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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. 🐾

The Mindcar: A Driver’s Manual for Comfortable Journey

The Mindcar: A Driver’s Manual for Comfortable Journey

by | Mar 7, 2026 | RElationship, STRESS, Transformation, Zen

You may remember  this iconic movie scene.

Bus number 2525. A normal day. People going to work, going home, going nowhere special. Then the bomb. Then the call. The villain on the phone telling Keanu Reeves: There is a bomb on that bus. When the bus hits fifty miles per hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below fifty, it explodes.

Now you may remember the name of the Movie. SPEED.  It was a  big hit in 1994.

Now back to that bus 2525.

And the bus keeps speeding. The driver cannot stop. The passengers do not know. Keanu runs after it but the bus is faster. So he jumps into a car. A normal car. Not a police car. Not a hero car. But a Jaguar. And he chases.

He pulls alongside the bus. He has a poster. A handmade thing. Written in a hurry. Probably with a marker that was lying around. He holds it up to the window. It says something simple. Something that could save everyone.

It says: BOMB on the BUS

But the damn wind.

The wind from the speeding bus, from the speeding car, from the highway rushing past at eighty miles an hour—it catches the poster. Rips it from his hands. The paper flies and twists and tumbles through the air like a thing with no purpose. And then, by some strange grace, it sticks. Right there. On the front mirror of the bus. The driver's mirror. The one place where the driver might see it if she looks.

That poster is stuck. Stuck to the glass. Stuck to the minds of those bewildered passengers, who were on their way to work on a very normal day and Sam, their driver.

And on that poster, written in marker, is the warning that changes everything:

BOMB on the BUS

And then, after that message, our hero manages to get into the bus quite heroically as in any other normal Bollywood/Tolllywood movies.

Somehow. The way heroes do. A leap. A grab. A door that opens at just the right moment. He is inside now. The bus is still speeding. The bomb is still under the floor. The rule is still the same: below fifty, everyone dies.

There is a man driving. A regular driver. Sam. Who seems to know all the regular passengers of that bus 2525. A man who was just doing his job until a stranger jumped in and a poster appeared on his mirror and now his world is upside down. Keanu starts explaining. Starts trying to calm everyone down. Starts telling them about the bomb, about the speed, about what they have to do.

And then it happens.

There is an unruly passenger. Someone who cannot handle the fear. Someone who turns fear into fury. Someone who does not want to listen, does not want to calm down, does not want to cooperate. He pulls out a gun. (Which of course are available in plenty in the land of opportunities!)  And before anyone can stop him, he shoots the driver.

The driver falls. The bus keeps moving. But the wheel is empty.

And then Sandra Bullock takes over.

A passenger. A woman who was just riding the bus. Who had no plan to drive, no desire to drive, no training for this. But the wheel is empty and someone has to hold it. So she holds it. She drives. She learns in seconds what most people take years to learn. She keeps the bus moving. She keeps the speed above fifty. She navigates through traffic and turns and obstacles while behind her, chaos continues.

And Keanu? He is still there. Still managing. Still trying to calm the passengers, deal with the shooter, figure out what comes next. But Sandra is driving now. And that changes everything.

If you are driving a car through a busy Indian road (Let us say Hyderabad) and there are lot of people in the car. Many good, noble and friendly ones. And some loud, pesky, irritable ones. The one who wish that you have never come across in life. Now if you are really determined and focus on shutting up those bad ones or not have them in that car itself, you cant even focus on driving. Now the other fear is those bad pesky ones are allowed to in the car, you wont be able to drive at all. So U may stop on the kerb and fight them to throw them out. But they neve leave. They are all glued to their car seat with Fevicol. There is a middle path.. (The one Buddha and Aristotle taught ). These passengers are your memories. Your pain. Your thoughts. Some about your guilt. Some about your anger. Some about your not so good times.. Etc. That is your own. That is why they are stuck to the car seat glued with Fevicol. Consider you have enough room in those backseats of that CAR above your neck. And Just accept that fact and continue to drive. There may be other passengers who may whine to you about those loud irritable co passengers.. But even they are nothing but a passenger in your Mindcar. The tag phrase is Be comfortable with them all. While you navigate your car of life through those narrow , sometime wide alleys of this world.

This is not just a story. This is a map of the human mind, drawn with the dust of Hyderabad roads and the glue of Fevicol.

the paradox we all live inside:

  • The Trap of Suppression: We try to shut them up. We try to focus only on the good, noble, friendly ones. But the moment we put all your energy into silencing the backseat, our eyes leave the road. The car swerves. We cannot drive while fighting a war behind your own head.
  • The Trap of Engagement: So then we think, "I will stop this car altogether. I will pull over to the kerb, I will turn around, and I will throw them out. I will argue with them until they leave." But they never leave. They are ours. They are stuck with Fevicol to our mind, like that advt.  Every memory, every guilt, every angry thought—it is bonded to the seat of our experience. The more we fight, the more we are just sitting on the kerb, going nowhere, while the world waits.
  • The Middle Path is the Driver's Path: This is where Buddha's wheel meets Aristotle's highway. The middle path is not a compromise between the good passengers and the bad ones. It is a shift in identity. You are not a passenger. We are the driver. The driver's job is not to control the conversation in the back. The driver's job is to keep the vehicle moving. To watch the road. To navigate the narrow alleys and the wide boulevards.

