What looks like retreat to the world is often the most courageous advance inward. In this deeply personal reflection, I address a well-meaning piece of advice — that I shouldn’t “shut my door” simply because someone hurt me. But my withdrawal from worldly engagement is neither sudden nor born of wounded pride. It is the culmination of a 50-year spiritual quest, a decision quietly forming since December 2021, now firmly made. Drawing on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, I explore how most of us mistake the shadows of the material world for ultimate reality — and how spiritual sadhana is the very act of breaking free from those chains. As Rousseau reminds us, man is born free, yet lives everywhere in bondage. True freedom isn’t found in the world’s noise; it is discovered in the sunlit stillness beyond the cave. This is not an escape. This is a homecoming.
Tag: Spirituality
Psychiatrists Are Now Teaching What Ancient India Knew 3,000 Years Ago—and It Could End Your Suffering (The Non-Issue of Body-Mind)
There is a question so deceptively simple that most of us never think to ask it: when pain arises in the body or sorrow rises in the mind, who is it that is aware of the pain? Who is watching the sorrow?
We are so habituated to collapsing the observer into the observed — to saying “I am sad” instead of “sadness is arising” — that the distinction seems merely grammatical. But this small grammatical shift conceals one of the most profound insights ever articulated by human civilization, and it is an insight that has now been independently arrived at by the ancient wisdom traditions of India and by cutting-edge clinical psychiatry and psychology in the West.
The central claim is this: you are not your body-mind and its fluctuating states. You are the Consciousness that is aware of those states. And learning to rest in that awareness — to become the witness rather than the sufferer — is the gateway to the deepest peace available to a human being.
Modern psychiatry calls it the “observing self.” Advaita Vedanta calls it sakshi-chaitanya. The Stoics called it prosoche. They are all pointing at the same truth — and that truth could change everything.
The Distance
Love is what makes the world go aroundSo it is said; I do not differYet I differ in a wayI … More
The Entrepreneur — Wealth-Seeker or Dharmic Agent? Why the Bhagavad Gita Sees Business as Sacred Yajna
The popular imagination has long cast the businessman as a necessary evil — someone who accumulates wealth while society grudgingly tolerates him. But this is a profound distortion of the Dharmic vision.
The Bhagavad Gita does not treat any profession as spiritually inferior. What it insists upon is svadharma — the faithful and selfless execution of one’s ordained function in the cosmic order. The entrepreneur’s svadharma is not merely profit; it is artha-srishti, the creation of the material conditions of civilizational life. Without him, no temple gets built, no scholarship gets patronized, no army gets fed.
In Chapter 3, Krishna establishes that all action must be performed in the spirit of yajna — sacrifice. The businessman who creates genuine value, employs livelihoods, and takes risk so others may have security is performing a yajna. His enterprise, when rightly oriented, is a sacrificial act in the cosmic order.
As Kautilya declares in the Arthashastra: Dharmasya mulam arthah — the root of dharma is artha. The society that dishonors its wealth-creators dishonors its own life-force. The Gita asks not that the businessman renounce his activity, but that he transfigure it — from mere acquisition into sacred function.
Is the World Real?
A friend wrote to me: “Trying to understand Reality,By renouncing the world,Is like trying to understand the ocean,By ignoring the … More
“Not a particle of antagonism” — J. Krishnamurti
The phrase “not a particle of antagonism” comes from a 1968 conversation between Jiddu Krishnamurti and Huston Smith in Claremont, … More
What is the difference between happiness and pleasure?
Q: What is the difference between happiness and pleasure? Nisargadatta Maharaj: Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not. Q: If … More
Ramana Maharshi on Destiny
“The Ordainer controls the fate of souls in accordance with their past deeds. Whatever is destined not to happen will … More
Krishnamurti on Loneliness
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.
Know Thyself 