For the past four weeks, my life has been a whirlwind of "shifting." I’ve been moving house, navigating the chaos of boxes, and reconnecting with family members I haven’t seen in nearly eight years. In the midst of this personal upheaval, I dove into the teachings of Alan Watts. What I found wasn't just "support"—it was a radical permission to stop taking the drama of my life so seriously.
The Dissolution of the "I"
We spend our lives building a fortress around the "I." Over the last decade of holding space for others, my own ego has traveled from a place of wanting to be seen to a point of falling flat into absolute emptiness—Shunyata.
Watts reminds us that the "I" is a hallucination. There is no separate controller steering the ship; there is only the universe experiencing itself. I realized that the masks I wear to fit in are just that—masks. When the "I" becomes too important, we become delusional. During my travels this month, meeting old colleagues who reminded me of the high-earning corporate path I left ten years ago, I felt that old "I" tugging at me. But something deeper held firm. The "I" has dissolved, leaving behind a space that is neither great nor small—just presence.
The Backwards Law and the Art of Wu Wei
One of the most profound shifts came from understanding the Backwards Law. We often strive for happiness or calm, but that very striving reinforces a sense of lack. Watts, through the lens of Taoism, points toward Wu Wei—the abandonment of the "controller" hallucination.
By dropping the friction of self-intervention, I found I could hold space for others more genuinely. It’s a humbling realization: enlightenment isn't a trophy to be won; it’s the simple, unrecognisable state of being human. As Watts honestly shared his own "flamboyant and argumentative" nature, I learned to honor myself exactly as I am, without the need for a "Guru" persona.
Playing the Game as a Bodhisattva
The most beautiful anchor this month was the concept of the Bodhisattva in the Mahayana tradition. To be a Bodhisattva is not to retreat from the world, but to engage with it fully, knowing it is a Lila—a divine game.
I’ve spent ten years in this work, sometimes doubting my path when compared to the "security" of the past. But Watts cleared the clouds. Whether I’m earning a certain amount or meeting family who remembers a different version of me, it’s all part of the play. The Bodhisattva’s aim is to take their understanding and spread it, which is the work I’ve chosen to embrace with all my heart and mind.
The Eternal Now
We often try to "capture" life through memories, clinging to the past and missing the actual experience. But life is a constant flux; our continuity is an illusion. This month taught me to come back to the skin, the air, and the present moment.
There is no "getting it" or "not getting it." There is only the harmony of opposites—the buying and the selling, the attachment and the detachment. I am choosing to play this game with more ease, more patience, and a lot less "me." The delusion has happened, the rebirth is here, and the game continues.
Just read this, remarkable post Sneha. I like the idea of dropping the Guru persona and just being. Which, in perhaps a very twisted way, brings me to a question, closely related to the Boddhisattva principle:
If one were to become a Guru, a Boddhisattva or any teacher or mentor, isnt that also a karmic debt one is paying off? Perhaps, we have over many ages wanted to become that, and now we have to do it. Did all the Oshos, Krishnamurthis, Watts- all of them- have to pay off their karmic debt by teaching?
Or is it that they are those whose karmic debts have all been completed and yet chose to stay back for the sake of liberating others? I know this is a common statement used to define a Boddhisattva. But, how does one know they are free from their debts? Even if there is complete dissolution of the ego and they are fully in the flow, how would we not know that the "flow" is after all a process of dissolving all the debts, all the ripples?
Perhaps complete debt clearance would mean Nirvana or the extinguishing (blown out) of the entity. And if any ripple remains, one is not in nirvana. So if at all they choose to stay back, doesn't that mean there is still something left?
Thank you Fabin and a very interesting inquiry.
What you call karmic debt, I would put across as the baggage of the lineage, and so much of it if we ever had an opportunity we can learn about our personal ancestral history from parents, grand parents, potential things we have embodied and heard from childhood. I only say this because in my experience of what I would call the absence of self the only understanding remained is the great vast neutraliser, no debt, no end, no begining.
Coming to the Bodhisatva vow, it still stems from the same place, your personal journey, life experience, call and action.
In the mystyal texts Goddess Kuan yin choses to stay back for liberating others only giving us the understanding that in doing so there is compassion. This drops the idea of debt itself. What has been debt but the baggage we have carried, we are free when it has no hold over us, and how do we know it's when what triggered doesn't anymore, it's a flow that already exists, we have come in the way by trying to access.
Complete debt clearance to me is only that, I open my heart to love again and again, it's a flowing process and a commitment that I choose beyond all odds. Because a Bodhisatva can choose to play this all needed is absolute awareness, hence all the texts about absolute awareness and practices exist.
Who are we to choose to stay back in a way, death happens, it's the same afterall, shunyata, merging with the energy field, dissolving the very question of birth, rebirth, next life.
This is all coming from the heart and in honest uninterrupted flow.
Thank you for asking.