I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. I want to reach out and touch the flame where the streets have no name.

We live in an over­pop­u­lated and over-consumed world, fac­ing an inevitable result of all our actions. But as with every other equa­tion that involves life and its mul­ti­ple, inter­de­pen­dent vari­ables, the solu­tion to our prob­lem is already inside it.

Often­times I’ve been asked to describe what a nat­ural devo­tion is com­pared to prac­tice found in insti­tu­tion­alised forms of Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism and their branches. In other words, I needed a good story peo­ple can imag­ine, take roles and iden­tify with. I finally got one, and that was — through karate.

There’s an old para­ble: one has become many. It comes from the old scrip­tures and wants to illus­trate an idea of how God cre­ated cos­mos and beings like us. But it doesn’t explain why exactly. We’re left with only some reli­gious and pre-rational assump­tions about it that don’t con­vince any­more. Today we may ask right­fully: what’s wrong in being just one?

Although endowed with a cul­tur­ally rich palette, devo­tional art of Gaudiya Vais­nav­ism has almost always been a ser­vant maid of its philo­soph­i­cal oeu­vre and a wider preach­ing mis­sion. How it can move on?

Nat­ural devo­tion can indeed be prac­ticed within Protes­tantism, Catholi­cism, Pagan­ism, New Age, Islam, Judaism, etc. The envi­ron­ment itself is not a deci­sive fac­tor as much as it is our inner sen­ti­ment, or emo­tional rapture.

The idea with devo­tional med­i­ta­tion and remem­brance is sim­i­lar to one prac­tised by great artists…

How does an artist, or say a philoso­pher, apply for a job? What would be his-her resume?