoxical. We are where infinitude meets finitude, the eternal with the temporal. We can only realize the Self through our own consciousness—through the very ego we are told to erase.

Try this simple experiment: hold your breath for a few moments. The desire to breathe in, to live on, is our most natural desire. Without it, there is no life, no practice, no realization. So one cannot be egoless and desireless.

The real question, then, is not whether ego and desire should be annihilated, but:

  • What is a healthy ego?
  • What is a wholesome desire?

Let us begin with ego…

What we call Self / I / Other / World are not fixed identities. The borderlines between self and other, I and world, keep changing like a shifting sand. In a sense, self-realisation is the dissolving, the sublimation of that line altogether. But as the Zen koans remind us, one cannot function in that place for long. One must return—to this world, to the marketplace, to the ordinary rhythms of living. Modern psychology offers its own language here. Winnicott spoke of the “true self”—a healthy ego that allows spontaneity, play, and authentic living. Jung described individuation—the process of integrating fragments of psyche into wholeness. Both point to the same truth: ego is not to be annihilated but clarified. In Dharma terms, ego is not the enemy but the raft. Without it, we cannot cross the river; with it, we must remember not to cling once the crossing is complete. And this borderline is not a single line at all, but a continuum—stretching from finitude to infinitude. Take a simple example: when I sit on a chair and say my chair, the border is drawn where my body rests on the wood. The chair is the “other.” But when I say my hand or my leg, suddenly that which is outside me is also claimed as mine. The borderline has shifted inward, now lying between me and mine. Follow this chain of logic and you find it is endless in both directions.

Where does the “I” end and the “world” begin? Is the breath I draw in mine or the worlds? Is the food that becomes my body still “other”? Even the thought that says I—is that me, or is it something arising within me?

Advaitins keep referring to Advaita Vedanta’s never-ending refrain of neti-neti— “not this, not that.” Each identity we cling to, each border we draw between self and world, is gently negated. The chair, the hand, the breath, even the thought “I”—all are peeled away until what remains is the unnameable Self, beyond attributes.

 Yet Zen diverges.  Zen insists we return. After the silence of dissolution, we must still sweep the floor, cook the rice, and bow to the neighbour. The paradox is clear—Vedanta dissolves, Zen re-enters. Together they remind us that realization is both transcendence and ordinariness, silence and sound, vastness and marketplace.

Zhuangzi, the Taoist sage, once dreamed he was a butterfly. Upon waking, he wondered: was he a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man? This wasn’t just whimsy—it was a radical questioning of the solidity of the self and the world. Zhuangzi constantly shifted perspectives to show that what is “true” depends entirely on one’s standpoint. He didn’t resolve the paradox—he danced with it.

The borders keep moving, like waves on the shore. Sometimes they dissolve altogether, and we glimpse the vastness where self and world are not two. But then, inevitably, the tide returns, and we find ourselves once again in the marketplace—buying vegetables, greeting a neighbour, saying this is mine, that is yours. It is here—in the weighing of tomatoes, in the bargaining for onions, in the smile exchanged with a neighbour—that realization is tested. Not in exalted states, but in ordinariness. The marketplace is the true koan: do we cling to “mine” and “yours,” or do we walk lightly, allowing the world to fill us in?

When one becomes egotist, then for them only they exist, and the other does not. But when we are empty of self, then the world fills us in.

Turning now to desire, and what makes it wholesome…

Buddhism itself makes a subtle distinction here. It speaks of two kinds of desire:

  • Tanhā – craving, thirst, the clinging that binds us to suffering.
  • Chanda – wholesome aspiration, the clear and steady wish that leads toward growth, practice, and liberation.

So, the problem is not desire itself, but the way it is held. When desire hardens into tanhā, it narrows and enslaves. When it opens into Chanda, it becomes a path, a current that carries us toward freedom. In many mainstream interpretations, moksha, mukti, nirvana, swarga, and heaven are precisely conceived as an escape—a final release from the painful, relentless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (samsara) on this Earth. And many traditions teach the way out of this to kill the ego and discipline the desire. Sometime back, I read a caption on the T-shirt of a young tourist in Kodaikanal. It read: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.” I was struck by the absurdity of that quote. Many don’t realise that living here, right now, is heaven.

Religions often seem to have trained us to believe in a heaven “out there”—a distant reward to distract us from our pain here. We’re told to sacrifice our joy, suppress our desires, and endure suffering for a paradise that never arrives. It’s like a carrot hung in front of cattle—always just out of reach. Infact In Mahābhārata, Bhishma Parva urges the warriors that virgins wait in heaven for their valour and death in the battlefield.

In verse 6.11.13, Sanjaya declares to Dhritarashtra:

“Those who die in battle, having fought bravely, attain the regions of the righteous, where celestial nymphs wait upon them.”

The battlefield becomes a portal to heaven, and death becomes passport and visa. But what gets lost is the heaven of this life—the heaven of ordinariness, of compassion, of presence.

By the way this motif isn’t unique to the Mahābhārata. In Norse mythology, warriors who die in battle are promised entry into Valhalla, where they feast and fight eternally under Odin’s gaze. The valour of death becomes the ticket to glory. In Islamic martyrdom traditions, especially in certain militant interpretations, paradise is promised to those who die defending the faith—often described with vivid imagery of gardens, rivers, and companions.

