Then I asked, “Would you describe that one- to two-year period as suffering?” She said, “No...” then paused and added, “Yes, I was indeed suffering during those years.” We didn’t discuss what we each meant by “suffering” or why she paused before acknowledging it.

Fast forward a few weeks. Enter hot mush time.

Hot Mush Time

One night, I was in India, 12:30 hours away in a different time zone, a few hours past midnight. I was alerted to the news that the company I work for had decided to reduce its workforce by 30%. A big number. There was also a voluntary separation plan. My mind went numb and stayed that way for a few days. I was in India because my father was ill. He had a mild stroke. He was in physical therapy, with my mom as his primary caregiver, struggling hard to regain his lost mobility. Frail body, further weakened by the stroke, struggling to regain control — that’s suffering we quickly recognize. For me, it was a ripe condition for a mushy mind.

As the company announcement spread, there was widespread uncertainty and confusion at work. Being available to the team while in a different time zone was physically and mentally taxing. I did what my role required. I barely slept for the rest of that night and the following night. My body was already struggling with jet lag.

I wish I could write about all this as someone who had conquered such situations. Patterns learned over a lifetime kicked in. My mountain resisted what was happening. I felt numb as I went through the motions. My thoughts and emotions pulled in different directions, assessing, predicting, imagining, and scheming.

First, there was a sense of freedom and mild excitement. Maybe this is the time for me to gently step away from work and explore a different working identity. What would that look like? Am I ready? Are my finances in order? How might the situation pan out? What happens if I decide to stay, but my company does not want me there? That could be another forced outcome, but not much different from me choosing to exit. Just different timelines and different runways. My mountain was seeking vindication and assurances for its survival.

What if I get to stay? What about all the things that needed to be done? Who might stay? Who might leave? Who might be impacted? How can I help? How do I pick up the pieces and restitch? How do I earn the trust of those who remain? Why should they trust me? How do I drive clarity and purpose? What about my purpose and clarity? Is that still intact and valid? More questions that required more assessing, predicting, imagining, and scheming.

My mind was a mushy mixture of sadness, concern, and anxiety. I knew that I was suffering. I have dealt with much worse before. I could name and describe the phenomena in my head, and yet I was stuck in that mush for a few days. Why was it? What happened to all the wisdom I tucked on my mountain? Shouldn’t that awareness free me from that suffering? What was going on?

Appropriation — The Scenic Side

Remember how the mountain forms — slowly, with effort, experience, expertise, and accomplishments over time adding mass, weight, and shape? That’s what we refer to in good times, and when our status and stability are threatened. But what is the precise mechanism that helps such mass, weight, and shape accumulate? That’s essence building and appropriation.

Imagine your team’s accomplishment becoming your leadership success. You first see an accomplishment. You quietly explore your relationship with it. You notice all that you did in that situation. Those stories then become your contribution to that success. The more meaning you give them, the more real your contributions appear. They become part of your story. Notice the trick? You quietly feed the essence — events and actions become contributions — and then you claim them. That claiming is mamaṃkāra (mine-making). Your story solidifies. I boldly set an ambitious course for the team. I masterfully unblocked everything. I fought for resources. I hired the best. You feed the essence and then appropriate it. That “I did this” is ahaṃkāra (I-making). That story is now part of your mountain.

Consider the rapid growth your unit experienced as evidence of your perseverance and hard work in your narrative for your job interview. We executed hard. We beat our competitors. We kept winning. I made that happen. The same mechanism.

Or think of your kid’s accomplishment at school that makes you proud. That’s my kid. We gave him the best. We taught him everything right. We set him up for success. Look at him right now. That’s the same mechanism.

Appropriation is how the mountain is formed in the first place. It feels earned rather than imagined, with shape, weight, and history. It appears self-made — you got evidence. Our minds reflexively superimpose fixed, independent meanings onto our fluid experiences, as Nagarjuna warned. The mind quietly compresses messy, contingent, distributed events into clean, bounded things, giving Svabhava (intrinsic nature or essence), and then quietly appropriates them.

