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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.

 

 

The Goalless Goal: Escaping the Prison of the Timekeeper

The Goalless Goal: Escaping the Prison of the Timekeeper

by | Dec 29, 2025 | Harmony, Joy, Life, Meditation, STRESS, Zen

It was my habit to sit in the last week of December, reflect on the year gone by, and write down goals for the year to come. All the “Success” literature reinforced this: write it down, and it will manifest. (Though research says most new gym signees in the first week of January drop out within 2-3 weeks—hence the insistence on annual payments. The percentage of readers who never go beyond chapter one is very significant.) For a long time, I even carried that quote from mountaineer W. H. Murray, attributed to Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!”. Not that it made any difference to my life per se.  It was one of those things to showcase effort.

And so, during the last week of a December 2022, after "successfully" shrugging off anxiety attacks, sleepless nights, and the annoyance of tinnitus—like that vetala on Vikramaditya's shoulder—by returning to Zazen as advised by my Zen Master Fr. AMA Samy, I wrote down a vow: for the whole of 2023, I will wake up and meditate every single day. No exceptions.

I had read that if you do something for 21 days, it becomes a habit. Considering the amount of failures I had known, I stretched the vow to a year. And I did it. Even during the Qatar World Cup, when matches ended at impossible hours, I still woke at 4 a.m. and sat. Many times during bus rides to Kodaikanal and back to Bangalore, once even in the early morning cab to the airport. The vow travelled with me.

As the Insight Timer announced milestones along the way, my heart swelled with pride—and my ego too, quite a bit. By year’s end, the streak was complete. 365 days. A circle closed. One evening in the early week of 2024, over tea at Kanzeon, I showed it to Fr. AMA. He might have sensed my vain pride.  He smiled, waved it off, and said: “This is not Zen. Zen does not need adrenaline-pumping, teeth-gritting effort.”

Then, with a twinkle, he asked: “Do you count your breaths too like this?”

Zen does talk about Great Doubt, Great Faith, and Great Effort. While it balances faith with doubt, it does not talk much about Great Effort. May be that is  due to  the most important lesson in Zen:  the Great effort in Zen is effortless effort. As the Zen master teaches Prof. Herrigel in that wonderful book Zen and the Art of Archery.

“I seated myself opposite him on a cushion. He handed me tea, but did not speak a word. So we sat for a long while. There was no sound but the singing of the kettle on the hot coals. At last the Master rose and made me a sign to follow him. The practice hall was brightly lit. The Master told me to put a taper, long and thin as a knitting needle in the sand in front of the target, but not to switch on the light in the target sand. It was so dark that I could not even see its outlines, and if the tiny flame of the taper had not been there, I might perhaps have guessed the position of the target, though I could not have made it out with any precision. The Master "danced" the ceremony. His first arrow shot out of dazzling brightness into deep night. I knew from the sound that it had hit the target. The second arrow was a hit, too. When I switched on the light in the target-stand, I discovered to my amazement that the first arrow was lodged full in the middle of the black, while the second arrow had splintered the butt of the first and ploughed through the shaft before embedding itself beside it. I did not dare to pull the arrows out separately, but carried them back together with the target. The Master surveyed them critically. "The first shot," he then said, "was no great feat, you will think, because after all these years I am so familiar with my target-stand that I must know even in pitch darkness where the target is. That may be, and I won’t try to pretend otherwise. But the second arrow which hit the first—what do you make of that? I at any rate know that it is not 'I' who must be given credit for this shot. 'It' shot and 'It' made the hit. Let us bow to the goal as before the Buddha!" The Master had evidently hit me, too, with both arrows: as though transformed overnight, I no longer succumbed to the temptation of worrying about my arrows and what happened to them.”