And then we add the most subtle truth: The ones who whine about the pesky passengers—the thoughts that say "Why is this thought still here?" or "I should be over this by now"—they are also just passengers. More noise. More meta-noise. All of them, just faces in the rearview mirror.

After lot of struggles and stumbles, while trying to drive the Mindcar on a Zazen cushion, we find the key to the whole journey:

Be comfortable with them all.

But what does comfortable really mean? Have given the answer inside the word itself. That was a  built  fort with letters.

COMFORTABLE = COME + FORT + ABLE

Let us sit with this. Let us feel the weight of it.

COME: This is the first step, and the bravest one. It is the opposite of running. It is the opposite of covering your ears. It is turning toward the backseat and saying, "I see you. I know you are there. You are loud. You are irritating. You remind me of things I wish I had never done, things I wish had never happened to me. But I see you. I acknowledge you." You stop fighting the fact that they exist. You invite the reality of your own mind to be present. You COME to terms with what is.

FORT: This is the realization of your own strength. You are not a fragile hut that will collapse if a loud thought shouts. You are a FORT. A fort does not exist to keep the weather away. A fort exists to stand firm in the weather. The rain comes. The wind howls. The fort remains. The noise from the backseat—the guilt, the anger, the pesky ones—it can bounce off the walls. It can scream. But the walls do not shake. Because the FORT is built with something deeper than temporary peace. It is built with the knowledge that you are the driver, not the noise. The fort is your own unshakable center.

ABLE: And because we have COME to the noise, and because we sit in our FORT, we are now ABLE. Able to drive. Able to navigate. Able to turn the steering wheel when a cow walks onto the road or a child runs after a ball. The ability does not come from a silent car. It comes from a driver who is at peace with a noisy one. You are ABLE to live your life with your memories, not despite them. The guilt is still in the back. The anger is still muttering. The pain is still there, glued with Fevicol. But you are ABLE. Your hands are on the wheel. Your eyes are on the road. You are moving.

So the final image is this: Close your eyes. And see your mindcar with insight.

You are driving through the busy, chaotic, beautiful, terrifying streets of Hyderabad—which is just another name for life. The car is full. It is loud. Some voices are kind. Some voices make you wish you had never been born. Some voices complain about the other voices.

And you? You are in the driver's seat. You have looked back once, said "I see you all," and turned forward again. You have built your FORT not in some silent mountain far from the noise, but right here in the driver's seat, with the chaos swirling around you. You are COMFORTABLE—not because the noise has stopped, but because you have COME to your FORT and you are now ABLE.

The Fevicol is strong. But so is the fort.

Drive on.

And now let us make things a little more complex.

Often You are not driving on a smooth highway with that Mindcar. This is not a movie set where the road is empty and the only problem is the bomb. This is not a Zendo.  But a market place  This is real life. Let us say that that road is in Old Hyderabad. Or This is anywhere.

On the road too you meet some good people. Some bad. And some really ugly.

Sometimes someone cuts in. No signal. No warning. Just swerves right into your lane because they are late, because they are careless, because they simply do not care about you.

Sometimes someone blares the horn for no reason. Not because you did anything wrong. Not because there is an emergency. Just because they are angry. Just because they have their own bomb inside their own car and they are taking it out on you.

Sometimes there is a truck behind you riding too close. So close you can see the driver's face in your mirror. So close that one tap of your brake would end everything.

Sometimes there is a pedestrian who steps off the kerb without looking. Lost in their own world. Their own thoughts. Their own passengers.

Sometimes there is a cow standing in the middle of the road. Just standing. Because this is India and cows can stand wherever they want.

Sometimes there is a child chasing a ball. Sometimes there is an old man crossing slowly. Sometimes there is a political procession with flags and shouting and drums. Sometimes there is a wedding. Sometimes there is a funeral. Sometimes the road is flooded. Sometimes it is full of potholes. Sometimes it is not even a road, just a dirt path that someone decided to call a road.

And through all of this, you are driving.

Your car is still full. The loud ones are still loud. The pesky ones are still pesky. The irritable ones are still making you wish you had never been born. The Fevicol is still holding them to their seats. The bomb is still under the floor. The rule is still the same: keep moving or explode.

And now there is all of this outside too.

The ones who cut you off. The ones who honk. The ones who drive like maniacs. The ones who walk like they own the road. The ones who do not see you. The ones who see you and do not care.

What do you do?