That’s the pretty and scenic side of the mountain. That’s the side you want others to see. That’s the side you refer to when you are challenged. That side affirms your existence and uniqueness in this world.

Appropriation — The Darker Side

Back to my situation. I was rapidly assessing the situation, predicting possibilities, and imagining options, constantly cross-checking with the mountain. What does this situation mean to me? What does it mean to the ideas I hold? What does it mean to the worries I protect?

It’s like building sandcastles — imagine a little at first, then more, then come back a bit later and imagine more, until it takes shape and feels real. I was predicting what might or might not happen. I was giving those sandcastles meaning and essence. I was rehearsing possibilities, like a broken record playing the same music in a loop. I was fabricating possibilities to keep my mountain — my identity — intact.

But I didn’t stop there. While fabricating those sandcastles, I also started annexing some of them, making them mine. Sadness became my sadness. The uncertainty became my uncertainty. The leadership challenge became my leadership challenge.

Just as you make your company’s success your success, my company’s decision to trim by 30% became my burden to carry. My doubt about what would happen to me, my worry about how to hold the team together, and my sadness about the situation all join those other failures and setbacks I have hidden on the other side of my mountain. They thus became part of my identity. Same process and same outcomes — scenic or dark, proud or sad.

This is the darker side of the mountain. That’s the side you and I hide — not just from each other, but also from ourselves. I must feel sad for the people being impacted, I told myself as I dug myself into the suffering.

The Hold

This system is self-reinforcing — essence feeds appropriation, appropriation feeds identity, identity feeds essence-building. No single entry or exit point. You know you are suffering, but there does not seem to be an exit. Suffering becomes something that the mind wants to continue. Here is who I am, this is what happened to me, and I must suffer in this situation — the mind continues to argue to protect that identity. That’s what my friend went through. That’s how people spend months and years grieving and carrying forward their traumas for decades.

I was threat analyzing and problem-solving in near real time as the situation unfolded. That got me into that mushy mixture of sadness, concern, and anxiety. I knew what was going on. I have written about parts of it. I had elegant metaphors for describing it — like the mountain, sandcastles, and clouds. Yet, I was stuck in that spiral. My awareness didn’t free me.

The two sides aren’t different in how they’re built. They are different in how you experience them. You experience the scenic side as your dignified visible identity. That’s how you like to appear to others. You claim it openly, you defend it knowingly. You proclaim it as your authenticity. But you experience the darker side differently — it’s not you, it was a mishap, it was something that happened to you, as if it were not your doing.

That’s the trap. That misunderstanding is what digs you deeper into suffering. Letting go of such suffering would mean letting go of the narratives it supported. That’s scary — a destabilizing situation calling for destabilizing the mountain?

Does time help? Time heals, they say. It appeared so in my friend’s case. But no. Time does not heal. Over time, the hold relaxes, not because the mind becomes wiser, but because it moves on to other ways of feeding essence and appropriation. The old suffering just got old. My friend had less identity investment in that particular situation now than in the past. It was still painful, but there was new fodder. The mind needs new fodder to keep reifying the mountain. Time is a false exit. But what’s the real exit?

The Real Exit

Back to my friend’s story. A day after our conversation, she told me what had happened. We spent almost two hours at the coffee table. She talked about the hurt, how she felt about that situation, and what she did to cope. I listened. After a bit, she said something in passing that stuck in my head: “When you renounce self, you renounce suffering.” I noted that sentence in my journal that day.

As I stand in the wreckage of the fresh situation, I see that sentence landing harder now than that day. What got me into the spiral was the appropriation. It has to dissolve, and the mountain has to go.

We are told to attain authenticity by being faithful to ourselves. There are leadership theories and self-help books to teach us how to be authentic. But there is no stored definition of that “being self” in our brains. Stories are all we’ve got, from the sandcastles to the mountains and the clouds.

