What does it truly mean that “all are appearances in and of awareness”? This deceptively simple statement — echoing the clay-and-pot analogy of Advaita Vedanta — contains the entirety of the spiritual journey within it. And yet, as Matsuo Basho reminds us, sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself. The real obstacle to Self-realization is the very seeker seeking it — for the “I” that strives to attain liberation is itself an appearance in awareness, nothing more. Gaudapada’s Mandukya Karika 2.32 states this with uncompromising clarity: there is no creation, no destruction, no bondage, no seeker, and no liberated one. This is the Absolute Truth — paramārthatā. Ashtavakra Gita and Sankaracharya’s Nirvana Shatakam echo the same. The knowledge is already here. The only thing left is to stop looking for it.
Category: Self-realization / Liberation
Big B & Other Poems
Big B You can keep blockingAs many as you want toBut how will you block lifeThat will keep expressing itselfThrough … More
Krishnamurti on How Not to Be Born Again
Jiddu Krishnamurti viewed the idea of being “born again” (reincarnation) as a continuity of the “me”—the bundle of memories, conditioning, … More
How Many I’s?
“Are there two I’s? Me and the Truth? Can’t be so, right? What gives?”
J. Krishnamurti on Liberation from the Cycle of Samsara
J. Krishnamurti’s answer to the ancient Hindu aspiration for moksha — liberation from the endless cycle of birth and death — is as radical as it is simple: the very self that seeks liberation is the obstacle. For Krishnamurti, the samsaric wheel turns not because we lack the right method or guru, but because thought, operating as time, continuously reconstructs the “me” — the psychological self built from memory, fear, and desire. Every spiritual practice, every path, every system only strengthens the seeker, and the seeker is precisely what must end. Liberation, he insists, is not a future achievement but a present perception — the choiceless awareness of “what is,” without the observer coloring it. When the self falls silent, what remains is not emptiness but something impersonal: intelligence, love, the sacred. This insight echoes across traditions — in Advaita’s witness-consciousness, Zen’s pathless seeing, Eckhart’s Abgeschiedenheit, and Taoism’s wu wei. The traveler was always the only obstacle. There was never a path because there was never anywhere to go.
Summa Iru — The Pristine Spiritual Path
A friend messaged me, “I have a long way to go”, referring to her ongoing spiritual journey. I replied: How … More
Chastity — A Conversation with J. Krishnamurti
“Another thing is that, before our marriage, we vowed never to have any sexual relationship with each other.” Again, why? … More
God’s Fault
“One cannot realize God if one has even the least trace of desire. A thread cannot pass through the eye … More
“Is it perfume from a dress / That makes me so digress?”
No, Eliot, it is not the perfumeFrom a dress or otherwiseThat makes me digress. I digressBecause the mind itself is … More
My Reply to My Brother On His OTT Recommendation of “Young Sherlock”
Dear Sac, Your recommendation is excellent. Mighty interesting. Set in Oxford, with all the literary allusions flowing in and the … More