Philosophy

In the spiritual traditions of ancient India, there existed a practice so counterintuitive to our modern sensibilities that it deserves careful examination. Most spiritual seekers kept three sacred elements of their lives confined to themselves or shared only with very close family members: their Guru, their Guru Mantra, and their Ishta Devata, or personal deity. This was not born of selfishness, exclusivity, or a desire to hoard spiritual benefits. Rather, it emerged from a

Life has a way of throwing things at us that seem totally impossible until we just stop fighting them. Here is a simple test. If I told you to learn to speak in a language you absolutely dont understand - say Telugu, you would probably say, "Its very hard Das. Not my cup of tea." Now take the example of a Maharashtrian girl who marries into a Telugu family. She moves into her new home, and suddenly she is surrounded by Telugu speaking relatives, in-laws, and extended family.

In my previous piece, I explored Chakravyuh, the trap where every solution creates a new problem. We saw how life oscillates between problems and solutions, how we are trapped in endless loops. But I left you with a question: What if there was a way out? Here is a way out. Nishkama Karma: not getting in the trap of finding solutions when there are no problems. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Let us take some time, a few paragraphs, to understand this concept of Nishkama

There are times when solving one problem ends up creating another. The solution becomes a new problem. This frustrating pattern is not a flaw in your problem-solving abilities. It is just that you seem trapped between the problem and the solution. In systems thinking, this phenomenon is known as the problem-solution trap or counter-finality. We encounter a problem, develop what appears to be a solution, and then discover that the solution itself has become a new problem. Even

When someone is diagnosed with diabetes, the first instinct is almost universal: stop eating sugar. The logic feels unshakable. High blood sugar means I must cut down on sugar. And for most people, that means the white, granulated table sugar we add to tea, coffee, or cereal. Surprisingly the average person's intake of table sugar is a fraction of the total calories consumed per day. It is often just one eighth to one fifteenth of their total calorie intake. So when you stop

Life often tricks us into believing that happiness is a permanent destination. We imagine a sunny plateau where the air is warm, the water is still, and nothing ever goes wrong. We spend our energy trying to protect that state, to hold onto it, and to avoid anything that might pull us down. But this desire to stay only on the high ground is not only impossible; it is strangely destructive. To understand why, let us first look at water. The most important thing to realize abou

The Twin Illusions We tend to think of zero and infinity as opposites. One represents nothingness. The other represents everything. But in truth, they share a deeper similarity: both lie beyond our perception, and both trap us in ways we rarely notice. Why We Fear Zero and Chase Infinity Let us start with zero. Zero is something beyond our perception, but below. Because it is below us, we find it very easy to dismiss. Anything that can be called zero is either dismissed or fe

An essay on nothing, everything and the distance between them Let's pause to think about zero. What is it exactly? Perhaps later. But since we were thinking of pausing, let's first analyze the pause. A pause indicates one of two things. Work in progress. Or the end of a specific activity for the time being. When you get started on a project like building your dream house, the pause at the end of the day indicates that it is work in progress. It signals that something much lar

Sometimes you learn a lot when you are a witness rather than a participant in an argument between two groups, each with their own rigid point of view. One such recurring theme is the face-off between theists and atheists, philosophers and scientists, tradition versus evidence. Most of the time, it boils down to one group saying, “Prove it,” while the other desperately tries to explain why their belief is sensible. One statement in particular — “I am practical. I believe what

So here is a thought that crept up on me while I was writing these blogs, especially the philosophy section. I started thinking: How much of what I am writing is actually speculative? How much of it is accurate, and how much of it is just me reaching in the dark? This question stuck. It would not let go. Why did it stick? Because we live in a world that worships the clinically tried and tested. We are told to look for what has been proven right or wrong. And so I began to won

Long before the term "microbiome" entered our scientific vocabulary, our ancestors had already grasped a profound truth through patient observation of nature. They noticed patterns. They saw that every living thing is connected, interacting, contributing, and supporting human life. They did not have microscopes or gene sequencers, but they were on the same track as modern science, albeit through a different paradigm. They operated from a worldview where everything was alive,

A family is a basic social unit that helps members survive as one fairly independent functional module. This module is the basic building block of our society. It goes without saying that if these basic modules are healthy, the emergent social structures too would be well oiled and functioning optimally. So let us look at this basic building block. Let us start with a simple question. How many people are actually required in a family that is at its optimized best? We can begi

The Push Pull Principle: Let me explain what I mean by push and pull. Think about a fan. You can push electricity into it, and the fan will start rotating. That is one direction. But what if you want electricity from the fan? You can rotate the fan physically. When you do that, electricity will come out from the other side. So there is a relationship between electric inflow and physical movement. Either you send electricity to get movement, or you create physical movement to

Wine, Wealth, and Women: The Three Ws – A Spiritual Guide to Power, Respect, and the Mindset Within There is a timeless saying for spiritual seekers, a guide often delivered in the form of a concise aphorism: Avoid wine, wealth, and women. To a novice on the spiritual path, this might seem like a straightforward instruction to shun these three things entirely, as though they were inherently negative forces to be expelled from a righteous life. But to a true seeker, someone wh

Usually, we think of responsibility as a set of duties we are supposed to fulfill. It feels like a cognitive choice, a conscious decision to do what is right. We talk about being a responsible parent, a responsible student, a responsible citizen. And most importantly, we internalize the social narratives about being responsible. But what is it really to be responsible? If we break this word into two, we can see what it truly signifies. Response. Able. The ability to respond.

When my gut thinks it can defend weight gain. My reasoning for weight gain is simple: if your body is putting on weight, it is doing so for a very good reason. There is always a reason behind it. While it is not appropriate to say that we understand the exact reason, a few plausible explanations exist. First, it could be a backup plan based on the body’s interpretation of stress, storing sufficient food as fat for difficult times. Second, weight gain could be a disaster recov

Starting on a Holistic Weight Loss Journey When you begin this journey toward better health, the first week often brings rapid changes. That initial drop on the scale is what we might call detox weight loss. This is the phase where your body begins letting go of what it no longer needs, not toxins in the dramatic sense, but the stores of glycogen as well as waste products that have accumulated in the gut and body. After a week or two, the numbers tend to stabilize. What follo

Human life is a study in contrasts. On one hand, we are entirely focused on the living of it. We look at life, we study its intricacies, and we strive to live it to the fullest. This is one dimension of our existence. But there is another, equally compelling dimension that has fascinated and perplexed us since the dawn of consciousness: the attempt to understand death. We study death, we follow certain rituals and practices. For those who believe in an afterlife, these practi

My mother had a unique way of teaching me about the world. It wasn't through textbooks or lectures, but through a kind of intellectual jiu-jitsu. I didn't know it then, but she was raising me to argue on behalf of my own better half. It usually started simply enough. She would state something as a given, a fundamental rule of how the world was supposed to work. She would say, "This is the way things are." And because I was a child, and because I loved and trusted her, I would

We often get caught in a loop of analysis. Is coffee good for you? Is it bad? We read the studies that proclaim its benefits for the heart and its ability to sharpen alertness, and we weigh them against the reports of anxiety and sleeplessness. But this back-and-forth, this debate about the merits of the bean, misses the point entirely. It's a distraction. The real question we should be asking ourselves is a much simpler and more profound one: Are we free? When you find yours