theseekingspirit

  In January 2025, I set out to read 25 books in 2025 (It had a a good ring to it!). Now in December, after having read the last page of book number 25, I feel a elated. Reading is not an easy endeavor in 2025. You have to resist the call of YouTube, Streaming channels, Cinema halls, Sports and Social engagements to stay the course.  From a humble book from a Zen Monk in January, to a humbling one on the the Cosmos, my reading journey was interesting.  I have shared summaries for each of the 25 books (they are also in chronological order). I have tried to capture the 'big idea' of the book and why is it worth your time.  I have also added a Netflix style 3 point summary, for those who want to grab and go... Book readers are a dying breed, and I am not sure how long we will be reading in the age of AI. If any of these inspire you to pick up a book in 2026 (and not let AI summarize it for you), please leave a comment below. Alternatively if you have read something tran...

“Soak In Ecstasy of Enlightenment” was a day-long program with Sadhguru, held on 20th Jan 2024 at ICC Sydney. It was a  attended by over 6000 people.  This is a personal account of my experiences during the event. Photo Courtesy - Isha Australia Sadhguru’s event in Sydney was a roller coaster of emotions that can hardly be put into words. How can one describe silence, stillness, emptiness and bliss? Yet, the heart says, write it all down! So, here I am, recounting the sequence of events that led up to some amazing and inexpressible moments. I write with the hope that the reader will get a glimpse of what I experienced, and in the process re-living it all over again! The Walkabout Sadhguru’s much anticipated event in Sydney was announced over 8 months ago, and I had booked early to secure a spot close to the dais. On the day of the event, I woke up early and reached the venue at 8:30 AM. I felt 'light as air', having subsisted mostly on the recommended diet o...

It has been two days since India made history at the Gabba, the fortress of Australian Cricket and we still have the hangover. Bloggers ,Youtubers, Cricketing legends, TV channels and even India's Cricketing rival Pakistan is waxing lyrical about the Gabba Test win and the series win by India. No doubt this is a historic achievement (it took 32 years for a team win against Australia at this iconic Cricketing ground). People may say that Cricket is just a sport, and this is just another win, but this win is special and very emotional. Stuff that causes a lasting hangover for billions of Indians… Like many of my friends, I had given up on Cricket. Too many T20's, and too much in-your face type of Cricket had jaded me. This win shook me out of my lethargy as I realized the enormity of this David vs Goliath story. In this story, it is not a plucky David who takes on the sluggish but fearsome Goliath. This is a David that is bruised, battered, written off, lampooned on social media,...

A few years ago, my Yoga practicing friend asked me why he should read the Yoga Sutras when so much modern information was available about Yoga. He was learning the āsanas from a teacher, and having heard about the Sutras from me asked me why does he need to learn a bunch of Sanskrit verses written more than 2000 years ago? My immediate answer to him that Sutra's are an "exercise for the mind" just as āsanas are the "exercise for the body" didn’t seem to satisfy him. I searched for better answers and came up with several arguments to counter all the busy people and sceptics. I hope one or more of these will resonate with you. Before I launch into the reasons, a brief history on the Sutras.  Yoga Sutras are 195 verses 1  (aphorisms to be precise) that were composed more than 2000 years ago by the sage Pata ñ jali. These Sanskrit verses, that essentially fit into two A4 pages, describe an entire philosophy of Yoga. The commentaries on these sutras written by s...

Rediscovering Pink Floyd 5 decades hence   Music Lovers will relate to this...   You are stuck in a traffic jam or on a long boring drive and trying to tune into a channel that is actually playing music and not ads and suddenly you hear an amazing piece of music. You latch onto the station, hoping against hope that the radio host has not yet announced the details of the song and the station is not going to play more ads. Until a few years ago you couldn’t do much about this, you either got lucky or that piece of music was lost to you until you heard it again and caught the host while he was announcing the artist and the band.  Smartphones and apps have finally brought us relief from these frustrations. On one such long road journey on the roads of Colorado, during the summer of 2015, I found myself in such a situation. I tuned into a radio station playing an amazing guitar solo. I scrambled to find the ‘sound hound’ app on my phone as I was driving and barely mana...