Do you stop the car to fight the man who cut you off? Do you get out and shout at the one who blared the horn? Do you chase down the pedestrian who stepped in front of you? Do you try to move the cow?

You cannot. The bomb is still there. The speedometer is still ticking. Below fifty and it is over.

So you do what an expert driver of a mindcar does. You acknowledge them. You see the man who cut you off. You hear the horn that means nothing. You notice the cow and the child and the old man. You register them. And then you keep driving.

You adjust. You slow down a little for the cow. You wait for the child to get the ball. You let the maniac pass because letting them pass costs you nothing and fighting them costs everything. You do not return the horn because returning the horn does not move you forward. You do not make eye contact with the angry ones because eye contact is just another kind of stop.

The road is full of people with their own bombs. Their own Fevicol. Their own loud passengers. Their own pain. Their own guilt. Their own anger. Their own not so good times.

They are not your passengers. They are not in your car. They are on the road. And the road is where they belong. The road is where everyone belongs. The good, the bad, the ugly, the maniacs, the lost ones, the ones who cut you off and the ones who let you in.

Your job is not to fix them. Your job is not to fight them. Your job is not to understand why they are the way they are. Your job is to share the road with them. To navigate around them. To keep moving despite them.

Because the bomb is still there. The passengers are still there. The road is still there. And you are still the driver.

Come. Fort. Able.

Come to the chaos outside as you came to the chaos inside. Build your fort so that their horns do not shatter you. Be able to drive through the worst traffic, the worst drivers, the worst roads, without losing your speed.

The world outside is not your passenger. It is just the road. And the road, like the passengers, like the bomb, like the Fevicol—the road just is.

Drive on.

 

 

Preparing with Care, Trusting in Execution… Reading the First Half, Living the Second

Preparing with Care, Trusting in Execution… Reading the First Half, Living the Second

by | Jan 19, 2026 | Change, Communication, Compassion, Harmony, Life, Meaning, RElationship, Trust, Zen

My better half’s family was into Krishnamurti and she got out of a well-paying IT job to be a teacher in a. Krishnamurti school and Manu and Rishi too had their entire school education there. Though, it is an alternative education, it did give me some anxious moments, especially when i got to read about the competitive landscape of higher education and career building and livelihood earning outside that protected cocoon. They did end up in really good universities for their UG. But , the elder one, did face the challenged due to changed environment. Someone who was never part of dumb bell curve or exams for most of his life, but who pursued knowledge and wisdom for its own sake, was thrown into the high seas of surprise tests, CGPA and dumbbell curve etc without any life jacket. And it did reflect on his performance for the first two sems… There were O+ with 0 ( Not present). As someone who skipped my final year Engineering exam , for watching World cup football, in spite of my late Father's concerned advice of a lengthy 5 page letter, i knew i did not have the moral capital to advise him. Though indirectly , i tried to share some pointers and nothing much. There was some subaltern tension and concern nevertheless.

But one thing good about him was his zeal of reading and ability to observe. As a very young child, he was into ornithology and could recognize almost all kinds of birds in the Valley school campus. Their daily routing in school, even for 1st std starts with early morning Nature walking. And the first gift i had given was a book by Salim Ali and a Bushnell binocular bought in Johannesburg. And he is one of those who read much more than i do. So in the breaks between semesters, while at home, he started reading the books in my bookshelf and also started buying a lot of books chosen by him. Me and Thara had also kind of stopped asking him about his results. We just used to say in a good way that he got to prepare himself to make a living as there is no inheritance as such.

So i was quite surprised, when he walked in and showed me his Semester marks card last month. It was all O+ and A+. I asked him how did he turn himself around and he talked about Frankl's paradoxical intention and Huxely's law of reversed effort. As someone who was trained in NLP ,Counselling, and did MA in Psychology and got trained in Coaching and read a bit, i was familiar with most of such stuff. But not this. And when i asked about it, he showed it in the book ( my old book of Man's Search for Meaning). I had read the first part and just skimmed thru the second half. 🙁 .. Below is his full note on that. When your own son self-coaches himself, out of trouble into some success and teaches you about it, may be one can’t be more happier than that ... Here is his note in full:

"The law of Reversed Effect

The law of reversed effect can be viewed as a psychological boomerang. When you attempt to wilfully dictate an experience, the harder you try, the more that experience will slip away from you. It’s like trying to hold a feather steady in a gust by grasping it tightly in your hand. Examples of this principle are found in all areas of human experience. The more you attempt to force sleep to occur, the more alert and reactive your brain will become; likewise, if you tell yourself to “stay calm,” all of a sudden, you’ll feel more anxious. The conscious mind, when in a state of contraction, creates a resistance to the natural rhythms required by the unconscious mind to perform its job effectively.

This law points out that the mind is likely going to produce better results through relaxation than through strain. All aspects of performance, confidence, creativity, and memory are likely to grow, develop, and improve when there is less pressure and strain associated with them. Athletes enter into flow states by not trying hard enough, but rather by getting out of their own way. As soon as an athlete stops worrying about the results of a competition and focuses only on the performance, their body takes over and performs at its best.

