Sunday, March 01, 2026
Dots connecting backwards and creating a whole non-dual picture
Two recent occassions created for me evocative 'join the dots backwards' moments.
I meditate using an app called 'The Way' which is a series of progressive meditation sessions painstakingly created by Zen Master Henry Shukman. I've meditated 1931 minutes so far in a little over a year - something that I'm proud of. 'The Way' is organized in the form of a hike; the biggest level of organization is 'Trails' such as Mindfulness, Support and Flow; each trail has 6-7 'Retreats' on specific sub-topics, and within each retreat there are 6-7 meditation sessions. Trails -> Retreats -> Sessions. Retreat makes it sound like welcoming base camps on the hike, while the session itself is the exploration of the areas around the base camp.
Last week, I was in the middle of the Trail called 'Wild World of Koans'. Koans are pithy and sometimes confusing sayings which enable and implore reflections on reality and the human condition. In the trail, the first retreat is on the Koan 'Not knowing is intimate'. Once we define something, we lose some sense of wonder around it. We relegate it to the familiar. Familiary breeds contempt, no?
It seems a different way to state one of my favorite insights from Indian philosopher J Krishnamurti, which I came across a year ago. He said: 'The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again'.
Bingo, it's the same idea! J Krishnamurti's insight parallels the one from Henry Shukman in the app. I love these moments, when some insight that I resonated with deeply, comes at me differently in another context and another time.
In the same retreat, one of the sessions was a different perspective of 'Not knowing is intimate'; it was called: 'Let the wind carry you'. I reflected, one can also view both sayings, 'not knowing...' and 'let the wind..' as exhortations to trust others: by allowing them to take you somewhere, you repose intimate trust in them.
The day after reflecting on 'Let the wind carry you', NP took A and me to an event by an NGO called 'Reap Benefits' called 'Solvecon'. We did not know the agenda of the event, we just went along. We prepared to give an AMA talk to young adults, but it got cancelled. A and I instead roamed the stalls, learning more about a voluntary organization called 'Broseph foundation' which is doing great work to make urban bengaluru better for its citizens. I felt happy that such an org existed, doing such great work for the common man. Through the vist, I also got to see 'PESIT' college- one of the famous colleges of BLR I'd heard about but never been to.
We trusted NP and went along, without knowing really what would happen; and when the original plan got cancelled, we let the wind carry us. And had a good time. Yet again, the same perspective played out in a different context, this time by theory meeting practice. Dots joining backwards, as Steve Jobs referred to it, produce moments of beauty.
In meditation and and spirituality, there is a lot of talk of 'non duality', referring to how meditation journeys instill the feeling that a person is physically not separate from the society, the earth, the elements and cosmos. It often comes out in sports, where you experience 'aha moments' of not being just an individual, but a unit, a team, working together towards the goal of victory.
I always thought of this non-duality manifesting itself in physical terms : how the physical identity of 'I' fades into background. There's something to be said about 'non duality' of insight and experience. Different ideas tying together, dots joining backwards. Like in the two instances mentioned in this post: 'Not knowing is intimate' linking to 'The name of the bird' and 'Let the wind carry you' linking to the Reap benefits visit. So, good ol' non-duality, showed up last week for me, in another way. Non-duality of insight and experience.
I meditate using an app called 'The Way' which is a series of progressive meditation sessions painstakingly created by Zen Master Henry Shukman. I've meditated 1931 minutes so far in a little over a year - something that I'm proud of. 'The Way' is organized in the form of a hike; the biggest level of organization is 'Trails' such as Mindfulness, Support and Flow; each trail has 6-7 'Retreats' on specific sub-topics, and within each retreat there are 6-7 meditation sessions. Trails -> Retreats -> Sessions. Retreat makes it sound like welcoming base camps on the hike, while the session itself is the exploration of the areas around the base camp.
Last week, I was in the middle of the Trail called 'Wild World of Koans'. Koans are pithy and sometimes confusing sayings which enable and implore reflections on reality and the human condition. In the trail, the first retreat is on the Koan 'Not knowing is intimate'. Once we define something, we lose some sense of wonder around it. We relegate it to the familiar. Familiary breeds contempt, no?
It seems a different way to state one of my favorite insights from Indian philosopher J Krishnamurti, which I came across a year ago. He said: 'The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again'.
Bingo, it's the same idea! J Krishnamurti's insight parallels the one from Henry Shukman in the app. I love these moments, when some insight that I resonated with deeply, comes at me differently in another context and another time.
In the same retreat, one of the sessions was a different perspective of 'Not knowing is intimate'; it was called: 'Let the wind carry you'. I reflected, one can also view both sayings, 'not knowing...' and 'let the wind..' as exhortations to trust others: by allowing them to take you somewhere, you repose intimate trust in them.
The day after reflecting on 'Let the wind carry you', NP took A and me to an event by an NGO called 'Reap Benefits' called 'Solvecon'. We did not know the agenda of the event, we just went along. We prepared to give an AMA talk to young adults, but it got cancelled. A and I instead roamed the stalls, learning more about a voluntary organization called 'Broseph foundation' which is doing great work to make urban bengaluru better for its citizens. I felt happy that such an org existed, doing such great work for the common man. Through the vist, I also got to see 'PESIT' college- one of the famous colleges of BLR I'd heard about but never been to.
We trusted NP and went along, without knowing really what would happen; and when the original plan got cancelled, we let the wind carry us. And had a good time. Yet again, the same perspective played out in a different context, this time by theory meeting practice. Dots joining backwards, as Steve Jobs referred to it, produce moments of beauty.
In meditation and and spirituality, there is a lot of talk of 'non duality', referring to how meditation journeys instill the feeling that a person is physically not separate from the society, the earth, the elements and cosmos. It often comes out in sports, where you experience 'aha moments' of not being just an individual, but a unit, a team, working together towards the goal of victory.
I always thought of this non-duality manifesting itself in physical terms : how the physical identity of 'I' fades into background. There's something to be said about 'non duality' of insight and experience. Different ideas tying together, dots joining backwards. Like in the two instances mentioned in this post: 'Not knowing is intimate' linking to 'The name of the bird' and 'Let the wind carry you' linking to the Reap benefits visit. So, good ol' non-duality, showed up last week for me, in another way. Non-duality of insight and experience.
Labels: Musings
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