Tag: spirituality

Veedu Varai Uravu, JFK Terminal 4, and the Long Flight Home

Or: why life is basically an international holiday, and everyone eventually stops walking with you at a different gate.

There is a Kannadasan song that has been quietly following me around for about fifty years, like a well-behaved dog that occasionally sits on your foot to remind you it exists. You know the one — Veedu Varai Uravu, from Paadha Kaanikkai, TMS in that impossibly grave voice, Viswanathan–Ramamoorthy leaving space around every syllable the way a good chef leaves space around a piece of fish on the plate.

Four lines. That’s all. Kannadasan didn’t need eight.

Veedu varai uravu
Veedhi varai manaivi
Kaadu varai pillai
Kadaisi varai yaaro?

Relatives come as far as the house. The wife comes as far as the street. The children come as far as the cemetery. And then — that beautiful, slightly terrifying question mark — who comes with you all the way to the end?

Kannadasan, being Kannadasan, refuses to answer. He just leaves you sitting there with your coffee going cold.

I have been thinking about this song again, but from a very unpoetic angle, because I am a modern man and I fly Economy.

Life is a return trip you didn’t quite plan

Here is the thought that will not leave me alone.

Life, from the moment we arrive to the moment we leave, is structured exactly like an international holiday. Not the yoga-retreat kind. The messy kind. The kind where somebody forgets the adapter and somebody else insists on packing three kilos of murukku (a crunchy South Indian snack twisted out of rice and urad dal flour and deep-fried into little edible spirals — the kind of thing aunties smuggle across international borders in Tupperware) “just in case.”

Consider the arrival.

You land. The plane doors open. You are wheeled or carried out — because let us be honest, nobody walks off their first flight — and there, waiting at the gate, is your entire welcoming committee. In this case, the “airport” is a hospital, the “arrivals lounge” is a delivery room, and the welcoming committee wears surgical masks and holds you upside down until you announce yourself with a scream.

The doctor is the immigration officer. (“Papers, please. Weight, length, APGAR score.”)
The nurse is the ground staff. (“Sir, madam, this way to baggage claim, which is you.”)
The parents are the family who drove three hours to pick you up and are now weeping in the parking lot for reasons neither of you fully understand yet.

They take you home. They make sure you are comfortable. Someone puts a blanket on you that is objectively too warm. Someone else insists you eat something. This is the veedu varai uravu phase, and it lasts, if you are lucky, about eighty years.

The middle of the holiday, or: why we fight over the AC remote

Now — anyone who has ever been on a family holiday knows that the middle of the trip is where things go interesting.

Day one, everyone is delightful. “Shall we all have dosa?” (a thin, crisp fermented rice-and-lentil crepe; the South Indian answer to the pancake, only with more opinions attached to it.) “Yes, dosa is a wonderful idea.” “You take the window seat, no no you take it.”

Day four, someone is not speaking to someone else because of a comment made at breakfast about the correct way to eat curd rice (thayir sadam — cooked rice mixed with yogurt, tempered with mustard seeds and curry leaves; simultaneously the most comforting food on earth and the most fiercely litigated recipe in every South Indian household). Day six, there is a full diplomatic incident about who booked which taxi. By day nine, two people are communicating exclusively through a third person, who is themselves not on speaking terms with a fourth.

This is life. This is the entire arc between the veedu and the kaadu. Ego, opinions, small betrayals, big betrayals, the terrible things we say because we are tired and it is 41 degrees and the kulfi (the Indian ice cream cousin — denser, chewier, usually flavoured with cardamom, pistachio, or mango, and constitutionally incapable of surviving an Indian afternoon) has melted. And underneath it all, the strange and slightly embarrassing fact that we love these people so much we cannot quite bear it, which is precisely why we are fighting with them.

You never fight this hard with strangers. Have you noticed? Nobody has ever had a shouting match with the person selling coconuts on the beach. We reserve our finest performances for the people we plan to weep for.

The departure gate

And then the holiday ends.

You know this part. Somebody has to catch the flight back. The luggage is heavier than it was on the way in — it always is; this is one of the immutable laws of the universe, along with entropy and the fact that any samosa (a fried triangular pastry stuffed with spiced potatoes and peas — the samosa is to India what the sandwich is to England, except with better structural engineering) you drop will land chutney-side down.

Some people come to see you off at the door of the house — veedu varai. They stand in the driveway. They wave. They are already thinking about lunch.

A smaller, more loyal contingent comes to the street — veedhi varai (veedhi = street, in Tamil). They help you load the bags. They make jokes to cover the fact that they are sad. They insist you text when you land.

An even smaller, even more loyal contingent comes all the way to the airport — kaadu varai, in Kannadasan’s more austere vocabulary (kaadu literally means forest or wilderness, and in this context, the cremation ground — the last stop before there is no more road). They stand at the departure gate, that peculiar liminal space where you are neither here nor there, neither with them nor without them, and they hug you one more time than is strictly necessary. And you turn around and walk toward the security line, and they wave, and you wave back, and then — this is the part nobody warns you about — you have to stop waving and just walk.

And then it’s just you, your carry-on, and the long line to the metal detector.

