Fueling Thoughts

At an age when most rockers had burned out, overdosed, or taken permanent residency in rehab, the undisputed King of Heavy Metal burst in with his first solo mega-hit, “Holy Diver,” well into his mid-40s. I had been yelling along, with the starting demonic howl and all, since my teens without the faintest idea what Ronnie James Dio was singing about. Recently, I looked it up. Apparently, it’s about some transdimensional, chain swinging Batmanesque masked messianic figure taking a dive to save an ungrateful humanity. Sounds familiar. Now on a personal level, “Holy Diver” has lately come to mean something else. One, call her the manifestation of my Jungian Anima , the female archetype lurking in a man’s psyche, or simply the temptress, a Sky Dakini in the flesh luring me to take the plunge. This Diver, a Skydiver actually, is no fantasy. She is the latest YouTube demigoddess I stumbled upon. A striking, brown-haired, yet a decidedly unglamorous young woman who sits on a chai...

My father had a deeply irritating habit. Any subject I picked up, he had to follow. But first, he would patronize me - Astrology, Buddhism, tantra, Jung or whatever I was reading. Suddenly my books became his, and soon he the “expert.” The only things he didn’t chase me into were Taoism, motorcycle repair, and boat building. Our approaches differed. I collected books, skimmed, dropped them when bored, filing fragments away in the chaotic, multithreaded system of a dyslexic ADD brain. He, on the other hand, would first criticize the author, then read cover to cover, make notes, study further, and inevitably write an article—say, on Tibetan Buddhism’s effect on Shankardeva’s Vaishnav tradition. We rarely agreed: his pedantic stance was dogmatic, while I followed Lao Tzu—“the further one goes, the less one knows.” Still, one explanation of his stayed with me: the difference between a Bodhisattva and an Arhat - both are realized masters in their respective Buddhist traditions. A Bodhisatt...

I’ve found myself on an unplanned sabbatical due to factors completely beyond my control. Sudden caregiving responsibilities, and the absolute apathy toward my work from all quarters in my region (international interest and multiple media coverage be damned), have forced me to step back. Not to think or replan or reevaluate, but simply to flatline the monitor. Time now drifts by in household chores, repairs, and errands. Fixing a 50-year-old bungalow, a 20-year-old car, and then there’s the “Toilet of Doom.”  I’ll come to that later. First, a revelation made by myself to myself, in a dream last night. I was seated in  a large glassed office or a conference room when a smart, pretty young lady, purportedly a CA, who asked me, “What do you think is wrong with the startup sector?” I took out my notepad and drew a cross-section of a volcano. “Everyone,” I said, “wants a startup to grow into a massive volcano, impressive and loud, great for the optics and valuation. But no one ...