The Cosmic Cackle

The end of the seeker

2025-07-13T00:00:00Z

Back when I was a spirituality junkie (which wasn’t that long ago), I was endlessly fascinated by Buddhism. It had a rigour and seriousness I desperately craved, while being the more “scientific” of religions - there was a technique and no blind belief was required of you to be on the path. It started with one 10-day Vipassana sit which then snowballed into one sit every year. “I need this for my sanity”, I would whisper under my breath as I completed the application form for the next course. 10 days of silence, no contact with the outside world, 10+ hours of meditation per day, waking up at 4 am and battling backaches from all that sitting. 10 days of righteous and pious suffering so that I could go out into the world and feel like I’m better than all these “sleeping people trapped in the matrix”.

I tried hard to get into the scriptures but there was no pull - I was quite happy knowing what I learnt from the Vipassana evening discourses. Each day we’d get a small yet sobering dose of “you must work hard, maybe thousands of lifetimes later you’ll awaken, but you must work hard now”, and I’d shut my eyes harder and concentrate more. The self-flagellateion program, ah yes. Very noble - please rinse and repeat.

Until last year at my last Vipassana sit - on day 7, I simply couldn’t meditate. More self-flagellation. More dreams and images of an enlightened life, more chanting “I will practice until I’m free” in my head. No dice.

Something was wrong.

After a lot of struggling, I stopped trying and relaxed.

And then it became clear.

There simply was no-one to meditate.

I would’ve laughed if it didn’t feel like I was in hell.

The only scripture in Buddhism I remember clearly is the Flower Sermon - a wordless transmission of “direct knowing” where the Buddha picks up a flower and smiles. One of his students Mahakashyapa, “gets” it and also smiles. The Buddha was able to know the flower’s “tathata” - such-ness, that- ness, is-ness. The underlying true nature of the flower and the recognition that the flower and him share that possibly caused that smile, but I digress, those are stories.

“I” am a bunch of positively reinforced personality traits I picked up over the years - what a fraud.

With it, there’s automatic thinking about how this act fits into the “I” story and how I’m being perceived by the people around me.

Without it, the flowers and cats and the sky and trees and “me” continue our joyful silent game.

We danced in temples

2025-07-10T00:00:00Z

Last year, I headed off to my motherland, Kerala, India, to study human emotions and their expression through the eyes, facial muscles and body with my teacher, Koodiyattam (an ancient dance form from Kerala) exponent, Guru Venu G. The course is based on a collection of 2000+ verses written by a sage, Bharata, between 500 BC and 500 AD, called the Natyashastra.

I thought this was “just” another acting workshop. And I did become a much better actor. But after 45 days of rigorous practice and study, I was swearing up and down to everyone who would listen that this was THE path to awakening. Or enlightenment. Or if that scares you, it was the way to go beyond the chatter of our minds, the echo chambers that we are born into, stories that we are given by our families - good or bad, and experience first-hand something real, true, unchanging.

Each phase of the workshop was 15 days long and I did three phases back to back. Each phase of the course primarily dealt with the “nava” nine “rasas” emotional states that every person experiences, namely:

Shringara: Love or beauty
Hasya: Laughter or joy
Karuna: Compassion or sorrow
Raudra: Anger
Veera: Courage or heroism
Bhayanaka: Fear or terror
Bibhatsa: Disgust
Adbutha: Surprise or wonder
Shanta: Peace or tranquility

“Shringaram”

We evoked these emotions through mythological stories (like how a demon king lifted a gigantic mountain to prove his might and courage), choreography from Koodiyattam and improvisation based on themes (such as poverty, physical sickness, death of a loved one and so on). We practiced intense eye and facial muscle exercises to ensure we relied on these more than words to emote.

I wish I could write about every single insight I had over this period. I wish I could capture every moment when things around me seemed right and everything fell into place, where this insane and intense roller coaster called life finally seemed like it had a point and purpose. But that would take pages and years. I’ll stick to my main one. Everything is a story.

After a decade of doing impro, I’m a little ashamed that this didn’t click earlier. After being in multiple shows a week, playing characters so different from one another, picking stories up out of the universal group consciousness, playing them with careful reverence, only to let go of it and then doing it all over again - this muscle of holding and dropping stories is pretty well worked out now.

Once the Navarasa practice started to take hold, after summoning emotions on command for weeks, I thought about all those times when I was overwhelmed by emotions. At the time, it seemed like there was no other way to respond to the situation. Tears, hurtful words or burning bridges was the only way - but a new possibility had emerged. A two-step process: drop the emotional charge of the story, and then drop the story.

The net result of this was a pleasant falling away of how solid my own stories seemed. Who I thought I was and wanted others to see me as, my history, fears and achievements, traumas, screw-ups, dreams, aspirations, Balasree Viswanathan. POOF.

This is not to say there’s no mind chatter - it's always going to be there I think. But I feel like I’ve found the remote. And the mind chatter television is simply not my thing anymore. Click.

What now?

2025-05-02T00:00:00Z

When Tipu Sultan and his army entered Kerala, he destroyed many temples and their idols as they moved south. When he reached the town of Thrissur, his army camped just outside the Sree Vadakkumnathan Temple, on the vast grounds surrounding the temple. The temple lent their large vessels so that they could cook for their soldiers, despite knowing that the army could very well destroy them the next morning.

Tipu Sultan not only returned the vessels, he also donated a large brass lamp and left the temple untouched. There are some accounts of him entering the sanctum and experiencing something supernatural, but those are unsubstantiated.

I think he saw simple, sobering, clear-eyed human pragmatism. Simply seeing the situation for what it was - there was no stopping the army in any case. They would find a way to make food even if the temple declined.

“What now?”

“Might as well do what we would usually do 🤷🏽‍♀️”, the temple management probably said.

The mind sometimes use other people’s actions as an excuse to do or not do certain things. I(t) can weave stories of self-righteousness and create a nice cover for its own lack of conviction or motivation.

“Why should I do what I’m supposed to/ is right/is needed/when they aren’t?”

This dose of historical pragmatism from my hometown comes in handy in those moments!

An invitation to ask yourself- What story of others’ actions are you using to justify your actions/lack thereof? Can you see them for what they really are - just stories? And can you see beyond the stories?

[Pictured: one of the four massive gates of the temple]