 Later, on Fr. AMA’s insistence I spent time reading Dr. Steven Hays and studying about ACT. Dr. Steven Hayes’ teaching: that we often write our own prison rules for the mind. Our processes build the prison cells like a smart dictator. While we focus on external freedom and borders, we do not notice that we are prisoners of our own mind. The “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts,” the milestone flags it raises, the appreciation and depreciation notes it throws up on our mind’s billboards.

And when we chase our cast-in-stone goals, guided by the chimes of our smartphone timers, zealously driven by the psychological prison-warden in our mind, we hardly realize that the real achievement is gaining freedom from that prison of the watch.

On the last Onam day, after I missed the annual Sadya and ended up instead with a super lunch with Fr. AMA and Prakash at Kodai International hotel, I spent some time reading about calendars and time. The Kollam Era had just entered its new century—Kollavarsham 1200 in August 2024, now 1201 from August 2025. A calendar born in 825 CE, sidereal solar, still guiding rituals and harvests in Kerala. Chingam 1st, Andu Pirappu, the beginning of Onam.

So many calendars humans have made. Yet most of us stick to the Gregorian one, imposed by empire, just as Greenwich became the zero of time. And more curious still: we inherited this whole architecture of hours and minutes. The Babylonians and Egyptians gave us the duodecimal system—that’s why we have 24 hours and 60 minutes. The French Revolution tried to decimalize time, with 100 minutes in an hour, but it didn’t stick. For millennia, sundials and water clocks (clepsydras) measured in broad strokes. In medieval China, they even used incense sticks that burned at a fixed rate—you could literally smell what time it was. Early mechanical clocks in Europe had no minute hand. The second hand is a very recent invention. We’ve even had human alarm clocks: in Victorian England, “knocker-uppers” were paid to tap on workers’ windows with long poles.

And I see now: just as we count days, we count breaths, we count streaks. We build cages of time, cages of achievement. The streak was my personal calendar. The Insight Timer was my Greenwich. My ego was the minute hand, ticking away, and my pride was the knocker-upper, jolting me awake to meet a man-made deadline.

But Zen says: Now.
Wu Wei says: the river flows without measure.
Krishnamurti says: the observer is the observed.  Or to paraphrase him in my own crude way the achiever is the achieved.

And Khalil Gibran too, in The Prophet, saw time as immeasurable and sacred. He said: “They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.” He called time timeless, boundless, like love. Not fleeting seconds to be quantified, not a commodity to be sold. He reminded us that yesterday, today, and tomorrow blend into one, that the richness of life is soulful purpose, not profit.

And so the goalless goal emerges not as passivity, but as release.
From outcome to process.
From accumulation to letting go.

From Greed to need.
From time to presence.
From selling days for gold to living them as gifts.

The practice remains—the 4 a.m. wake-up, the cushion—but the why has evaporated. It is no longer a brick in the wall of a spiritual identity. It is simply what I do, as naturally as breathing. And in that naturalness, the freedom the traditions speak of is not something found at the end of the streak. It is felt in the very texture of the sitting itself, unadorned by accomplishment.

And again From Zen in the Art of Archery:

"You see what comes of not being able to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension. You cannot even learn to do this without continually asking yourself: Shall I be able to manage it? Wait patiently, and see what comes—and how it comes!"

I pointed out to the Master that I was already in my fourth year and that my stay in Japan was limited.

"The way to the goal is not to be measured! Of what importance are weeks, months, years?"

"But what if I have to break off halfway?" I asked.

"Once you have grown truly egoless you can break off at any time. Keep on practising that."

Zen, which grew within the Mahayana stream, reflects this spirit of non-standardization. It resists being carved into fixed formulas. Instead of clinging to texts or doctrines, Zen points directly to experience: the sound of the wind, the rustle of a leaf, the ordinariness of attention. Where Theravada often emphasizes preservation, Zen emphasizes immediacy.