The law of reversed effect does not imply to “never try.” It means to use intention rather than effort and precision over strain. For instance, aim like an archer: identify the target, align your shot, and release without forcing the bow. In many cases, the most successful result comes from creating a time period of rest and relaxation in between two actions, during which you lead, rather than restrain, your movement toward your desired outcome. Sometimes the best way to make progress toward a goal is to stop chasing after it and allow it to come to you.

Rather than mandating performance, the conditions can be established which will allow the output to develop itself, which means So, you relax the inner grip. You don’t quit, you just change the aim of your effort. Just move your effort from trying to control the end result and start focusing it on the process. When the anxiety pulls you into "I must do this right," you pull back and say, "I'll make the space for good execution."

In a way, this is line with. Viktor Frankl’s Paradoxical intention. Paradoxical intention is a psychotherapeutic technique developed by Viktor Frankl, the founder of logotherapy. It is designed to break the "vicious cycle" of anticipatory anxiety—the fear of a symptom (like insomnia or stuttering) which, through the very effort to avoid it, makes the symptom worse. This directly mirrors the "Law of Reversed Effort". Many who read Frankl’s “Man Search for Meaning”, though it is a small book, reads the first part where he narrated his experiences and let go the second part in which describes the second part of Logotherapy. ( Like my Papa!) . And they don’t realise that , Man’s search for meaning is meaningful, only if you stay with it rather than let go in the middle. 🙂

Coming back to exams, it involves studying for them and going to them trusting what one has prepared for rather than going for what one has not perfected. With anxiety, it involves recognizing the sensations one feels without trying to struggle against them. With skills, it involves practicing them in a structured manner and executing them by breathing into them instead of straining them.

The core is:
Let’s put the effort into preparation rather than execution. Let the trust go into execution. You're not letting go of control; you're choosing the right kind of control: conditions, not grip. The effect appears like a cat; pounce too hard and it runs off; just be still, and it curls up in your lap."

What he has written is not just a psychological principle, but a Dharma gate. The law of reversed effect is nothing but the Zen koan of “trying not to try.” The feather in the gust, the archer’s release, the cat curling up in the lap—these are not metaphors alone, they are lived gestures of life teaching us that control is often the enemy of presence.

I see in his words the same paradox that Krishnamurti pointed to when he said, “The more you pursue pleasure, the more pain you invite.” Or in Zen, when Master Dōgen reminds us that practice is enlightenment itself, not a means to it. The reversal is the teaching: when you grip, it slips; when you soften, it arrives.

And perhaps this is the most ordinary miracle—that a boy who once walked the Valley campus identifying birds by their calls, now identifies the subtle calls of the mind itself. He has moved from Salim Ali’s field guide to Frankl’s logotherapy, but the movement is the same: attention, observation, and trust in what reveals itself when you stop forcing.
For me, reading his note was like being shown my own bookshelf anew. I had skimmed, he had stayed. I had read the first half, he had lived into the second. And in that reversal, the son became the teacher, the father became the student. That is lineage too—not only bloodline, but wisdom line, where insight flows back and forth, unowned, ungrasped.
So I take his words as a reminder: prepare with care, execute with trust. Grip less, condition more. Let the cat curl up. Let the arrow fly. Let the feather dance. And let the law of reversed effect be not just psychology, but practice—practice of living, practice of dying, practice of being.

And perhaps, this is where the circle of education and life shows its hidden symmetry. What began as a child’s morning nature walk in Valley School, listening to bird calls, has now become a young man’s walk through the inner valley of mind, listening to the calls of anxiety and learning to let them perch and fly away. The binoculars of Salim Ali have turned into the lens of Frankl, but the act is the same: seeing clearly, without grasping.

It reminds me that the true inheritance we give our children is not wealth or security, but the courage to observe, the patience to stay, and the humility to learn from reversals. My father’s five-page letter was one kind of inheritance; my silence with my son was another. Both carried concern, but only one gave space. And in that space, he found his own way.

This reversal is not a defeat of the parent, but the flowering of lineage. The son teaches the father and  the feather teaches the hand. And life, in its ordinary rhythm, teaches us again and again that the way forward is sometimes to soften, to trust, to let go.

So I bow to this teaching—not as a principle in a book, but as a lived koan in my own home. The law of reversed effect is not only his discovery; it is now mine too.

The Song from Behind the Wall: On My Grandmother, Kathakali, and Kalamandalam Hyderali

The Song from Behind the Wall: On My Grandmother, Kathakali, and Kalamandalam Hyderali

by | Dec 22, 2025 | Compassion, Harmony, Life, Meaning, Peace, RElationship, Zen

I have mixed feeling about Kathakali.. I have also mixed feeling about my paternal Grandma. … Mixed with likes and dislikes. No idea about the ratio of that proportion though. The artform of Kathakali was introduced to me by my Grandma.. So we got to start from her.