It’s like turning a broken, smudgy pair of binoculars to your mountain — look at the peak, that is my perseverance, that waterfall is my kindness, that other peak is my courage. Every one of us got those. Those stories create vague reference points in our minds, and we turn to them when asked to describe our authentic selves or when our identities are threatened.

Remember A’s situation when she found out about B’s views of A’s actions? Like a well-balanced pendulum that keeps on going, her rumination swung back and forth between her views of her strengths and B’s weaknesses ... click ... clock .. click ... clock. I selflessly stepped in and worked extra hard to get the job done. I always care for others. ... B is incompetent. B is thankless. That rumination stopped only when we changed the question from “who got upset” to “what got upset,” and she realized that what got upset was her story about herself.

But there is more to this, and it can be unsettling.

Already Arrived

I once worked for a peculiar and difficult manager. I used to have vivid stories of him in my head. In one particular meeting, he kept prodding me about a decision I thought I was entitled to make. That went on for some time. I did not feel good about that episode. I felt like I was being bullied. Later in the weekend, I began journaling about it. I wrote in my journal, “Here is my story ...” and then circled the word “victim” in bold next to that paragraph. I picked up that “victim” metaphor from Shirzad Chamine’s popular self-help book, Positive Intelligence, which I read sometime before that episode. Naming what I was feeling that weekend as “victimhood” calmed me down.

I didn’t probe it harder then. I did not have to. That label “victim” on my lapel fortified my self-definition: I am genuine. I thought through my decision. I behaved according to my principles. Nothing needs to change. I’m packaged. I’m authentic.

No more probing was required. That was all that my mountain was seeking that weekend. It felt virtuous. Finding vindication, that weekend rumination ended. That’s the catch with authenticity. You are perfect as you are. Just show up accordingly — such a naive concept. You have already arrived. Nothing more to be done.

Jacob Golomb, an Israeli philosopher, characterized authenticity in In Search of Authenticity in 1995 as being faithful to scripts you have already written for yourself. David Hume, one of the most well-known 18th-century Western philosophers, was more brutal when he called the self a “bundle of perceptions” that we can creatively mould in any way we like. That bundle includes memories, thoughts, emotions, and impressions. Hume’s view in the 1700s is similar to the Yogācāra view of the mind, ālaya-vijñāna, a storehouse of seeds of accumulated past impressions and habits.

Authenticity is not the starting point of our behaviors. It is a post hoc label we use to explain and defend our behavior. Such labeling builds an immune system. It makes the mountain a hero. A quick etymological search shows that the word “authenticity” is derived from the Greek word “authentikos,” which means killer, murderer, acting on one’s own, and hence not answerable to anyone. Over centuries, that definition morphed into a virtue.

When authenticity is nothing but post hoc labeling, the situation has already paid the price. My “victim” lapel stopped me from probing further. A’s label kept her pendulum swinging. It can be, and should be, unsettling to come to terms with the realization that authenticity is labeling.

There is no pure inner self to be faithful to. So, the instruction to be authentic has no fixed referent. The belief that authenticity is good rests on a hope that there is an inner guide that uniquely defines each of us. There isn’t one.

A few weeks ago, on a flight from San Jose, I accidentally nudged the seat in front of me. I didn’t notice it immediately, but there was a pregnant woman in that seat. A male sitting next to her got upset and gave me a look. I returned a similar look and felt vindicated. But what happened to my self-definition of being kind? Instead, a stored default behavior, anger, defined my behavior. My authentic self was nowhere to be found.

Nowhere to be Found

Was I being inauthentic on the flight? Or was I being unaware? In the moment, returning a look showed strength and yielded vindication. The right response was an apology to the couple. For that, I needed to give up my scripts about what standing up for myself looks like. I needed to be present, instead. But my scripts obscured presence. Golomb pointed to Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, who mused about authenticity as “having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation.” Had I been present, I would have substituted my look with an apology.