This brings us to Ikkyu, the great iconoclastic Zen master. A man once asked him to write down a maxim of the highest wisdom. Ikkyu took up his brush and wrote a single word: Attention.
The man frowned. “Is that all?”
Ikkyu calmly wrote again: Attention. Attention.
The man, now irritated, said, “I don’t see much depth in what you’ve written.”
So Ikkyu wrote a third time: Attention. Attention. Attention.
Exasperated, the man demanded, “What does this word mean, anyway?”
Ikkyu replied gently: “Attention means attention.”

The story is deceptively simple, but it cuts to the heart of Zen. Wisdom is not hidden in elaborate doctrines or clever formulas. It is in the quality of our attention—to breath, to thought, to the rustle of a leaf, to the ordinariness of life. And yet, being attentive cannot be taught by anyone.

The breath, after all, never counts itself. It just rises and falls. And in that endless, unmeasured rhythm—from the very first inhalation at our birth to the last exhalation at our death—everything is already complete.

Vanaprastha for Our Times: On Burnout, Busyness, and the Third Path

Vanaprastha for Our Times: On Burnout, Busyness, and the Third Path

by | Oct 12, 2025 | Career, Change, Harmony, Joy, Life, Peace, STRESS, Transformation, Zen

When M@@@@Lee first arrived at our zendo, I was struck by his quiet discipline. Middle‑aged, yet carrying the vitality of someone twenty years younger, he never missed a single zazen session. He spoke little, preferring to rest his gaze on forests, hills, and waterfalls rather than books. Only later did I learn of his past: 18 years in the United States as a chartered accountant, often working eighteen‑hour days in investment banks, living in luxury until burnout forced a reckoning.

For the last One and half decades, he has lived like a nomad, frugal and free. He speaks of happiness and contentment not as achievements, but as discoveries. His story is a living commentary on Byung‑Chul Han’s The Burnout Society. Han, another son of Korea, describes how the achievement society—with its relentless drive to optimize, perform, and succeed—leads not to freedom but to exhaustion. He contrasts deep attention, the contemplative focus that gave rise to philosophy and art, with hyperattention, the restless scattering of the mind across endless stimuli. In losing boredom and silence, Han warns, we lose the very conditions for renewal.

Lee embodies the medicine Han prescribes. His burnout was the breaking point Han diagnoses. His nomadic simplicity is the refusal of the achievement society. His steady zazen restores the deep attention Han says we have lost. His gaze on forests and waterfalls is a return to what Han calls the contemplative dwelling that modernity has abandoned.

And then there is Gopal, a respected corporate leader who recently reflected on his own transition into retirement. Quoting his father, he wrote: “To catch a train that has already started, you may have to run alongside it before jumping in.” It is a wise metaphor for transitions, yet it also reveals the subtle compulsion many of us feel—to keep running, to keep filling life with activity, even when the train we are chasing may not be ours to board.

In observing these two paths—Lee's and Gopal's—we see a fundamental dichotomy in how we face life's transitions. On one end lies the person who is totally burnt out... On the other, the person who, even after a great innings...

So it is safe to assume there are two kinds of people out there. The exhausted renouncer and the restless achiever. One who feels totally burnt out and want nothing to do with it. For him, emptying his mind about anything about it is what makes the rest of his life worthwhile. While the other, after a great innings and having done brilliantly well in his chosen profession, still is eager to jump into the next train of achievement. After reaching the top of the pyramid, why the eagerness, why the worry about the next phase of productivity? Monetary considerations of worry about a lesser lifestyle may not be the reasons. If one is intended to use their great expertise and knowledge of serving the mankind for the rest of their life after a great fist innings, may not get that wary about what s/he will be doing with their time. Being not comfortable about not being in limelight, could be one. Or maybe it is due to the worry about how to be with the void /emptiness in their life.

Even if  they worry about the next innings for none of the above mentioned reasons and it is just for timepass, when we call it timepass—scrolling reels, flipping channels, or filling the calendar with trivialities—it is rarely innocent. Beneath the surface lies the same movement: the fear of the void.