By any yardstick, my grandma was a very strong lady . She went to school only till 3rd standard.. But could remember the poems . especially the song praising the Queen of British Empire, she leant in her school. And she remembered all the slokas from Malayalam version of Ramayana.. Though she was not a great believer of God per se.. Guess her faith was very much rooted in practicality of day to day living. May be she followed Aristotle’s golden mean on that aspect. She liked temples and festivities as such. Especially those temple artforms such as Kathakali.

She was born into a very wealthy family, lost her mother when she was 21 days old. And sooner her father lost all his wealth. Her upbringing was taken care by a relative. She used to tell us that, as in infant she was fed goat milk. May be that explains her health till the very last moment of her life. I don’t remember she was ever hospitalised for any major illness. Though she was as smart or more smart than her cousin brothers, her education was stopped as was the norm during those days. Girl.

And as the daughter of a poor father, she got married to another not so wealthy person in that small Kannadiga community. Her husband, my paternal grandfather had almost a similar story being born into a wealthy family, but his parents squandering all their wealth and become quite poor by the time he finished his FA . ( During those days, intermediate was known as FA.). In our old family home, there was a photo of him in Football jersey . And my father Sankara, used to tell us that he was quite a good centre forward, that got him a job with Spencer’s. Then suppliers of British Army. But when their unit moved to Singapore , he had to leave that job and stay back to take care of his parents at their insistence. Guess not to his choice or liking. As he used to love Football too. And he took a govt. job.. and due to his over honest and over idealistic nature, remained quite poor throughout his life times.

During those times, there were around 10 Kannadiga families in Mannarkkad, 2 temples and a big graveyad just for the Kannadiga community.   Rest of them were quite wealthy and due to that my grandparents were kind of socially ignored. Also was at the end of ridicule by them.

May be that environment made her seek cultural wealth. I guess Kathakali was her connection to the lost grandeur , an equalizer and display of cultivated taste.

Another story she used to tell us was on how she and other relatives planning to grow vegetables. During those days, they used to grow most of their needs. And most vegetables were seasonal. And she always used to plant a few a few week before others did and used to harvest and share with her relatives. May be some competitive streak.

In a life where so much was decided for her—her halted education, her marriage, her social standing—controlling the calendar of a seed was a powerful act of sovereignty. Planting earlier was a way to command time itself. And Harvesting and sharing first wasn't just kindness; it was a subtle restructuring of social dynamics. The relatives who may have "socially ignored" them became, briefly, recipients. She transformed from being overlooked to being the source, the one who provides. It turned perceived lack of enough into plenty.

All her life experiences had made her a formidable person. And sometimes ruthless too (most of the times she was quite self-centred too.) When a small infant grows up against all odds, it might have ingrained in her that she got to take care of herself. And she is there to take care of herself. And that reflected the way she treated her others in general and her daughter in laws in particular. May be the dislike part in me for her comes from that.

And the like part comes from all the great stories of our ancestors, she shared with us , and especially the stories of Kathakali. ( Kuchelavritham and Karna Sapatham etc were here favourite) and great insights.

For example, when Rajiv Gandhi was PM of India, there was some commotion about his wife, Sonia Gandhi being an Italian. ( Bofors times). And. I remember , her cousin brother, who was a national award winning school teachers talking to her about it. She said, anyone who can ties a saree so well got to be an Indian. Now when I look back, that was great cultural exams, no one can dispute.

Coming back to Kathakali. During those days, 2 or 3 days Kathakali performance was part of the annual festival at MuMoorthi temple in Mannarkkad. And that was something she never wanted to miss. Every single time, she will tell us, next year no one knows whether she is going to be alive so that this may be her last Kathaakali viewing.

I did not like Kathakali is an understatement. For those who wonder what Kathakali is ! It is an 4 or 5 century old temple art form in Kerala. Now almost dying. That is more to do with its form than its content. Kathakali programs used to be like 3 -4 full days. ( Nights in fact... from after the dinner, till just before the sun rises !). Most of the audience used to be Old people.. and often the younger ones with them were there to go with them. As our attention span, ability to really learn nuances and enjoy the slow pace of life declined , Kathakali too moved to reel size appearances in movie songs or on the welcome program of foreign tourists in those fancy resorts.

On that temple grounds, on the grass mat we used to carry as our seating ( in our case sleeping pad), we kids used to sleep .. While elders used to enjoy every moment of it.

I should say that , I was quite happy when that annual sojourn ended.

Much later , it came back. Through the voice of Kalamandalam Hyderali. He came as an arts festival guest at Govt Vicotria college. As the most famous Kathakali singer , as a Muslim , his invite seems to be more of a political statement. But when as an humble man, he said he is no orator and he would sing a kathakali padam for us. And he sang “Ajita hare” without any accompaniments it hit the heart note of all the audience. That song from KuchelaVirttam might have entered into my brain, during my sleeping stint as an audience on that temple ground. Hyderali's rendering of that, just woke me up from my slumber.

