toDAY's novel petals...
If you had to sum up your life philosophy in one sentence, what would it be? Life is what happens to us , when we have other plans …
The Ketchup and the Idli: On a pizza in Ludwigsburg, a plate at T2, and the glue that holds a people together
What does a Neapolitan pizzaiolo, my mother’s stone grinder in a village near Mannarkkad, a plate of idli at Bengaluru airport, and Dogen’s tenzo have in common? More than food. They are all expressions of the same thing: care embodied in an ordinary act.
“Food is where a culture is practised every day without anyone calling it culture. A man from Naples taught me that over a pizza in Germany. The Neapolitan went into a rage when I asked for ketchup. ‘It is already made with real tomato puree. You Americans will kill the pizza.’ He was defending Naples, his mother’s kitchen, everything he came from, on a plate. I thought he was rude then. I do not think so now.
A plate of idli and vada at Bengaluru airport taught me the same lesson thirty years later. Everyone has a plate they will defend. Just a few days ago I sat at T2 in Bengaluru in front of a plate of idli and vada, a thin sambar, an icy chutney, and a fork. And quietly, because I am a Zen teacher now and we are trained to rage quietly, I heard the old man again.
Why on Earth Would I ?
A WordPress prompt asked: if you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be? My first reaction was, why on earth would I? The very wish comes from comparing, and comparing comes from being dissatisfied with what we have. Every human being, famous or not, carries a list of things that make them unhappy. If I swapped lives, I would get the stage and the applause, and the whole list along with it, in unfamiliar handwriting. Bhim, my Zendog master, never once eyed another dog’s bowl. A short reflection on that.
Still Water and Ice: On Memory
A coaching client once asked me how I would coach someone who is very difficult, but carries a very high level of composure.. and what came to mind at once was the Zen difference between still water and ice. Some composure is presence, and some is a frozen stance. It turned out to be as much about memory as about coaching.
“Human memory is not a chip. Every recall rewrites it, and the moulds and filters formed by our nurture shape what we remember. In Zen terms, still water reflects the moon as it is, while ice distorts it. Letting go is not forgetting.. it is having a better relationship with the past.”
Paper Walls and a Work Song for Four Men…
Before I left home to pick up my friends for our Saturday walk, I played a song a friend had forwarded. A few seconds in, my memory loaded itself—a tape recorder, Boney M, Bob Marley, and a square in Johannesburg where I first noticed that rhythm does not start with the guitar. It is already in the legs.
This is an essay about a song called Paper Walls, a sixteen-year walk through Lalbagh a Saturday walk that has outlasted sixteen years of idli, vada and coffee , and four men who never needed papers to prove they belonged to Lalbagh Saturday walking group.
“Soweto is an acronym. South Western Townships. White rule built it to put black people in, and it is the largest such place in South Africa. It was years before the word township and the word rhythm sat in the same sentence for me.
They drew a line across the hill. That is the first line of the song I played this morning.
The song is quieter than it first sounds. It says the map is not the land, the name is not the river, the deed is not the soil, the law is not the truth. A line is drawn across a hill and the hill does not move. Only the people are rearranged. The seed beneath the ground has never seen a title deed.”
What are your favorite side-hustle ideas? The word "hustle" itself suggests the suffering in the work of earning a livelihood. It carries the air of grinding, anxiety, and survival. As long as it remains that way, one "side hustle" won't be enough to make ends meet,...
Zen Followership Program…
Last year I wanted to run a 10-day Zen leadership program at the Zendo. I showed Fr. AMA the flier. He took a pencil, crossed it out, and said: “Just say a Zen meditation program for 10 days. Nothing else.” I was in a hurry. He always slowed me down. Here’s what that taught me about leadership. This piece is about what was left after that: body first, breath second, mind third. It also takes in a cow on a printed page, a painted rice cake, and why the only program Zen really runs is a followership one.
“You can quote Dōgen perfectly and still be bracing your shoulders, holding your breath, performing calm. Borrowed insight easily becomes one more thing to perform or defend. In front of a Boss, and in front of a team, it shows at once….A settled still mind can use frameworks. A scattered mind is used by them.”
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A year of Zen in Action : Guided Practice and Reflection for Modern Life and Work.
For those drawn to move beyond concepts and borrowed knowledge, and into the simple, unfiltered reality of their own life.A year of Zen in Action: Mirror Texts, Practice Gates, deep dialogue, and steady Anamcara companionship.Cohort 2 · 2027 · Online · 9 places open....
How do i write what people actually want to read ?
How do you write what people actually want to read? View all responses I write because I want to write. Even if I am the only one who reads it, that is enough. In fact, more than enough. Any count more than one is life's bonus. A gift. Rilke told his young poet to ask...
Too Cool for Nine to Five : Dharma Journey of the Ordinary 10
The first metro of the day is a different creature. It was there, somewhere between Majestic and Kengeri, that a stranger’s T-shirt — Too cool for nine to five — sent me back to a 3:45 a.m. bell, a Zendo in Perumalmalai, and the strangest discovery: that the “you must” I once lived under was freer than the “you can” I live with now.
A T-shirt on the first metro said “Too cool for nine to five.” I remembered three and a half years of 3:45 am bells at Kanzeon and found I was wistful, not superior. On why a harder clock rested me, what Byung-Chul Han calls self-exploitation, and the day the boss inside me went quiet.
