Rising in the Fall

The leaves have turned red, yellow and orange, now lying in scattered piles along the road. As the fall term wraps up, this will be my final post of the year. Thanks for your attention—your energy and encouragement have been palpable. I wanted to connect, and felt writing was the most authentic way. Less views, less likes, less virality, but perhaps a little more heart. Slower and quieter, inviting more presence and depth. Life doesn’t always have to be led by analytics and reach. This space helps me turn inward and decode. I’m now working on a new book, Decoding Karma: The Personal Journals of a Monk-in Progress. Nothing is random and chance is a myth. Behind every occurrence is karma, the cosmic order which bridges our knowledge-gap through vivid, tailor-made lessons. Karma is life’s most persistent, powerful and profound teacher. But we need to stop and decode.

In the jam-packed library, students are decoding their learnings and finishing final papers. And me too. This fall, I travelled through many worlds: the Aztecs of Mesoamerica, the Afro-American civil rights movement, the Greco-Romans and their philosophers. I confronted the Holocaust in detail for the first time—it stirred many emotions. I moved from the rationalists to the empiricists, from the Stoics to the Cynics, from Kant to Kierkegaard, Saint Anselm to Socrates. I went from the Yoga Sūtras and the poetry of Kabir to the hymns of the Ṛg Veda and the terse codes of the Upaniṣads. We zoomed in and zoomed out—examining how these thinkers and traditions interrelate and contrast in worldview. What a world it is—and behind it is Kṛṣṇa, the flute-player, quietly orchestrating the grand drama. Now comes the real work: to distil the essential lessons and translate them into service. Knowledge must serve a noble cause in bringing spirituality to the world.

It’s December, darkness settles in earlier each evening, temperatures drop, the Harvard campus slowly empties, and another year in the material world draws to a close. Twenty-five years have elapsed since the turn of the millennium. That’s one whole generation! As I walked home, a school bus went by, the children’s faces pressed to the windows looking out at life. I saw their innocent faces and wondered what kind of world they will inherit. Everything is changing. And yet, as I walked on, it dawned on me: nothing is changing. They will grapple with the same questions, study the same philosophers, recount the same history. They’ll take all the lessons I did, and then face the same existential choices: how best to spend their time here. Amidst everything they’ll surely hear, I hope they will also hear the flute call.

I ended the term in the very same lecture hall where I began over three months ago—the one where Kṛṣṇa appeared on day one. For the final class, Professor Carrasco, with his powerful and inspiring presence, invited me to share reflections on how monks confront mortality. I spoke about JD—living theology always hits the spot. At the close of the lecture, he asked everyone to rise for a final meditation. Then, the flute-player appeared again (see below). He gets the first and last word.

Signing out—and looking forward to more adventures in 2026.