Even then I did not make any attempt to learn about him. Again during 2006, he reappeared in the obituary column of the Hindu. And that was a great story. When Mohanlal and Kalamandalam Gopi’s epic movie based on Kathakali “Vanaprastham” was realised, Hyderali was again in news and the legendary Kathakali Artist Gopiasan told in a TV interview, the most iconic kathakali singer was Hyderali.

Kerala is known as God’s own country.. I would hasten to add that it is also Devil’s own country too… In This small Gaul like state , both profound and profane coexist…. Secularism and fanaticism .. kindness and meanness… Openness and narrowmindedness…

Kerala is also home to K J Yesudas, an Xian who is more known for his Hindu devotional songs, K Raghavan an Hindu whose Mappila songs are evergreen. And Kalamandalam Hyderali a Muslim who went to become a legendary Kathakali singer. Kathakali is a Hindu temple art form and was in the hands of conservative echelons of Kerala society.

One of the Best KATHAKALI singers of his generation, Hyder Ali is the first non-Hindu artiste to make a mark in the four-century-old Classical Dance-Drama KATHAKALI.

It was when he was 11 years old that Hyderali joined Kerala Kalamandalam. Hailing from a poor family, his parents had struggled to pay the admission fee -— incidentally "a Hindu and a Christian" helped him secure admission in the premier performing arts institute, as Hyderali later recalls in his autobiography.

Hyderali was blessed with a light, pliant and sonorous voice that tuned well to softer and melodramatic scenes on Kathakali stage. His emotive singing used to earn him praise from masters like Kalamandalam Gopi.

Hyderali, suave and soft-spoken, nurtured the wish to see Lord Krishna in real life, but had to occasionally suffer professional humiliation on religious grounds, as entry to temples, where a chunk of Kathakali shows finds stage, in Kerala is barred for non-Hindus. Kathakali aficionados recall how those in control of an ancient temple near Haripad actually pulled down a part of the compound wall and extended the platform there for Hyderali to sing for the Kathakali performers inside the compound.

And that was a great story.. And Hyderali in one interview says as he was forced to stand on the stage part which was behind the wall outside the border of the temple, “ My body was outside the temple, but my voice was within.. Had I extended my hand, I would have touched the God.”

After a few years in wandering through the Zen way, I would have told him, that God was within him and may be all the Gods go wherever he used to sing to listen to him.

Coming back to my grandma, maybe she too would have felt , she is standing outside the wall of this world, even from a 21 days old infant till she passed away…

It took the story of a Muslim man singing of Hindu gods from outside a temple wall to make me finally hear my grandmother. Her life, too, was a voice singing from behind a series of walls—of poverty, of gender, of social slight. I had resented the formidable structure of her person, as I had resented the endless nights of Kathakali she loved. But Hyderali taught me to listen for the song within the fortress. The 'Ajita Hare' that seeped into my childhood sleep was that song. Her sharp wisdom about a sari was that song. In the end, the walls—of the temple, of the art form, of her difficult strength—dissolve. What remains is the voice, reaching for the divine. And finally, I am listening.

The Pied Piper’s Tune: On Spiritual Gurus, Corporate Leaders, and the Surrender of Our Critical Mind

The Pied Piper’s Tune: On Spiritual Gurus, Corporate Leaders, and the Surrender of Our Critical Mind

by | Dec 12, 2025 | Friendship, Integrity, RElationship, Transformation, Trust

My concerns about the modern “guru”—a title that now stretches from ashrams to boardrooms—are simple and twofold.

First, does the person on the stage actually know what they’re talking about? Have they genuinely walked the path they’re selling, or is it just polished rhetoric? Second, and more dangerously, what do they do with the authority they gather? Too often, the answer points toward the oldest temptations: power, privilege, and personal gratification.

The mechanism for gathering this authority is often the same: the demand for total surrender. It’s a call to “have complete faith in me, my way, and what I say.” It’s the subtle (or not-so-subtle) instruction to park your critical thinking at the door, to keep your questions in abeyance, and to simply follow. This isn’t a relic of medieval spirituality; it’s the bedrock of modern influence.

I saw this play out in real-time recently. A venerated corporate leader was interviewed live by a famous media personality. Before a large, attentive audience, he staked a controversial claim. He leaned in and declared, with absolute conviction, that he was stating a “FACT.” Not an opinion, not a perspective—a fact. The crowd, a sea of people nearly all holding smartphones—literal fact-checking libraries in their pockets—nodded and absorbed it as sacrosanct truth.

A simple check proved his “fact” was wrong. I even shared the details beneath the video later in Linkedin. Yet, the reluctance to accept the correction was palpable. The spell of the moment, the aura of the speaker, was more powerful than a verifiable truth.