Naming victimhood over a weekend years ago calmed me down. I felt vindicated, and my mountain was protected. I also felt understood — I had a label to describe myself in that situation. Had I probed harder, I would have discovered some root-cause stories and been curious about what my manager was seeing. I would have seen what I helped A see — that what got upset was the story about herself. Labeling myself prevented that insight.

The search for authenticity obscures our vision. The reference points we want to see on the mountain are our defensive mechanisms. Ah - there is your perseverance peak, your kindness waterfall, and your courage peak. You arrived, authentic and fully packaged. No probing required. Let this unsettling feeling stay for a while.

But B felt differently. When the review time came up, C approached B for feedback on A. Her feedback was lukewarm. B told C that A’s work was not as consequential as A believed and that A should have handled technical decisions differently. For B, A’s heroics were unnecessary, and B’s team felt that A forced herself into the situation. B and her team could have lived without A.

A hears about it from C. That hurts A. After all the time and effort I put in, how could B say such a thing? How ungrateful! Had I not offered to help and intervened, their project would have gone completely sideways. This is what I get in return? If she had nothing to say, at least she could shut her mouth - instead, I had to hear from C that my work was not good enough for them. So thought A.

A starts building her case. I had to clean up B’s mess. I had to work late in the evenings to finish things from B’s backlog. It was such a mess before I intervened. I rescued their project. She rehearses her arguments. She imagines her future confrontation. Rumination begins.

What got upset in this situation?​

What Actually Got Upset

A’s work for B’s project was real. The technical decisions that A made were real. The project did move. Neither B nor C would dispute any of these. What caused A’s rumination was the threat to her narrative.

A had built up a narrative about her involvement — she was the hero. B was unable to manage their project, and the situation required her intervention. When the need came up, she selflessly stepped in and worked extra hard to get the job done. A always cares for others and deserves to be seen as such. That is A’s version.

A built this narrative based on these and similar deeds she had done in the past for B and others. She had always been that way. She had examples — like medals on a wall. That narrative has been part of A’s mountain — she built it slowly over time. It feels solid, authentic, and indisputable. That helping nature has been a critical part of her identity, according to A.

When A heard of a different version from C, she began to ruminate about the situation. It was unsettling for A. In that rumination, she turned to her mountain for validation. The mountain rightfully validated her version — there are past stories like that to prove A’s helping nature. A has plenty of examples to give comfort. Yes, I’m right, thought A.

Yet, that validation was not enough for her. B’s narrative still bothered her.

She turns her attention to B — Such a mess. How could B manage a project like that — so many pending but critical decisions? What a mess it was before I intervened. It was awful. I have seen this before. B always struggled to manage her projects well. What I did was not good enough for B? How dare.

This counter-narrative began to settle A’s mind. A is right. B is incompetent. And ungrateful.

The Pattern

What got upset here was A’s story about herself. What she heard from C threatened her narrative. To fight back against that upset, A turns to her mountain for validation and builds a counter-narrative to find comfort. Once threatened, the mountain quickly builds its clouds.

This pattern is universal. Earlier in my career, I went through the same drama when my manager made someone else the lead on a project I did most of the work on. How could that manager not see my contribution? I ruminated for at least a week. On the day the lead role was announced, I got so disillusioned that I left work early and locked myself in a room at home. I turned to my mountain for comfort. My narrative that I did most of the work for that project helped me. I also had to build a counter-narrative about the manager and the person chosen as the lead. The manager was the villain, and that lead person was incompetent. I was the competent one — that counter-narrative comforted me. My mountain was defended.

It’s story versus story, fabrication versus fabrication. The internal drama continues till you feel vindicated. Rumination is the search for vindication. The mind eventually quiets down when it feels that the mountain is protected.

Buddhism has a precise name for this pattern: upādāna — attachment or clinging. Attachment forces defensive mechanisms — you had to be a hero again and make the others villains. In this process, the victim becomes the judge, who then reprimands the villains.

