I am sitting cross-legged in a fairly large meditation hall, my knees resting awkwardly on two pillows. I am propped up on two other pillows. Outside, I hear birds and a grass-cutting machine hypnotically whirring its way through. Inside the hall, someone coughs. I hear the person next to me deeply sigh. I bend over, […]
I first started meditating more than a decade ago when I was in college. That time, I devoured self-help books in an effort to project myself as a strong, confident woman. Or at least, to believe that I did. I went through Joseph Murphy’s “The Power of the Subconscious Mind,” and the “Silva Mind Control […]
A friend of mine sent me this link in the morning. It’s a beautiful page and was just what I needed. On Being is a “social enterprise” with a radio show at its heart. It looks at questions that we wonder about but are always scared to ask: What does it mean to be human, […]
While writing on my book, I happened to write about how of one of the characters in the novel has a Monet painting on her wall. Not the original, of course. As I wrote it, I realized that’s just how I would want my living room wall to be. I would love to have many […]
I read this. “A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it’s the most painful thing you’ll ever have to do and that you’ve […]
I went running yesterday evening. I take the same route every day. There is something of the routine that calms my mind. I don’t like running. Especially not after a grueling strength workout in the morning. I don’t like running and yet I run every day. I am not supposed to run with a bad […]
Abandonment. the action or fact of abandoning or being abandoned: “she had a feeling of utter abandonment and loneliness” synonyms: desertion · neglect · stranding · jilting · betrayal · disuse · [more] evacuation · neglect · renunciation · relinquishment · rejection · withdrawal · dropping · cessation · discontinuation · termination · stopping · […]
I write this at a time when the sun is relentless in Bangalore. The light, pale, washed-out sky seems tired. It’s almost a reflection of my mind. I have been trying to be kind to myself – to not beat myself up if I do not work at the same pace as in a “regular […]
Today, as I finished Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, and looked up more of her works online, I came across this quote from her journals: “I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or […]