And this game doesn’t only play out on spiritual or corporate stages. Think about it: a person in deep distress, seeking a therapist’s help; a coaching client investing in their potential; a young child looking up to their teacher; a fan pouring admiration into a celebrity. In each of these relationships, a natural power differential exists, built on a legitimate need—for healing, growth, knowledge, or belonging. This is precisely where the Piper’s tune finds its most vulnerable listeners. The dynamic can morph, subtly or overtly, from guidance into control, where the healer, coach, teacher, or star becomes the sole, unquestionable source of what the seeker desperately needs.

This is the essence of the Pied Piper’s power. It doesn’t work through logic, but through a magnetism that asks for our trust in exchange for our discernment. As sociologist Paul Heelas observed in studies of modern spirituality, people often reject traditional authority only to surrender to new, charismatic forms of it. We exchange one piper for another.

Mariana Caplan, in her book Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment, diagnosed this same malaise in contemporary spirituality. She warned that seekers and teachers alike often mistake charisma, altered states, or partial insights for full realization—and then prematurely claim enlightenment. The danger, she argued, is not only in the teacher’s illusion but in the seeker’s surrender of discernment. When we hand over our authority too quickly, we become vulnerable to fraud, confusion, and exploitation. Caplan’s critique echoes the Pied Piper metaphor: the tune is seductive, but it leads us away from freedom into dependency.

And this is not new. History is littered with such tunes—whether in medieval cults, fascist rallies, or corporate “visionary” speeches. The melody changes, but the mechanism remains: charisma eclipses scrutiny, and authority bias blinds us to fact. Even today, with confirmation at our fingertips, the enchantment of certainty often outweighs the quiet labor of verification. Psychologists call this authority bias: the tendency to accept statements from perceived experts without question. Add confirmation bias—the desire to hear what fits our worldview—and the Piper’s tune becomes nearly irresistible.

The true guide, then, is not the one who demands we stop thinking for our journey. It is the Kalyan Mitra—the “good friend” or fellow traveler—who walks beside us. This is the therapist who empowers your inner authority, the coach who mirrors your own wisdom back to you, the teacher who ignites your curiosity beyond their own knowledge. This guide doesn’t ask for surrender; they empower our scrutiny. They don’t offer a tune to follow blindly, but a mirror to see our own path clearly. Where the Piper plays louder, the friend invites silence. Where the Piper demands obedience, the friend cultivates discernment.

John O’Donohue, in his Celtic meditation Anam Cara, speaks of the soul friend in precisely this way: as one who dissolves masks, who sees you as you truly are, and who walks with you in intimacy and authenticity. The anam cara is not a master but a companion, not a Piper but a mirror. In such friendship, the soul finds recognition and freedom.

The Buddha, too, told Ānanda that spiritual friendship is not half the holy life but the whole of it. In the Samyutta Nikāya (SN 45.2), he declared that with admirable friendship, companionship, and camaraderie, the Noble Eightfold Path unfolds. The radical claim here is that awakening is not built on surrender to authority but on the wonder of camaraderie—walking together, questioning together, supporting each other.

In a world full of Pied Pipers claiming to have the only map, the most radical act is to hold on to your own compass. To listen, but also to verify. To respect, but also to question. Because the tune that leads you to surrender your critical mind never leads to freedom; it only leads to the next cliff edge, with someone else in control of the music.

Freedom is not found in the tune that enchants us, but in the pause that lets us listen. The true guide is not the one who plays louder, but the one who helps us hear our own music. To walk with such a friend—whether as anam cara or kalyāṇamitra—is to keep our compass alive, even in a world of pipers. Better than following a tune is learning to hear the rhythm of your own footsteps. It is my lived experience that, transformative growth happens in the soil of egalitarian, trusting relationship, not in the shadow of unquestioned authority.

Three Birthdays and a Remembrance: The Ensō Circles of November

Three Birthdays and a Remembrance: The Ensō Circles of November

by | Nov 2, 2025 | Gratitude, Grief, Joy, Life, Peace, RElationship, Zen

2 November. Today is Nithya Chaithanya Yati’s birthday. A long time back, when I started reading Malayalam newspapers, one of the must-reads was his articles—mostly about day-to-day life and challenges. Later in high school, my grand uncle, a National Award–winning teacher, used to talk about him as well as Krishnamurti. Gopala thatha was considered an atheist by many of my relatives. But he was quite spiritual, just not religious. Much before I started seeing Nithya as a spiritual guru, I read him as someone who wrote Malayalam prose really well. Like another spiritual master, Eknath Easwaran’s English.