We are uneasy with silence, with the space where applause fades and identity loosens. So we keep ourselves busy, not because the activity nourishes us, but because it shields us from emptiness.

But as Krishnamurti reminds us, emptiness is not a defect to be patched over. It is a doorway. When we stop trying to fill it, the void reveals itself as fullness—alive with creativity, compassion, and presence.

The real courage is not in passing time, but in letting time pass through us, unresisted.

Here, Pascal’s old warning rings true: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Whether it is the youth endlessly scrolling through reels, the middle‑ager flipping through channels, or the retiree rushing to fill the calendar, the root is the same: our discomfort with stillness.

Krishnamurti went even deeper. He observed that as long as the mind is seeking to fill its emptiness, it will remain empty. We try to fill the void with activity, possessions, relationships, or applause, but this only perpetuates the sense of lack. He wrote: “As long as the mind is seeking to fill itself, it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be.”

For Krishnamurti, emptiness is not a defect to be patched over, but a doorway. “In emptiness alone can there be creation,” he said. When the mind stops running, stops filling, stops chasing trains, it discovers a silence that is not absence but presence. From that silence, something new can be born—innocence, creativity, compassion.

This is the crucial distinction:

  • To fill hunger is natural, necessary, life‑sustaining.
  • To fill psychological emptiness is endless, and often destructive.

When activity arises from genuine need or from the joy of service, it nourishes. When it arises from fear of silence or the craving for applause, it drains.

Zen would call this the great death of the striving self. And in that death, a new life appears—one that needs little, yet feels complete.

In the ancient Indian worldview, Vānaprastha—the stage of “going to the forest”—was not only for ordinary householders but also for kings and emperors, who were expected to renounce power and wealth at their peak and turn toward contemplation. King Bharata, after whom Bhārat (India) is named, is one of the most striking examples: he gave up his throne and retreated into the forest to seek liberation.

Today, the forest may not be a literal place, but a state of mind—an inner withdrawal from applause and limelight into presence.

Between the exhausted renouncer and the restless achiever, there are a few rare ones who discover meaning early and live it seamlessly until their last breath. For them, life is not about applause or limelight, nor about withdrawal in exhaustion. Their work itself is their prayer, their service, their offering.

Saba Naqvi once wrote of Mallikarjun Mansur, the saintly Hindustani vocalist from Dharwar. Stricken with lung cancer, doctors had given up. His daughter was told not to deny him the things he loved most. In his final moments, he asked for a bidi, and as he drew on it, he was still humming Raga Jogiya, almost inaudibly. With the raga on his lips, his head rolled over, and he was gone. His art was his final breath.

Another story is told of Abdul Karim Khan, founder of the Kirana gharana. On his way to Puducherry to sing for Sri Aurobindo, he sensed his end was near. He stepped off the train at an unknown station, spread out his prayer mat, and sang his last song. He died there on the platform. He did not board the next train of achievement—he stepped off, to let music itself carry him across.

And I see the same spirit in my own Zen master, Fr. AMA Samy. At ninety, he still sends emails at 3:30 a.m. with reflections, still walks into the zendo for early morning meditation. His life is not about filling time or clinging to relevance. It is about continuity of presence, a rhythm of practice that does not retire.

These lives remind us that there is a third path: not renunciation in exhaustion, not striving for the next platform, but a life so deeply rooted in one’s calling that even the final breath is an act of practice, art, or service. For them, there is only one train—the train to eternity.

In the end, whether we are young and restless, middle‑aged and distracted, or retired and still wary of leaving the limelight, the invitation is the same: to stop running, to stop filling, to sit still. The rishis called it Vānaprastha. Han calls it deep attention. Pascal calls it the courage to sit quietly. Krishnamurti calls it the doorway of emptiness. Zen calls it the great death of the striving self. Many names, one truth: the train we most need to catch is not out there on the tracks—it is already here, in the stillness of this very moment.