The flight itself

Now, friend, here is where the song and the airline seat conspire against you.

You are in seat 34K. The person next to you is already asleep with their mouth open. The screen in front of you offers you three action movies, one romantic comedy, and a documentary about penguins that you know from experience will make you cry. You choose none of them.

Because at some point over the Atlantic — usually around hour four, when the lights have dimmed and the cabin has taken on that submarine hush — the ruminating begins.

Why did I say that to her at breakfast on day four?
What was the actual point of that argument about the taxi?
He was only trying to help. I made it about my ego. Why?
She said something kind and I heard it as criticism. Why?
I had eighty years. I spent forty minutes of it not speaking to my own brother because of a chair.

You cannot fight with anyone at 37,000 feet. There is nobody to fight with. There is only you, a small plastic cup of water, and a slowly dawning suspicion that most of what you took so seriously down there was — how does one put this politely — not that serious.

The plane is an accidental confessional. The tray table is an altar. The seatbelt sign is a mild but persistent guru: please remain seated. Please, please, remain seated.

The French have a phrase — l’esprit de l’escalier — the wit of the staircase. The perfect reply you think of only after you’ve left the party. The Tamil equivalent is even better and does not have a name: the wisdom of the return flight. The clarity you find only after the door has closed and the cabin has been pressurised and it is far, far too late to go back and un-say the thing.

Kadaisi varai yaaro?

And then Kannadasan’s question, which has been waiting patiently in the overhead bin the whole time, gently opens.

Who comes with you all the way to the end?

The relatives came as far as the house. The wife came as far as the street. The children came as far as the cemetery — or, if you prefer the modern edit, as far as the drop-off lane at Terminal 4, where they were shooed away by a very serious man in a fluorescent vest.

But someone is on the plane with you. That is the strange bit. That is the bit Kannadasan leaves as a question mark because he is too much of a poet to ruin it with an answer.

Pattinathar, who was less of a diplomat, said it outright a thousand years ago: what travels with you is what you did. The paavam and the punniyam (paavam = sin, the debits; punniyam = merit, the credits; between them, the only luggage the universe actually lets you check in). The way you treated the person at the coconut stall. Whether you let go of the taxi argument. Whether you called your brother back after the chair incident. Whether you were, on balance, kind — not to the people you were trying to impress, but to the people you had already stopped bothering to impress, which is the only real test.

The rishis would put it more mysteriously and say the witness in seat 34K is the same witness who was there in the delivery room, watching the whole holiday from the beginning, unbothered by the AC remote, uninvolved in the curd rice debate, present through every fight and every reconciliation, and — here is the punchline — not actually going anywhere at all.

The plane lands somewhere. The witness stays.

So what does one do on day four?

I don’t know. I really don’t. I am, as I have confessed elsewhere on this blog, an amateur at all of this. But here is what the return flight has been quietly whispering to me lately, and I offer it in the spirit of one economy-class passenger to another:

The next time somebody at breakfast says the thing about the curd rice — pause for exactly one breath before you answer. That is all. One breath. The length of a soham, if you like (soham — the natural sound of the breath itself: sa on the inhale, ham on the exhale; the mantra you’ve apparently been chanting since the delivery room without ever signing up for it). In that gap, you can sometimes hear the hum of the return flight already. You can sometimes see, faintly, how this scene will look at hour four over the Atlantic. And nine times out of ten, you will choose the reply of the person you’ll be at 37,000 feet — not the person you are at the breakfast table.

That is not enlightenment. That is just packing lighter.

Because veedu varai uravu is true. The relatives really do stop at the house. The wife really does stop at the street. The children really do stop at the cemetery. And that is fine. That is how holidays end. That is how they were always going to end. There was never a version of the trip where everyone got on the plane with you.

But the samosas you shared, the arguments you dropped, the person you were kind to when nobody was watching — those, apparently, come along as carry-on.

And they don’t count against your baggage allowance.

Kadaisi varai yaaro? Perhaps you already know. Perhaps you’ve always known. Drop it in the comments, or better yet, drop it in the driveway before the taxi arrives.

Shree Matre Namaha. (Salutations to the Divine Mother — the closing bow, in case She is the one in seat 34J.)

#NallaMadras #VeeduVaraiUravu #Kannadasan #TamilSongs #Pattinathar #IndianPhilosophy #NonDuality #Advaita #Kirtan #Devotional #TamilLiterature #Vairagya #LifeAndDeath #Impermanence #Spirituality #SouthIndian #Rumination #MindfulLiving #WitnessConsciousness #Soham

The Many Forms of the Mother

There are some forces in life that quietly shape us long before we fully understand them.

For me, that force was always Devi — the Divine Mother.

Even as a young boy growing up in India, I felt an unexplainable pull toward Her. Not out of fear, nor because of strict religious conditioning, but from something much deeper and strangely familiar. Looking back now, I sometimes feel it may have been the quiet continuation of spiritual impressions carried across lifetimes — a culmination of punya that naturally drew my heart toward the Mother.

And perhaps, like many of us, my first glimpse of the Divine Mother came through my own mother — through her care, sacrifice, protection, and quiet strength. Before we understand philosophy or spirituality, we first understand love through a mother’s presence.