In my collection, after Krishnamurti’s books, the most number of books I have are by Nithya and Eknath Easwaran. While Easwaran’s spiritual life was almost like that of JK and UG, Nithya belonged to the illustrious lineage of Śrī Narayana Guru—the great Advaita teacher and social reformer from Kerala. Nithya’s guru, Nataraja Guru, was Narayana Guru’s disciple. Nataraja Guru, after a PhD from Sorbonne and teaching in Switzerland, returned and accepted sanyasa. Nithya, after being a monk, went on to do a PhD from TISS and taught in many universities such as Stanford. He also headed ICMR’s yoga division.

Though I was not fortunate to meet them in person, they were all great influences on me—connected through their writing. And another connection: I share my birthday with Nithya Chaithanya Yati, 2 November.

I missed that with my late father Sankara, whose birthday was on 3 November. He passed away on 20 November. So November is a bittersweet month. Like that movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, for me it is “three birthdays and a remembrance (śraddhāñjali) day.”

Like that classic movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. It was such a wonderful comedy and a must watch… especially for that eulogy Matthew delivers during the funeral service of Gareth. That W.H. Auden poem— “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone…” And the best in my view: “He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest.” Maybe someone would rephrase it for me at my memorial in the Zendo: “My resting week and my Sunday work.”

When my father left, I did not cry for a very long time. The tears came much later, one evening as I sat alone on the KAUST beach. With that, my grief cycle turned in full, like the arc described by Kübler‑Ross. Perhaps it turned so full that, later that year, when my mother called to ask if I had done puja on 20 November, I realized I had forgotten the śraddhāñjali day. And after so many years, I see that this forgetting is itself the best śraddhāñjali one can offer to the dear and near—that we forget they are no more, because in truth they are still here, in another form, formless.

I even hope to breathe my last on a 1 November, so that after I am dusted and gone, joyful memories would come up for my dear and near ones after the sad ones—if at all someone cares to remember.

And it is always good to get reincarnated, even in our imagination, like Jesus—though I was not crucified by life in general. After all, don’t we wake up to life after a deep death every single night.

Many religions and concepts of God arose from humanity’s fear of death and the anxiety of being mortal. Some religions and spiritual paths teach that real life begins only after this life, after our death—the very word moksha points to that. But Zen looks at it differently. For Zen, this life is the only life that matters. Samsara is Nirvana.

Fr. AMA often reminds us that life is precious, and any other thought is without true understanding. One begins to live only when one accepts death fully. Only when we accept our mortality and fragility do we become truly immortal. There is no day without night. And if there were an endless day without night in between, would we really value that day at all?

Many years ago, when I joined a Stoic Week program organized by the University of Exeter, there were two important meditations: one to recognize our insignificance in the vast universe as individuals, and the other to face death directly. A few months ago, Fr. AMA too spoke of the Jesuit meditation practice of meeting one’s own death. All these are preparations to face death. And in a way, there can be no better preparation for death than this: to live one’s day-to-day and moment-to-moment life with full presence.

I don’t remember celebrating my birthdays during my growing-up years. One reason was obviously economic—my parents just struggled to take care of the essentials in my and my siblings’ life. And the second reason is that, usually in Kerala, birthdays are celebrated as per the Malayalam calendar. So it kind of complicates things.

The first such celebration was in engineering college hostel, when my friends—the Dagar gang—came up with an impromptu birthday celebration and gifted me a book: Lee Iacocca’s autobiography.

And this time, it is the first birthday in the Zendo. So kind of being reborn.Feel like the first birthday. And like that, life comes in circles… not straight lines. What I missed in childhood, comes back now in another form. Not with cake or candles, but with silence, chanting, and friends on the path. Feels like the day itself is saying—be born again, again and again.

Zen teaches that life and death are not two separate realities, but one continuous unfolding. Yet at the Zendo we still celebrate birthdays, and we also gather in prayer for departed Sangha members. To lean only on the side of the infinite, ignoring the world of form, would be foolishness. We live in this phenomenal world, where grief must be endured and cannot be bypassed. However much one reframes, body pain, loss, hurt—all are truly sorrowful. And just the same, moments we cherish and enjoy bring real joy, laughter, and happiness. To deny either sorrow or joy would make life sterile and empty. To embrace both is to live fully.

Like Kübler‑Ross’s grief cycle, everything else in this universe too has its own life cycle. It is circular in nature. A recognition that the path is not straight, but it is whole. That every loss is woven into the fabric of a larger gain, and every ending is, in some form, a very quiet and gentle beginning.

And perhaps the best wordless way this truth is represented is in the Zen ensō—the circle drawn in a single breath, open or closed, complete yet unfinished.

Yesterday evening, Fr. AMA reminded us of this truth in the most ordinary way: he said today morning we will go   to the cemetery for Alosanai’s remembrance — she, the first staff of Bodhi Zendo, who lived Zen without ever needing to sit in meditation. Today evening 630 pm we will gather again for a memorial service to all departed Sangha members. And i plan to include Nithya and my late father Sankara too to that. And in between, he is taking me  for a birthday lunch. Life and death, grief and joy, silence and laughter — all folded into one circle

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