The vindication feels like the truth. It has a nice ending for A and, in the project lead situation, for me, although arriving after gut-churning rumination. A quick discussion by A with B would have revealed something that A had missed. A chat with my manager on what I could do to earn the lead role would have opened a different door. But the rumination got in the way.

The Chuckle

A has stories about herself, decorated in her mountain. B has stories, similarly adorning their mountain. B must have ruminated too, seeking validation and finding fault with A. B’s project was, of course, not in good shape. Then they formed clouded views of each other — B first, then A — clouding their judgment. They mirrored each other’s behaviors, each seeking vindication and defenses. This conflict is about view versus view and story versus story, not about who is right.

Hurt, A shared her story with me. It reminded me of situations when I was similarly hurt and ruminated. I knew who was upset. So I changed the question — What got upset?

That question helped A detach from the situation and see what I’m seeing. There are two mountains on the stage, each looking to defend its position. Each was upset and was seeking answers. Not feeling vindicated, each was checking whether their shape and mass were intact and looking for weaknesses in the other. That way of seeing the situation made her chuckle.

Next time, when you catch yourself hurt, defending, or protecting, consider the question: What got upset?

Mind is racing - I had seen this pattern before with this team. I need to fight back. They struggle with their deadlines and escalate in the last minute! Poor planning. Always. Now they are acting like bullies, covering up their problems. I don’t like this. They are wrong. A cloud forms in the head. Weapons up. Argue. Defend. Prove them wrong.

Or, pause and acknowledge? Where are they coming from? There is difficulty. Their work is critical. What was their situation? What are the challenges? Where did the process break down? What were they seeing that I have not seen so far? I ignore weapons. I ask questions and seek answers. We decide the next steps. War mode diffused.

Weapons up and prove yourself right? Or pause to see through the cloud to solve the problem? Most choose weapons. Few choose the pause. Why? The answer does not come from leadership training or self-help books. It comes from somewhere older.

It was 1925. Gandhi received an anonymous letter criticizing his satyāgraha. It was harsh and accusatory, blaming Gandhi for failure and cowardice. The accuser urged Gandhi to leave politics. What did Gandhi do? Get upset, ignore it, or angrily throw it away? Or loudly defend himself? None of those. He first published the letter in full in a newspaper, then praised the accuser’s love of the country, and calmly explained his approach. No bitterness. No insults. No criticism. Was that response spineless? Or mastery?

Take any interpersonal or team conflict. The pattern is the same: egos, disagreements, talking past each other, and bruised feelings. We hear about pausing and reframing in many self-help books to handle such situations. Still, we often forget such advice in the moment. Why is that?

Step back. Understand what we think happens versus what actually happens.

The obstacle runs deeper—way deeper—than we realize.

The Cloud That Clouds

Here is what we think is happening. We observe the situation, assess it objectively, judge, and then act according to that judgment.

I entered the room, saw it was an escalation, observed the frustration and blame, objectively assessed that they were wrong, and concluded that I had to argue for and defend my position. I had a strong case, based on facts, rational thought, and judgment.

Sound familiar? Most of us have been in that room. Most of us were equally certain.

But would a different person who observed the same situation come to the same conclusion? Likely not.

Let me share another work situation. It happened years ago. I was not initially involved in the situation, but I decided to intervene after witnessing pent-up friction among about a dozen individuals. Their work was connected, but the people were not. There had been years of mistrust, finger-pointing, passive aggression, and little cooperation.

I met with each of them individually to ask a few questions - what was happening and what they would like to see happen. I kept asking clarifying questions and taking notes. Each person shared stories about what was wrong. I compiled my notes and, without naming anyone, shared my summary with everyone in a group meeting. Everyone agreed. I then led a discussion to determine the next steps. Suspicion decreased, and trust increased. By the end of the meeting, everyone felt relieved upon realizing they had a clear path forward.