Life eventually carried me far away from home. Nearly three decades ago, I relocated to the United States. Like many immigrants, I became absorbed in the practical realities of building a life — work, responsibilities, survival, family, adapting to a new culture. Yet through all the movement and noise of life, one thing remained constant:

My connection to Her.

Prayer continued. Worship continued. Even when life became turbulent, Devi remained the silent center I returned to again and again.

Then, through what first appeared to be a chance encounter with a professor at Rutgers University, life opened another unexpected door. One thing led to another, and I was blessed to meet Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswati of Devipuram, who initiated me into the Shakti path through the sacred Panchadashakshari mantra.

Years later, Guruji asked me to help clean up some audio recordings; Viraja Homam and Rashmi Mala Mantras, and add musical interludes to them. During that process, I heard chants and invocations to Matangi Devi. Something within me immediately responded. It did not feel like discovering someone new. It felt like remembering someone ancient and intimate.

I was irresistibly drawn to Her.

Life, of course, did not suddenly become free from difficulty. Like everyone else, I have experienced uncertainty, disappointments, emotional upheavals, and periods where the road ahead seemed unclear.

But through every rise and fall, my faith in the Divine Mother has remained unwavering.

And perhaps that is what motherhood truly represents.

Not perfection.
Not control.
But unconditional presence.

The ability to nurture life even while carrying one’s own burdens. The ability to comfort, protect, sacrifice, forgive, and continue loving despite exhaustion and pain. The world often celebrates power loudly, but the quiet strength of a mother sustains humanity itself.

Over time, I began to realize that the Mother I worshipped in temples and mantras was also present in the women around me — in their resilience, compassion, intuition, creativity, and immense capacity to give of themselves.

To all women, I say this with great reverence:

You are blessed to embody Her Shakti.

Whether you are raising children, caring for family, supporting others emotionally, creating beauty, healing hearts, or simply carrying love into a difficult world — you are expressing the Divine Feminine in ways both seen and unseen.

And even if you are not a biological mother, the nurturing principle still lives within you. The ability to create, protect, inspire, and nourish life is itself sacred.

What greater gift can there be?

On this Mother’s Day, I bow to the Divine Mother in all Her forms — and with gratitude remember my own mother, through whom I first experienced Her love.

Shree Matre Namaha.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

You didn’t hire the heart!

You Didn’t Hire the Digestion Department: On Ramana Maharishi and the Supreme Doer

The 3 AM Regret Committee

You know how it works.

It’s somewhere between 2:47 and 3:15 AM, and your brain, which had absolutely nothing useful to say during the actual meeting, has suddenly convened an emergency session. The agenda? Every bad decision you have ever made. The tone? Prosecutorial. The mercy on offer? None.

“Remember 2009? That thing you said to Ramesh? Remember the job you didn’t take? The relationship you didn’t value enough? That investment you made in what turned out to be the financial equivalent of a paper boat in the monsoon?”

And so the mind replays, rewinds, and re-examines, as if a 47th viewing of the blunder might somehow change the ending.

We’ve all been there. If you haven’t, please write a separate blog, because clearly you are an entirely different species.

Enter the Sage. No PowerPoint Required.

A devotee once came to Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi at Arunachala with exactly this question – not at 3 AM necessarily, but with the same existential heaviness. The weight of past deeds. The crushing burden of karmic ledgers that seem to carry interest at rates that would embarrass a credit card company.

“Bhagavan,” the devotee essentially asked, “how do I get out from under the effects of the bad things I have done?”

Now, another teacher might have assigned a few hundred rounds of a mantra, or perhaps a month-long diet of boiled vegetables and noble thoughts. Ramana’s answer was something far simpler – and, if you sit with it, far more earth-shaking.

He said, in effect: Look. Right now, are you digesting your lunch?

The Stomach Has Better Things to Do Than Take Your Opinions

Here is the miracle that happens every single day that we completely ignore.

You eat your idly-sambar. Perhaps some rice in the afternoon. Maybe, if you are having a particularly adventurous evening, some pasta that you told yourself was “light.” And then – and this is the remarkable part – you forget about it entirely.

You don’t sit there holding a clipboard, managing the acid levels, dispatching enzymes, supervising the peristaltic movement of your intestines. You don’t schedule a 4 PM reminder saying, “Check on protein absorption in the small intestine.” You just… live your life.

Meanwhile, an incredibly complex, unimaginably precise operation is happening inside you. Every minute. Every second. And you are not running it.

Your heart beats. Not because you remembered. Not because you set it up in a settings menu somewhere. It just beats – about 100,000 times a day – without a single conscious instruction from you. Your lungs breathe. Your liver quietly does something extraordinary with seventeen different toxins from last Tuesday. Your immune system, right now, is probably handling something that would have hospitalised you if it had waited for you to notice it.

You are hosting an operation more complex than ISRO’s mission control, and you are completely unaware of it.

And Ramana’s point was this: Who do you think is running that?

The Invisible CEO

Think of your body as a massive corporation. Thousands of departments, millions of processes, an unimaginably intricate supply chain running 24/7 without a single holiday or a “we are experiencing high volume, please wait” message.

Now – who is the CEO?