Even in Indian traditions, moksha or mukti is often described as a state of eternal bliss—freedom from rebirth, from the cycle of earthly pain and suffering. In other words, another metaphor for heaven. Swarga, Vaikuntha, Kailasa—each tradition paints its own celestial landscape. But the paradox remains: we long for liberation from this world, even as the teachings whisper that liberation is found in this world.

My reflection, however, leans into a different, though equally ancient, interpretation found within those very same traditions. It’s the voice that questions:

What if the goal is not to escape the world, but to see it correctly?

This is the radical non-dual perspective within Vedanta, the “nirvana is samsara” of Mahayana Buddhism, and the “ordinary mind is the Tao” of Zen.

From this vantage point:

  • Heaven (Swarga) vs. Moksha: In the traditional ladder, swarga is a temporary, pleasant abode—a reward for good deeds, after which one must return to Earth. Moksha is the final release from that very cycle. But we often treat moksha itself as a super-sized, permanent swarga—a “better place” elsewhere. This longing for “elsewhere” blinds us to the sacredness of “here.”
  • The Problem isn’t Earth, it’s Ignorance: The suffering isn’t inherent in the world, but in our avidya—our distorted perception. We suffer because we cling to what is impermanent as if it were permanent and believe the fragile ego to be the whole truth of who we are.
  • Liberation is a Shift in Perception, not Location: When ignorance falls away, the world isn’t negated—it is transfigured. The same marketplace, the same breath, the same neighbour, is seen in its true nature—as luminous, empty, and inseparable from the divine ground of being.

So perhaps the eternal bliss of moksha isn’t the antithesis of earthly life, but its fulfilment. We don’t leave the world to find heaven—we discover heaven by fully, awake-ly, living in the world. The raft (ego) isn’t burned because it’s evil, but because the crossing is complete. One stands on the further shore, only to realize the shore was always right here, and the river was an illusion of perception all along.

So we return, as always, to the paradox of ego and desire. At the beginning, they seemed like obstacles—something to be killed, disciplined, erased. But now they appear as gates. Ego is the raft, desire the wind. Without them, there is no crossing. With them, there is danger of clinging, of craving.

The task is not annihilation, but clarification.

  • Ego clarified becomes openness, a self that is porous, playful, and free.
  • Desire clarified becomes aspiration, a current that carries us toward compassion and ordinariness.

When ego hardens, the world shrinks. When desire distorts, the heart thirsts endlessly. But when ego softens, the world enters us. When desire steadies, the path unfolds beneath our feet. Perhaps this is the paradox: we do not transcend ego and desire by destroying them, but by letting them dissolve into their true nature. Ego as transparency. Desire as aspiration. Both as companions on the way.

And then, as always, we return to the marketplace—smiling, bowing, buying onions. Heaven is not elsewhere. It is here, in the ordinariness of breath, in the neighbour’s greeting, in the stray dog’s eyes. And the other shore is not the shore of Nirvana, but of our present life—this breath, this neighbour, this stray dog, this marketplace. Ego and desire do not vanish; they are clarified, softened, made transparent. They return with us to the ordinariness of living, no longer chains but companions.

The realisation / enlightenment or whatever we name is the understanding that  there is no non-dualism without dualism, no day without night, no life without death and no yin without yang. Realisation is not the erasure of opposites, but the seeing that opposites are inseparable.

 

On the Way of Fireflies and False Lights and Borrowed Brilliance

On the Way of Fireflies and False Lights and Borrowed Brilliance

by | Nov 24, 2025 | Life, Management, Meaning, Zen

Btw Nature as we call it is not all about serene views and instagram photo shoot opportunities… As every Rose comes its thorn, nature too comes with its own paradoxes….. After rainfall, especially regions like Tamil Nadu, it’s common to witness swarms of winged insects. They are winged termites or ants… (they are not Fireflies) Attracted to artificial light, and die within hours.. gathering around artificial lights.. interesting thing is they are alwys swarm near to blue or white elctric lamps.. anot the yellowish ones. aFter swarming, they shed their wings and die quickly.. Naturalists say especially if they fail to. mate of find shelter.. And often in the mornigns yo see piles of dead insects near the map. By the fireflies are biolumiescent insects that emit light from their abdomen. And they are not attracted to artificial light in the same way. They are not known to swarm and die en masse around eletric lamps.

This natural paradox is a powerful metaphor for our own lives and careers. How often are we, like the insects, drawn to the “borrowed brilliance” of trendy ideologies, external validation, or the glamour of someone else’s success? This mindless swarming is not true community, and such attraction rarely leads to meaningful union or purpose.

This challenge of navigating external noise is not new. Steve Jobs articulated it perfectly when he explained the core of Apple’s marketing philosophy, saying:

“This is a very complicated world; it’s a very noisy world. And we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.”

This is the corporate equivalent of the firefly’s path. Jobs understood that the only way to cut through the “noisy world” was not to swarm towards the artificial lights of competitors or trends, but to be radically clear about your own core identity—to generate your own light from within.

May be that is why Buddhs said to us “appo deepo bhava” and. Krishamurti wrote ““It is only when you are a light to yourself that there is freedom.” The insects teach us: Not all light is guidance. Not all swarming is Sangha. Not all attraction leads to union.

Let us not be drawn to borrowed brilliance. Let us glow from within, like the firefly— not to dazzle, but to illuminate the path.

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 louts 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.

 

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