Truly, We Are What We Are When No One Else Is Watching…

Truly, We Are What We Are When No One Else Is Watching…

by | Oct 8, 2025 | Integrity, Leadershipwithintegrity, Life, Livingwithawareness, RElationship, STRESS

Almost all our problems stem from lack of congruence—lack of integrity. When we are torn between two pieces—the inner voice that knows what is true for us, and the outer mask that seeks approval, recognition, or safety—conflict is the result.

we live in tension. That tension is exhausting. It breeds anxiety, self‑doubt, and the constant feeling of being “out of place” even in our own lives

long-time back, in 1998, I was visiting California. My close friends James Mathew and Komal Jain were working in San Jose then. Unni and I flew in. We were planning to drive down to LA through Highway 1 along the Pacific coast, with a pit stop in Big Sur. I just wanted to see the Esalen Institute. During those times, I was trying to get into a good MBA school. (Though I did land in one of the second‑tier schools then, I did not pursue for want of money.)

James, Unni and I drove down to Stanford. They had asked me to visit the campus and assigned a current student to walk me through. Our host was a Catholic priest from New Zealand, working in the Vatican. One question I had was with respect to our essays and recommendations. I asked him, “Do prospective students write their own recommendations?” He replied, “It is possible. But integrity is for ourselves. We are what we are when no one is watching.”

That learning stayed with me. Integrity is not a social quality—it is a personal one. It cannot be enforced on another, nor can it be measured by applause or recognition. It is the quiet covenant we keep with ourselves, the alignment between our inner compass and our actions when no one else will ever know. Social morality may depend on rules and consequences, but integrity begins where rules end.

And here lies the connection with judgment. Much of our inner conflict comes from the masks we wear in society—performing, projecting, seeking approval. The dichotomy between the self we show and the self we hide creates unease. The Bible says, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged.” That begins with ourselves. The moment we stop judging ourselves, we stop performing for the world’s imagined gaze. We no longer live for recognition, vanity, or pride. Instead, we begin to live from our truest center, where integrity burns like a steady flame—unseen, yet unwavering.

Integrity, then, is not about morality in the social sense, but about wholeness. The word itself comes from integer—to be whole, undivided. When we are congruent, when what we think, feel, and do are aligned, there is a natural ease. Life flows.

And this is where judgment comes in. The moment we judge ourselves, we split ourselves in two: the one who acts, and the one who criticizes. That inner division is the seed of suffering. When we stop judging—even ourselves—we stop tearing ourselves apart. We return to wholeness.

So in a way:  Lack of congruence = lack of integrity = inner division.

Integrity = congruence = wholeness.

And wholeness is freedom. It is the state where we no longer need to perform, defend, or seek applause. We simply are.

After , Thara and I came back to India from the USA ( now disUnited Empire of Trump !)  , we decided to settle down in Kanakapura road. Closer to a Krishnamurti school. Our children, Manu and Rishi were students there and Thara a Teacher and I was a frequent visitor at the KFI study center. I used to be very regular for the monthly study sessions ( first  Sunday of every month). Once, as I was getting ready for the monthly study session, my son Manu asked me where I was going. I said, ‘KFI study centre.’ He looked at me and said, like a young Socrates or UG Krishnamurti: ‘You people are going to talk about things you don’t know. At that point of time, I might have read almost all the books of Krishnamurti ( infact the late Dr. Satish Inamdar used to tell me half seriously and half-jokingly , that when I stopped reading , I will understand JK better.), I also used to be a regular visitor of UG whenever he used to visit Blr. But that question of Manu was like a thunder bolt. And set my own inner enquiry of what do I know about  it . May be , that kind of took me to a full time MA Education course at APU , where I chose courses like Phenomenology , Epistemology etc.  That kind of helped me to read between the lines, whenever someone else , “usually a know all gas bag types”, yap about spirituality.  Whenever I used to write, I stopped being an interpreter of those great knowledge . Rather I started sharing my own inner travels and experiences.  Many of them of insecurity, brokenness, helplessness and what little I understood from my own seeking. But one thing, I ensured, is I spoke what I thought and felt.  Many a times, that got me thrown out of my jobs, ended good relationships, and put myself under the bus.  But still I thought I was being what I am. Some of those who broke away , came back to my life and those relationships were stronger. Some of those ended and I thought that was the way it is.