It certainly isn’t your conscious mind. Your conscious mind is that enthusiastic but slightly clueless intern who sits in the front office, takes all the credit, and panics when the WiFi goes down. The real operations are being managed by something far more capable, far more silent, and far more permanent.

The ancient texts call it Ishwara. Ramana called it the Self. Modern people might call it Source, or Consciousness, or if they are trying very hard to avoid Sanskrit, “the Intelligence underlying existence.”

The name doesn’t matter. What matters is this: it is running the show. It has always been running the show. You are not, and have never been, the Chief Executive.

“But What About My Mistakes?”

And here is where Ramana’s answer becomes genuinely revolutionary.

If the same Supreme Intelligence that runs your digestion and beats your heart is also the Force underlying all of existence – then who, exactly, was the “doer” of those past actions you’re so busy prosecuting yourself for?

This is not a hall pass for bad behaviour. This is not Vedantic permission to be careless. This is something far more precise.

It’s the recognition that the “you” who made those decisions – the anxious, grabbing, fearful, confused identity that acted back then – was itself a product of a web of causes and conditions so vast and so complex that no individual ego could have possibly directed it. Ramana is essentially saying: you were not the driver. You were, at most, the passenger who thought they were steering.

Think of it like the GPS on your phone. You think you’re navigating. But the GPS is using satellite data, traffic algorithms, map updates, real-time rerouting decisions – a million variables your eyes can’t even see. If you end up on the wrong road, is it really you who chose it? Or was it the signal, the map data, the moment of distraction, the imperfect information?

The Supreme Doer – that vast Intelligence – accounts for all of it. Every variable. Every condition. Every circumstance that led to every choice.

The Background App You Forgot About

Here’s another way to think about it.

On your phone right now, there are apps running in the background that you have completely forgotten exist. They are syncing your data, updating your contacts, managing your cloud storage – quietly, competently, without any drama or press releases.

Consciousness works the same way. It is the background process that runs everything – your autonomic nervous system, the movement of the planets, the water cycle, the growth of a child in the womb. It doesn’t send you notifications. It doesn’t ask for acknowledgment. It simply operates, with a precision and elegance that makes the most advanced AI look like a pocket calculator.

And here is the liberating part: that same Intelligence was also the background process behind everything that has happened to you, and everything you have done.

The good. The bad. The cringe-worthy. The regrettable. All of it arose from that Totality.

The Lighter Wallet of Guilt

Ramana’s teaching isn’t asking you to become irresponsible. It’s asking you to become honest.

The ego says: “I did that. I am guilty. I must carry this forever.”

The Supreme Doer teaching says: “That action arose from the Totality. You were the instrument. The instrument is not guilty of what the music is.”

When you truly internalize this – even for thirty seconds – something remarkable happens. The fist in your chest around that old regret… loosens. Not because you have escaped accountability, but because you have suddenly seen the full picture of what accountability even means when you are not, in fact, the independent agent you thought you were.

The cosmic laptop, as it were, has a much better virus protection system than your individual guilt-loop.

A Practical Experiment

Next time you find yourself spiralling into the past – whether it’s 3 AM or 3 PM – try this.

Take a slow breath. Notice the breath happening. Notice that you did not decide to breathe in the last sixty seconds – it just happened. Notice that your heart is beating, your cells are functioning, your temperature is being regulated, all without a single conscious instruction from you.

And then ask: who is doing all of that?

Sit with that question. Not to get an intellectual answer, but to feel the weight of the Intelligence behind it. The same Intelligence that handles your digestion with such extraordinary precision is also handling the full arc of your story – including the chapters you wish you could redact.

And maybe, just maybe, that Intelligence knows a bit more about the editing process than your 3 AM committee does.

The Final Word (From Arunachala, Not from Me)

Ramana was the quietest revolutionary who ever lived. He didn’t shout from rooftops. He didn’t run workshops with certificates and a merch table. He just sat, in stillness, and pointed to the one thing that was undeniably real: the Self – the Supreme Doer – that underlies everything.

His message on past karma wasn’t “don’t worry about it.” It was far more powerful: you were never the doer you thought you were. And the Force that actually runs this show? It doesn’t make mistakes. It doesn’t have a ledger of your sins. It’s too busy keeping your heart beating to hold a grudge.

So maybe go ahead and fire that 3 AM committee.

The Supreme CEO has it handled.

Published on Nalla Madras – All things movies, music, and philosophy, from a South Indian, Madras-born native’s perspective.

Life is a Time-Lapse: Why You Are the Camera, Not the Movie

The Stationary Camera: Why Time Doesn’t Exist (And Einstein Agrees with the Rishis)

You know that feeling when you look at a time-lapse video of the night sky?

The stars are streaking across the heavens, the Milky Way is spinning like a giant cosmic pinwheel, and the earth seems to be on a wild carousel ride. But the camera? The camera sits there—rock solid, unmoving, silently watching the show.

We usually think we are the ones moving through time, getting older, rushing to meetings, and chasing deadlines. But what if we’ve got it backwards?

What if Time doesn’t exist? What if we are the stationary camera, and it’s the environment that is whizzing past us?

