It started with planning a holiday.
A simple conversation with my wife about the itinerary — dates, logistics, accommodations. Nothing hostile, nothing unusual. But somewhere in the back-and-forth, a button was pushed. A flicker of annoyance surfaced.
Later that same week, I found myself in a different interaction — this time, judging someone rather harshly. They weren’t, in my view, being fully transparent. I mentally wrote them off. Then paused. Then asked:
What’s going on here?
These weren’t intense reactions. But they lingered longer than I expected.
And more than that, they bothered me — more than they used to.
That’s when the deeper question arose:
Why am I reacting to my reactions?
The Gap That Isn’t a Gap
In the past, I might have slipped into a familiar loop:
“I reacted. I shouldn’t have. Let me get better at not reacting.”
But something about that didn’t sit right.
Was I really upset at the reaction itself — or at the fact that I wasn’t “beyond” it?
This is where the more subtle layers of sādhanā start to show.
There is a gap between knowing and living. I’ve heard the teachings, reflected, even glimpsed moments of clarity.
And yet… here I was, bothered by trip planning.
But maybe the issue wasn’t the failure to “live Vedanta.”
Maybe it was the quiet, almost invisible sense of becoming:
“By now, I ought to be better.”
Which is — ironically — just another identity claim. Another script in the play.
The Elephant, the Mahout… and the Director?
Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor came to mind:
The elephant — emotional, subconscious, conditioned responses.
The mahout — rational mind, trying to steer, often in vain.
And behind them both… an inner critic, whispering:
“Where’s all that Vedanta when you need it?”
In both recent situations, the elephant moved first. The mahout justified.
But the real insight wasn’t in trying to control either. It came from seeing the whole scene — including the one trying to get better — as part of the same movie.
The Movie Within the Movie
When I was a child, watching movies in the theatre, during a particularly scary or emotional scene, I had a trick:
I’d glance at the exit signs, the rows of seats, the walls — just to remind myself it wasn’t real.
A subtle re-grounding.
That came back this week.
Maybe these worldly interactions — conversations, conflicts, judgments — are no different.
Part of the same projection. Real enough to take seriously… but not ultimately real.
And that’s the strange, liberating paradox:
The work isn’t about stopping the movie.
It’s about remembering it is one — without walking out of the theatre.
No Grand Resolution — Just a Realigned Stance
There’s no punchline here. No spiritual trophy.
I still get annoyed. Just last week, in fact.
But something’s shifting. Not in the outer reaction, but in the pressure to improve it.
That too is māyā.
And so the path — if it can even be called that — isn’t linear.
It’s not about mastering silence or perfecting equanimity.
It’s subtler.
It’s the slow dissolving of the need to “become.”
It’s awareness, not trying to fix the character — but seeing the character, the plot, the stage… and quietly smiling.
Simply Vedanta 