That thunderbolt from Manu deepened my inquiry into what I truly knew, and it prepared me for the uncompromising honesty I would later encounter with my Zen master, Fr. AMA. That seed of integrity, planted in me by a Catholic priest in California, found its full flowering years later under the guidance of another Jesuit Priest and my Zen master, Fr. AMA. Fr. AMA who is also my Zen Master and Mentor.   Over the last 12 years , after being accepted as a student , I would have asked him more than 1000 questions. And especially during the last 3 years, when I became a resident at Kanzeon Zendo and his assistant.  Many of them were very provocative and came from my ego , “all knowing” arrogant self.  Many were in Dokusan 1 -1 interviews and many during our open  Q &A session at the Zendo hall. Infact Dr. Meath Conlan a Sangha member from Australia wrote in his memoir that “His thoughtful questions during evening sangha sessions with the Master leave me dumbfounded. I admire his comprehension of Zen and his courage in asking questions. I sense that often Vishy voices exactly what the rest of others were wondering but hadn't found words or forthrightness to express.”  Fr. AMA  He always answered with the same calmness and smile. Not once he had flinched. Some the questions he said he does not know. And some of them, even personal ones, he answered honestly. The questions including in the problems with religions, sexuality, greed and anything under the sun.

His unwavering calm in the face of my ‘arrogant self’ and provocative questions embodies the very wholeness I was seeking. He didn’t need to perform the role of an ‘all-knowing’ master. By sometimes saying "I do not know" and always answering honestly, he modeled the integrity I was looking for He was a living example of a person who is no longer torn between pieces, who has dissolved the inner critic, and who operates from that "truest center."

And that is the ultimate lesson in spiritual seeking I learnt. 

Living an ordinary life of compassion and service, with integrity, is the Way. Not elsewhere, not in some other world, but here. As Hakuin Zenji wrote: ‘This very body is Buddha, this very land is lotus land

The Crane That Could Not Lift and the Compassion Shift

The Crane That Could Not Lift and the Compassion Shift

by | Sep 29, 2025 | Change, Compassion, Grief, Joy, Meditation, Peace, RElationship, STRESS, Transformation, Zen

Yesterday night, was on my way to Bangalore from Kanzeon Zendo, Perumalmalai. The KSRTC Volvo semi sleeper  bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. At first I thought , it was a momentary halt. But then as it lingered on  A, most of the passengers stepped down from the bus to look for the cause of block on the ghat road. I continued to read Mother Mary comes to me. Then Driver Krishnappa , came back and asked me to go and see. There was a mini truck off the road, almost landed perfectly on all four.

 Krishnappa, the ace KSRTC driver is one of my new found friends from my sojourn to  Perumalmalai over the last three years.  For the first two years, I had made a monthly trip of. Blr- Kodai- Blr  and since last December. It is. Kodai-Blr- Kodai.  Mostly on Sunday to Friday  or Friday to Sunday.  And most of these days, drivers were  Krishnappa, Girisha and  Sunmadhappa ….  I used to get down at Perumalmalai some 13 km away from Kodaikanal , the bus stand.  Though my initial interactions with them was just friendly courteous smiles and a thank you as I stepped off from the bus.  It was Krishnappa who broke the ice.  Once while having early morning coffee at that way side coffee shop during a pitstop, he asked me what I am doing at that place , making so may visits.  And when I shared about Zendo and Zen, he  told me with a hearty laugh, that they thought I am a drug carrier from Blr.  Especially since I used to travel lightly and used to get down before the check post and town limits.