This isn’t just a late-night “hostel terrace” theory. It’s a place where modern physics and ancient Vedanta decide to have a cup of filter coffee together.

The Photographer’s Philosophy

Let’s look at this “Stationary Camera” theory.

In a time-lapse, two things are happening:

  1. The Changing: The stars, the clouds, the rotation of the earth.
  2. The Changeless: The camera lens that captures it all.

If the camera started moving around, the video would be a blurry mess. The only reason we see the movement of the stars is because the observer is still.

Now, apply this to your life. Your body changes (grey hairs appear, knees creak). Your mind changes (happy today, annoyed at the traffic tomorrow). The world changes (new governments, new iPhones).

But YOU—the sense of “I am”—does that ever change? The “I” that felt the sun on your face at age five is the exact same “I” reading this blog right now.

You are the camera. The world is the Milky Way.

“But Saar, What About Science?”

I can hear the skeptics (and the physics majors) clearing their throats. “Nanda, time is real! Entropy! The Second Law of Thermodynamics! You can’t un-break an egg!”

Fair point. But here is where it gets interesting.

Einstein enters the chat.
In the old Newtonian days, we thought time was a steady river flowing at one speed for everyone. Then Einstein came along with Relativity and proved that time is actually bendy. It slows down if you move fast; it warps near black holes.

When his best friend died, Einstein wrote a letter to the family saying:

“The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Science is basically admitting that “Time” isn’t the solid container we think it is. It’s an illusion. Or, as we call it back home, Maya.

The Vedantic Upgrade: Drg-Drishya-Viveka

Our ancient rishis didn’t have DSLRs, but they had this exact same theory. They called it Drg-Drishya-Viveka (The discrimination between the Seer and the Seen).

They would say your Camera theory is perfect, with one major “Pro Mode” upgrade.

In your analogy, you might think:

  • Camera = My Mind
  • Milky Way = The World

Vedanta says: Not quite.

If a bug crawls across the camera lens, the camera sees it. If the lens gets foggy, the camera sees the fog.
Your thoughts, memories, and emotions are like that bug or that fog. They are constantly moving. They come and go.

So, the Mind isn’t the Camera. The Mind is part of the movie!

The real Camera is the Sakshi (Witness Consciousness). It watches the world move, and it watches the mind think about the world moving. It is the Sat-Chit-Ananda—the existence that never moves, never sleeps, and never changes.

The Final Verdict

So, are there holes in this theory? Only if you try to make the “Camera” into your ego. Your ego is definitely moving (and usually running late).

But the real You? You are stationary in eternity.

  • Science studies the movie (the changing particles, the biology, the entropy).
  • Spirituality studies the Camera (the Observer).

You don’t have to choose between them. You can enjoy the science of the stars while resting in the stillness of the Self.

Try this today:
Next time you are stuck in a chaotic situation—maybe traffic on Mount Road or a heated meeting—just pause. Be the camera. Let the cars and the shouting be the Milky Way spinning around you.

You might find that while the world is noisy, the Witness is silent.

The Trap of Sensory Pleasures: How to Escape

This or that?

You know the feeling.

It’s 11:30 PM. You are doom-scrolling on Amazon, and suddenly, you see it. A noise-canceling headphone that promises to silence not just the traffic outside, but arguably your own thoughts. Or maybe it’s Saturday night, and that second slice of chocolate truffle cake is looking at you with the intensity of a long-lost lover.

In that moment, a powerful wave rises. The ancient texts call it Kama (desire), but let’s just call it what it is: The Itch.

The Itch says, “If I get this, I will be happy.”

And you know what? It’s not entirely lying. You will be happy. For about fourteen minutes. Maybe twenty if the cake is really good. But then? The happiness evaporates, leaving you exactly where you were, perhaps with just a slightly lighter wallet or a heavier stomach.

This is the trap of the sensory world. It sells us rental happiness and charges us ownership prices.

But there is a little game you can play to hack this system. I call it “This or That.”

The Two Menus

Imagine life is a restaurant with only two items on the menu.

Item 1: “This”

  • Ingredients: Sensory pleasures, shopping sprees, that extra glass of wine, the dopamine hit of a new gadget.
  • Guarantee: Instant gratification.
  • Side Effects: Transient. It fades quickly, leaving a vacuum that demands to be filled again. It is the hamster wheel of happiness.

Item 2: “That”

  • Ingredients: Satchitananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss).
  • Guarantee: Eternal peace. A subtle, unshakeable joy that doesn’t depend on what is in your driveway or your refrigerator.
  • Side Effects: A sense of invincibility. The realization that you are already full.

How to Play the Game

The game is deceptively simple. The moment a craving arises—whether it’s for a new car, a harsh retort to a colleague, or just mindless consumption—you pause.

Take a breath. Create a tiny gap between the urge and the action. And in that gap, ask yourself:

“Do I want This… or That?”

Do I want the fleeting thrill of the object (“This”)?
Or do I want the eternal stability of my own Self (“That”)?

When you choose “This,” you are choosing to be a beggar, asking the world to drop a coin of happiness into your bowl.
When you choose “That,” you remember you are the Emperor.

The “That” is Always There

Here is the secret the marketing departments don’t want you to know: The peace you are looking for in the object is actually what remains when the wanting of the object drops.

