Category: Meditation

Summa Iru: Formal Renunciation for The Dissolution of the False Self


All my life I have been ending ignorance — reading, thinking, writing, seeking. Now the loose ends are nearly tied. Come July 16, my 62nd birthday, it will be summa iru: not a thing I choose, but what happens when the false self, strung together from my relationships, finally dissolves. The more I carve out this “Me Time,” the more I begin to disappear. Nothing defines me; nothing tells me who I am. And so the old question arises almost naturally — “Who am I?” — a question one can sit with, alone, and stand a very good chance of answering.

My Latest Book Available Now on Amazon — The Mind Itself Is a Digression: Poems, Reflections, and Dialogues of a Restless Seeker


Kindle eBook In India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0H4X9NFMB In USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H4X9NFMB Paperback In USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H58FG4VK The mind itself is a digression — or … More

Beyond the Golden Veil: Transcending Sattva, Para Vidya, and the Final Frontier of Self-Knowledge in Advaita


Of the three gunas that constitute all of manifest existence, Sattva — the quality of luminosity, harmony, and knowledge — is the most seductive bondage. Unlike Tamas, which crushes, or Rajas, which burns, Sattva seduces with bliss, ethical refinement, and the pleasures of understanding. Ramakrishna’s parable of the three robbers captures this with surgical precision: the sattvic robber alone unties the traveller and shows him the path home — but does not take him there. The finest veil is still a veil.
The Mundaka Upanishad’s distinction between Apara Vidya — all systematized human knowledge, from the sciences to the humanities — and Para Vidya, the knowledge by which the Imperishable is realized, frames this predicament with extraordinary clarity. No accumulation of apara vidya, however refined and sattvic, can answer the question the Upanishad’s Shaunaka poses at the outset: by knowing what does everything become known? That question dissolves the knower, and no object of knowledge can accomplish that.
Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and J. Krishnamurti — approaching from different angles — converge on a single insight: the final obstacle to liberation is not ignorance or desire, but the subtle, luminous, deeply respectable self that knows.

What Consciousness Really Is—And Why the More You Study It, the Less You Know


What if the thing you understand least is the very thing happening inside you right now? In a wide-ranging conversation with science writer Michael Pollan, Ezra Klein explores one of philosophy’s oldest, and most stubbornly unsolved, puzzles: consciousness itself.

Pollan spent five years researching his new book, diving into everything from plant anesthesia experiments to psychedelic trips to Zen caves in New Mexico. What he found wasn’t clarity; it was deeper, more beautiful mystery. The more rigorously scientists try to pin consciousness down, the more it slips away.

This conversation covers the surprising science of how thoughts actually form (hint: your body usually knows before your brain does), why children may be more conscious than adults, how mind-wandering is secretly your most productive mental state, and what philosophers mean when they say consciousness might be a universal field rather than something your brain generates.

It also asks urgent questions about the modern world: Are our smartphones quietly shrinking the richness of our inner lives? And what would it mean to reclaim sovereignty over your own mind?

A rare conversation that leaves you knowing less, and wondering far more.

The Bhagavad Gita Explained: Key Teachings and Insights


The Bhagavad Gita — spoken on a battlefield over two thousand years ago — remains one of the most profound guides to the human condition ever written. Yet its philosophical depth, Sanskrit terminology, and eighteen dense chapters can feel overwhelming to modern readers.

Sammary of the Bhagavad Gita by D. Samarender Reddy is not a translation or a conventional commentary. It is a guided philosophical journey through the Gita’s core teachings — written for the intelligent general reader who wants to genuinely understand what the Gita is saying, why it says it, and what difference it makes to how one lives.

The book covers the Gita’s two-tier vision of Reality, the Goal of Life as Krishna defines it (compared with Buddhism, Christianity, Stoicism, and modern psychology), the four paths of Karma Yoga, Jñāna Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Raja Yoga, and practical guidance on action, duty, meditation, and liberation. A complete fresh English translation of all eighteen chapters is included as an appendix.

Whether you are encountering the Gita for the first time or returning after years of study, this book will deepen your understanding of why this ancient dialogue continues to speak — with remarkable directness — to the most urgent questions of human life.