From then onwards, those coffee became on the house for me. If Krishnappa was the driver,  he used to announce to them,  Nammavaru to the coffee “barrista”  which roughly translates. “ He is one of us”.

He was a very interesting character. One who took immense pride in being one of the really early Volvo bus drivers in Karnataka.  He told me that. It was Karnataka RTC which bought Volvo buses first in India and they  had put their best drivers for that fleet.  And I have heard that story from him quite a number of times.

So when a Pilot of an aero plane, a Captain of a ship and driver of your bus, tell you something, you think twice, or at times thrice before saying a  reason to say know. So I got down from the bus and made my way to that  accident spot. Just  10 – 20 meters ahead. 

 I was told, the driver had passed away on the spot. May be yesterday afternoon. Truck went down and the driver's soul up. Since the truck load was fruits, the owner had send a crane to lift the truck. Looking at the crane, Krishnappa told me that , that crane wont be able to life the truck with the fruit load. And after more than 1 1/2 hour of effort , those workers to agreed and gave up. On our walk back to bus, Krishnappa told me that many a times, driver die due to heart attacks. ANd accoding to him, that is a better way than live on with pain and severe injiruies. ! Neither i agreed nor disagreed with him. Our journey to Bangalore continued. MAy be that scene was playing up in my mind. When i landed in Bangalore home , very early morning, there in Linkedin popped up a advt brochure on Compassion Shift. An org i had worked ( ?) earlier is part of that program. and i had to type in the below comment. During the last part of my tenure over there, i was in deep depression. My otherwise friendly Tinnitus had turned into a monster in my brain and ate away, my sleep, my wakefulness, peace of mind, joy and hunger and tears. Dont know which crane was able to pull me out of that abyss. But i too landed on all four in Zendo on the Way. On reaching home, went with Thara for our breakfast at The Rameshwaram Cafe... Thara was talking about their new joint named Thirtha in Cunnigham road. May be there was too much butter on that crispy rava dosa. I slept again and woke up for lunch.. 🙂 Pls find below my comment without further comments. Shift / transformation is not a one time act . One constantly and consciously need to be aware and keep working on it. Often reflecting on the past does help. reflecting on the past is crucial. This is wise reflection (yoniso manasikara). We look back not with guilt or pride, but as a scientist studies data: · "In that moment of irritation, where was my compassion?" · "When I acted kindly, what was the true motive? Was it free from the 'passion' for gratitude or recognition?" · "How did that word or mindless act of mine land on the other person?" This reflection isn't dwelling; it's learning to do better next time. It's how we polish the lens of our understanding and make the "compassion shift" more accessible, more instantaneous, in the next moment of interaction. And what is a butcher’s compassion . Is it towards the animal or the knife as in Daoist parable of Cook Ding . And who are we in the parable! The animal, knife or Cook Ding ??? From someone who was on the receiving end of compassion…😀

On second thoughts,  I feel  compassion is not about choosing between the animal, the knife, or Cook Ding. it is about seeing that in each moment, we are all three—cutting, being cut, and learning to move with the grain of life. And in that realisation , the shift happens quietly without needing an external prompt, like a bus resuming its journey after a long halt on the ghat road. In the end, the truck stayed where it was, the crane gave up, and the bus rolled on. Life too moves like that—sometimes stuck, sometimes lifted, sometimes simply continuing. What matters is whether compassion travels with us. I don’t know which crane lifted me from my own abyss, or which hand steadied me when I landed on all four.

But I know this: each time I pause to reflect, compassion becomes a little more available, a little more natural. And that, perhaps, is the real shift.

Also the true crane is not outside us at all, but that  quiet strength, boot strap program written in us by that great intelligence  lifts us, again and again, into the next step of the Way.

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

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

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

 

John Moriarty  wrote in Dreamtime :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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