The Essays

The essays cluster into four kinds of terrain. New essays are added to these four kinds, the buckets themselves are stable. Any essay may sit in more than one; the placement below is where each one lives most naturally, with a small note where it also touches another bucket.

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The body, and what genuine health actually is

Essays about breath, movement, food, sleep, and the daily rhythm of the body, written against the industrial-wellness idea that health is something you buy. What genuine health looks like when it is not for sale.

• The Brightest Thing In The Body
• You Are Not Unfit. You Are Underfed.
• Charaka knew - Two thousand years before perimenopause had a word
• The Body That Outshines The Sun
• Upstream of the Lab Report
• The Universe Within Our Cells

Also touching Body: The morning I was told to feel my feet (primary in Self); Three Mantras, Three Planes (primary in Lineage); Generation Shaper (primary in Household); Your Morning Belongs To You (primary in Household).

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The self, and the traps of the modern self-project

Essays about how a person is currently being told to organise their inner life, the productivity culture, the optimisation culture, the endless questioning, and where the older tradition offers a different account of what a self is for.

• The Self that Must Win
• The Self That Must Be Chosen
• The Road After the Question
• The morning I was told to feel my feet
• The Four Rooms Of Talent
• The Fourth Room
• Before The World Claims You
• The Pit Stop Before The Blueprint
• The Three 3.0s
• Wants and Needs - What Diksha Did

Also touching Self: You Are Not Unfit. You Are Underfed. (primary in Body, the woman in the mirror).

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The household, and the widening circles of a life

Essays about what a life is actually built out of, the family, the work, the community, the world, and the responsibilities that run through those circles. Written from inside the householder’s ordinary Tuesday, not from a monastery.

• Why a second child began to feel too expensive
• Generation Shaper
• Oh Money In This Too
• Your Morning Belongs To You
• Of All The Things, He Chose That One
• The Chakyar Could Insult the King
• Young Businesses and AI
• No Bank Would Lend His Father Two Lakh Rupees

Also touching Household: The Self That Must Be Chosen (primary in Self, the widening-circles argument lands here too).

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The lineage, and what the tradition actually teaches

The quieter essays. Reports from inside the practice, the ashram, the Guru relationship, the small daily disciplines the tradition holds. Slower reading, less argument.

• The Rain Was Never the Problem
• Swamiji on Mantra
• The morning Alexander walked back to camp
• The Original Yoga Nidra
• Three Mantras, Three Planes
• The River And The Riverbed
• He Smiled Between Two Armies

Also touching Lineage: Wants and Needs - What Diksha Did (primary in Self, the diksha framing sits here too).

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