When you finally buy that gadget, you feel a moment of relief. You think the gadget gave you joy. It didn’t! The gadget simply removed the craving for a moment, revealing the natural joy (Satchitananda) that was already there underneath.

So why take the detour through the shopping mall? Go straight to the source.

The Practice

Next time the urge hits, catch it mid-air.

  • Craving for approval? Ask: This (someone else’s opinion) or That (my own inner fullness)?
  • Craving for distraction? Ask: This (social media noise) or That (the silence of being)?

You might still choose the cake. And that’s fine! We aren’t trying to be monks overnight. But simply asking the question breaks the trance. It reminds you that you have a choice.

You are standing at the crossroads of the momentary and the eternal fifty times a day.

So, my friend… This or That?

The Ego: Friend, Foe, or Just Misunderstood?

For centuries, sages, saints, and that one uncle at weddings who insists he knows “the truth of everything” have been shouting in unison: shed the ego! According to them, the ego is the villain of the spiritual soap opera, the moustache-twirling bad guy who blocks us from enlightenment. One modern guru even turned it into a neat acronym: E.G.O = Edging God Out.

Sounds convincing, right? But here’s the twist: without the ego, you wouldn’t even know there was a truth to realize in the first place.

The Double Life of Ego

Think of ego like your neighborhood auto driver. On one day, he’s weaving dangerously through traffic, shouting at pedestrians, and playing film songs at full volume—annoying, loud, and best avoided. On another day, he’s the one who drops you exactly where you need to be, gives you change without grumbling, and even warns you about the pothole near the signal. Same guy, two different roles.

Ego works like that. If you identify it with your endless stream of random thoughts—“what’s for dinner?”, “does my WhatsApp DP look fat?”, “why hasn’t Netflix released Season 2 yet?”—then yes, ego is the troublemaker. But if you recognize ego as the quiet sense of “I am” that sits beneath all this noise, suddenly it becomes a signpost pointing straight toward Truth.

The Shopping Mall Analogy

Picture yourself in a shopping mall. Every shop window is blaring for attention: “Buy me! Eat me! Discount 50%!” These are your thoughts. Your ego, depending on how you use it, can do one of two things:

  1. Chase the mannequins—run around from Zara to Apple Store to the food court, completely distracted.
  2. Stand in the middle of the mall—aware that all these shops exist, but not compelled to enter. Just resting in the fact that you are present in the mall, not the stuff inside it.

One leads to exhaustion (and an empty wallet). The other leads to realization.

The Cosmic Stage Show

Think of life as a stage play. The thoughts, emotions, aches, and identities are like actors. The ego can either insist, “I’m the hero, the villain, the comedian, and also the audience—give me all the parts!” Or it can sit back as the stage itself—the screen upon which the entire drama plays.

It’s the same ego, but which way you flip it makes all the difference.

Why We Need Ego to Drop Ego

Here’s the paradox no one tells you: you need ego to even decide to shed ego. Who else is sitting there reading blogs about spirituality at 11:47 p.m. on a Tuesday? The “I” that seeks the Truth is still ego—but it’s the refined version, the ego that points beyond itself, like a GPS that tells you, “Recalculating route to Infinity.”

So maybe the sages weren’t wrong about letting go of ego. But until you use it to realize what’s beyond, dropping it too soon is like throwing away the car keys because you’re frustrated about potholes. The car’s still the way to get home.

Everyday Example: The Alarm Clock

Think of your alarm clock. It’s annoying, intrusive, and loud. You want to smash it against the wall every morning. But without it, you wouldn’t even wake up to know there is a morning. Ego’s the same. It wakes you up to the sense of “I am”—and from there, you get to see that you are more than the random noise of thoughts and identities.

In short: Ego isn’t the villain. It’s the slightly irritating but ultimately helpful character that gets you to the truth. Shed the noisy part, keep the “I am” part, and you might just find that what you thought was blocking God was really pointing to God all along.

How to Tune Into Your Inner Steady Hum

Have you ever walked past a giant generator or one of those industrial motors and felt it in your bones before you even heard it? That low, steady hum… reassuring, powerful, unbothered. It’s just there. Not shouting for attention, not needing to prove itself, but quietly powering the whole building.

That, my friend, is exactly what the sense of “aliveness” feels like.

We’re so used to identifying with thoughts—this endless parade of “should I…”, “what if…”, “oh no…”, “why me…”—that we forget there’s something far more fundamental buzzing underneath. A current that’s been running since before you knew your name, before you knew you had knees that creak when you get up too fast, before you had a list of worries that could rival a grocery bill.

The Dynamo Within

Sit still for a moment. Drop the drama. Forget the story of “you.” What’s left? A hum. Not metaphorical, but a very real sense that something is alive in you. Breathing, pulsing, steady as a ceiling fan in a summer power cut (when the current isn’t steady, you really notice!).

From that humming place, you’ll see your thoughts like little fireflies outside a streetlamp—pretty maybe, sometimes irritating, but clearly not the light itself. Even your precious “identity”—that carefully curated name, job title, Instagram bio—sits outside this hum. The aliveness doesn’t care if you’re CEO of the world or Chief Operator of the Remote Control. It just hums.

