kokorozendo.life

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.