Tag: Mental health

Modern Way to Live Vanaprastha Ashram


Vanaprastha Ashram is often misunderstood as withdrawal from society. In truth, it is a withdrawal from compulsion, ego, and the need to constantly prove one’s worth. Traditionally associated with midlife or later years, Vanaprastha marks a shift from achievement to understanding, from control to clarity.

In modern life, this transition does not require forests or seclusion. It can be lived in homes, workplaces, caregiving roles, and leadership positions. Psychologically, it aligns with the brain’s natural movement toward emotional regulation, pattern recognition, and meaning-making. Spiritually, it softens identity without erasing responsibility.

Vanaprastha allows one to mentor without ownership, serve without depletion, and remain socially engaged without being entangled. It is particularly relevant for those experiencing midlife questioning, leadership fatigue, caregiver exhaustion, or spiritual burnout.

To live Vanaprastha today is to stay present in the world while loosening one’s grip on it—fully engaged, yet inwardly free.

Brute Force Meditation: Why It Fails & The Vedantic Path to True Transformation


Most meditation techniques today—from breath-watching and mantra chanting to mindfulness and loving-kindness—belong to the Raja Yoga or Buddhist tradition. While they calm the mind temporarily, they work like “brute force” methods, attempting to suppress thoughts without addressing their root: our underlying desires. True inner transformation, however, requires a radical shift in understanding, not mere mental discipline. Vedanta teaches that only through śravaṇa (learning), manana (reflection), and eventually nididhyāsana (meditation) can the mind genuinely quieten. When the nature of the self, the world, and desire is understood, meditation becomes natural, effortless, and transformative—not just relaxing.

The Empty Mind – J. Krishnamurti


In this profound Saanen talk, J. Krishnamurti explores the nature of intelligence born of insight — an awareness that acts instantly and without conflict. He questions the conditioning that makes human beings seek satisfaction through conformity, ideology, or authority, and urges the listener to sustain a “flame of discontent” that leads to true understanding. When all patterns of comparison, imitation, and suppression are dropped, the mind becomes empty — not void, but free and alive. In that emptiness lies insight, and from that insight, spontaneous, unmotivated action arises — pure, immediate, and transformative.

A Journey from Worldly Noise to the Quiet of Consciousness


I no longer seek guidance from heart or mind, for both belong to the restless play of duality. Instead, I turn inward, where Advaita Vedanta reveals the true relief of emptiness: the Self as pure awareness, untouched by sorrow or delight. Solitude is not misanthropy but clarity—a freedom from humoring the world’s illusions. To abide in stillness is to realize that the knower of light and darkness is itself eternal.

Love, Masks, and the Cosmic Drama: Why Pretending Is Inevitable


When I said, “All of us are pretending,” I wasn’t talking about fake smiles or empty promises. I meant it in the Advaitic sense: the entire drama of “I” and “you” is a cosmic role-play, Brahman’s theatre of masks. Even love — when I say “I love you” — is both a pretence and the deepest truth. Pretence, because the separate “me” and “you” don’t exist. Truth, because love is the very essence of that One Reality. In this play, pretending is how the Real shines through.