Aches, Pains, and Invincibility

Here’s the wild part: even the body’s complaints—sore shoulders, stiff back, that knee that behaves like it’s auditioning for a horror movie soundtrack—can be observed from here. You notice them, yes. But they’re not you. They’re like background noise in a café where the espresso machine hisses, chairs scrape, and the couple at the next table is arguing over pineapple on pizza. None of it stops the café from being a café.

And from here, strangely enough, there’s a feeling of invincibility. Not the Marvel superhero kind where you dodge bullets, but a deeper invincibility. Even mortality feels… well, slightly overrated. Because the hum doesn’t really start or stop—it just is.

Everyday Example: The Fridge

Think of your refrigerator. You don’t stand there all day listening for the motor. But if the hum stops, you immediately sense something’s wrong. Suddenly, all the thoughts appear: “Do I need to call the repair guy? Will my ice cream melt? How fast can I eat three tubs of Ben & Jerry’s?”

Our aliveness is like that fridge motor. It’s constant, reliable, and easily overlooked because it’s always there. But notice it, and suddenly the thoughts about melted ice cream (or anything else) are just noise outside that steady hum.

The Easy Part

Here’s the best news: nobody can deny being alive. This isn’t some mystical achievement reserved for monks in Himalayan caves. You’re alive, right now. The hum is running. Tuning into it doesn’t take effort—it takes not effort. Just notice.

The hard part? We forget. The easy part? We can remember again, any time.

So the next time you find yourself spiraling in thought or getting stuck in an ache, pause. Step back. Listen for the dynamo. That quiet, invincible hum of aliveness.

It’s been there all along, and unlike your fridge, you don’t need to call a repair guy.

The Ostrich, the Sand, and the Secret of the Universe

They say the ostrich buries its head in the sand to avoid danger.

That’s not true, of course — it’s a myth.

The ostrich does no such thing.

But if it did… ah, then we’d have a bird with a very promising career in philosophy.

Because the idea behind the myth — that shutting out the world makes it vanish — is actually a rather elegant pointer to one of the oldest truths in spiritual thought:

Everything you experience exists only in consciousness.

Sand as a Spiritual Tool

Let’s say you really were an ostrich (just for argument’s sake — no offence to your current species). You poke your head into the sand, and suddenly your vision is filled with warm, brown nothingness. No predators. No sky. No grass. No desert. The universe, for all practical purposes, is gone.

You didn’t destroy it — you just stopped perceiving it.

And here’s the big leap: the same is true for your waking life.

The so-called “objective world” is actually stitched together inside your mind. Without the light of consciousness shining on it, the whole grand spectacle collapses into… well, nothing.

The Sleep Experiment You’ve Been Running Every Night

This isn’t just poetic speculation. You prove it to yourself every single night.

When you slip into deep, dreamless sleep — that mysterious stage where there are no mental movies playing — the entire cosmos disappears. Not just your problems, not just your to-do list, but the Himalayas, the Pacific Ocean, the Milky Way — poof.

No you, no neighbour’s dog barking at 2 a.m., no neighbour either.

And yet, you wake up in the morning convinced the world “was there all along.”

But here’s the uncomfortable question: was it? Or is it that the world only exists when you are conscious of it?

Ancient Wisdom and Ostrich Wisdom

Philosophers from Advaita Vedanta to modern-day consciousness researchers have been politely trying to tell us the same thing: the “world” is an appearance in awareness, not an independent reality.

The ostrich myth, despite being zoologically false, has a certain charm here. If putting your head in the sand can make the predators vanish (from your point of view), isn’t that just the avian equivalent of closing your eyes in meditation? The outer scene fades, and you are left with the awareness that contains it all.

Why This Matters (Beyond Bird Comparisons)

If the universe only exists in consciousness, then our frantic attempts to “fix” the outside world before we’re happy might be a bit backwards.

Instead, we could turn inward and examine the one constant — the awareness in which all this appears.

That doesn’t mean you stop paying your bills or feeding the cat (even enlightened beings have to clean the litter box). But it does mean you stop clinging to the idea that the world is a fixed, external “thing” and start seeing it as a living, breathing projection in the cinema of your mind.

So the next time someone mocks the ostrich for “burying its head in the sand,” you might smile and think:

Maybe that ostrich isn’t avoiding reality.

Maybe it’s just contemplating the profound truth that without perception, the world as we know it… simply isn’t there.

And perhaps, like that mythical ostrich, we could all use a moment to put our heads down — not in sand, but in stillness — and watch the universe quietly dissolve back into the infinite awareness from which it came.

Kabir: The Weaver of the Infinite, and the Song of the Inner Beloved

“Ghoonghat ke pat khol re, tohe piya milenge…”
“Lift the veil, beloved — and you shall meet your Eternal Lover.”

The audio version of this blog

In a time divided by caste, creed, and the rigid formalities of religion, one voice emerged from the modest lanes of Kashi. It was not the voice of a scholar, nor of a priest, but that of a weaver — Kabir — whose threads joined the sacred and the everyday, the word and the Wordless.

More than 600 years have passed, and yet his voice rings louder than ever, reminding us of a simple, radical truth: the Divine is within you.

The Weaver and the World: Who Was Kabir?

Born in the 15th century — likely to a Muslim family of the Julaha (weaver) caste — Kabir remains an enigma. Legends say he was found as an infant near a pond in Varanasi and raised by a Muslim couple. Others say he was initiated by the Hindu saint Ramananda. Kabir himself defied labels, calling neither mosque nor temple his home. His religion? Love.

He made his living weaving cloth, but his true vocation was to weave unity across the fragmented landscape of Indian society. Through verses that were sharp, wise, and filled with mystical longing, Kabir sang not about a distant God, but about the Beloved who dwells within the breath.

🎧 Featured Song: “Ghoonghat ke Pat Khol Re” – A Cry of Awakening

In this iconic verse, Kabir speaks directly to the seeker. He says:

“The veil is not on your face, but on your mind.
Remove it — and you will see what has always been.”

The word “ghoonghat” refers to the traditional veil worn by women in northern India. But in Kabir’s poetry, it becomes a symbol — of illusion (maya), of ignorance, of the false belief that the Divine is outside us.

🕊️ Kabir’s Core Teachings: Simple, but Not Easy

1. God Has No Religion

Kabir rejected the labels of Hindu and Muslim, choosing instead to follow sahaj path — the path of naturalness and simplicity.

“Allah and Ram are different words,
but the One behind them is the same.”

2. Ritual Without Love Is Empty

He poked fun at rituals if they lacked bhakti — heartfelt devotion.

“You went to the temple, rang the bell.
But did you ring the bell of your own soul?”

3. The Guru Is the Boat Across the Ocean

Kabir revered the Satguru — the true teacher — as one who can destroy illusion and show the path inward.

“The Guru is greater than God,
for he shows you the path to the Divine within.”

4. Live Fully Awake

To Kabir, the real sin was spiritual sleep — not living consciously.

“Kabir soya kya kare, jo jagay so mare.
Jo mare so ubrejay, jaga hua kya dare?”

“Why sleep through life?
The awakened never fear death.”

🌍 Why Kabir Matters Today

  • He offers direct experience over dogma.
  • He affirms that awakening is possible right now.
  • His poetry is alive across traditions: sung by Sufis, Bhaktas, Bauls, and yogis.

Kabir is not a historical figure to be studied — he is a fire to be caught.

❤️ Kabir’s Love: Fierce, Fiery, and Free

Kabir’s relationship with the Divine was intimate, raw, and immediate. He didn’t seek salvation — he sought the Beloved, not in another world, but in every breath.

“Moko kahan dhoonde re bande,
Main to tere paas mein…”
“Where are you searching for Me, dear one?
I am right next to you. In you.”

🪔 Conclusion: Lift the Veil

To read Kabir is to be challenged. To sing Kabir is to be cleansed. To live Kabir is to tear away the veil and meet the Beloved — not in heaven, but in silence, in song, in surrender.

So once more, close your eyes. Listen:

May Kabir’s voice echo within your soul — until the veil lifts, and the One is seen.

How Dropping “Me” Can Set You Free (and Why Cows Don’t Care About Your Opinions)

Let’s start with a simple experiment.

Look at a tree. Any tree. Don’t label it. Don’t call it beautiful, ugly, or a neem tree near uncle’s house. Just… see it.

You’ll notice something strange.

For a fleeting second, there’s only tree. Not your memory of a tree, not your opinion of it, not even you looking at it. Just… tree.

Now imagine living like that, always. That, my friend, is what some call liberation.

The Problem with “Me” (And All Its Cousins)

Your mind is like a chatty radio host who won’t take a breath.

“I like this.”

“I hate that.”

“This reminds me of that summer in Goa.”

“This cow looks tired.”

But who’s this “I”?

J. Krishnamurti once said:

“The observer is the observed.”

It’s not a riddle. It means when you say, “I am anxious,” you’ve created a false duality. In truth, there’s just anxiety—no owner required. The moment you label it as yours, you’ve claimed it like a Netflix account.

Liberation Isn’t a Mountaintop, It’s a Mute Button

Non-duality teachers say it beautifully.

Rupert Spira reminds us:

“The belief in a separate self is like imagining a wave is separate from the ocean.”

Mooji says, with a grin:

“Don’t take your thoughts so seriously. They’re not paying rent.”

When we drop our constant labeling—our me, mine, my—we return to what just is.

A cow grazing becomes just… cow. Not a “lazy cow” or “my cow.” Just cow. And in that seeing, you’re free.

A Little Practice (But Not a Method, Please)

Krishnamurti hated methods. But here’s a loose suggestion:

  • Just observe.
  • Don’t label.
  • Don’t claim.
  • Don’t objectify.

It’s not about doing something. It’s about stopping the habit of always being someone.

In Conclusion: Leave Your “I.D.” at the Door

You don’t have to meditate in the Himalayas or chant your way to freedom.

Just stop owning everything.

Stop saying “my thoughts,” “my anger,” “my truth.” Just notice—without naming.

Krishnamurti again, for the win:

“To understand what is, there must be no condemnation of what is.”

Including yourself.

And if you see a cow today—resist the urge to say moo.