Any one of those dozen individuals could have easily done what I did. But they did not. Why not?

Before I stepped in, they all had stories about others in their minds. Each had a different story. They saw themselves as the protagonist. In their mind, a few others from the group were the antagonists. They provided examples. Each had logically constructed reasons for their actions toward the antagonists.

You have those antagonists, too. You know exactly who they are.

But I didn’t have an antagonist in my mind in that situation. All I saw was dysfunction. Their stories clouded their judgment. I was willing to see through those clouds.

But where do those clouds come from? Character flaws? Immaturity? Poor attitudes?

The Mountain is the Source

Check your mind. Is there a story about that colleague you don’t get along with? Check. That girl at the reception you’ve never spoken to? Check. The scuffle from three years ago, you still replay? Check. Your best friend? Check. Your loved ones? Check. That meeting where you were triumphant? Check. When you got fired? Check.

The mind keeps scores and scars. Every experience, every interaction, and every impression leaves a trace, like a bit of soil and rocks added to a mountain. The mass and shape of the mountain, which we proudly call “I,” is a slow and silent accumulation. The mountain is our identity.

The trouble with the mountain is that it builds clouds. Orographic lift - the meteorological process by which mountains force moist air upward until clouds form - isn’t just geography. It is psychology. Our past impressions form clouds that cloud our perception of what’s in front of us. This clouding is not just a metaphor. Our minds generate predictions based on accumulated experience and only update them when prediction errors are significant. Neuroscientists call this predictive processing. What we see is largely what we expect to see. Two people in the same room, looking at the same status slide or the same dysfunctional situation, will form different perceptions. Social psychologists call it construal.

But this idea is very old - nearly 1600 years ago, Yogācāra, a branch of Mahayana Buddhism, called the mind ālaya-vijñāna - a storehouse of seeds of accumulated past impressions and habits. These seeds remain dormant until the right conditions, at which point they ripen into our lived experiences. More recently, memory researchers arrived at the same conclusion through a different path: their idea is schemas, which are generalized patterns that our brains construct from incoming information and then automatically apply to new situations before conscious thought even begins.

Those dozen individuals weren’t clouded by character flaws. They were clouded by their mountains - years of accumulated impressions, interactions, and stories about each other. Each saw the situation differently, shaped by the nature of their mountains and the stories that shaped their clouds. I had the same impediment in my work situation. I had past impressions ready to cloud my view even before I looked at the status slide on the screen.

You do not see situations NEUTRALLY. You never have.

Our perception is already clouded before we do anything. This is a fundamental limitation of the mind — not a flaw, not a choice, just how it works. There is nothing you can do to eliminate it. But there is something you can do about your relationship with it. That is the practice.

The Practice

I walked into that room with clouds already formed. I saw weapons instead of, perhaps, a plea for help or a call to take responsibility. Each of the dozen individuals saw their own cloud, not each other.

That insight - that we don’t see situations neutrally - created the pause. That pause changed everything. I acknowledged the difficulty. I saw what they saw that I had missed. I asked questions and sought answers. We decided on the next steps without war. Squinting through the clouds, I could see what they saw. That seeing opened the door to reframe the situation.

That pause is rare, not because it is difficult, but because the insight behind it is almost never named. We see clouds in the situation, and not in our perception of the situation.

Gandhi learned it from the Gita and Tolstoy. He didn’t let clouds obscure his vision. People expected him to confront, but he acknowledged and engaged instead - whether it was when the anonymous accuser criticized him, when he gifted handmade leather sandals to General Smuts, who jailed Gandhi twice, or when he refused to see antagonists in the Hindu-Muslim conflicts of the 1940s.

The same wandering prediction-making mind that builds sandcastles also makes up the clouds. Controlling the mind from making sandcastles or clouds is a futile exercise. The trick is catching the cloud before it becomes a certainty.

The clouds still form. They always will. The next time you walk into a room, certain about the people in it, certain about who they are, what they want, why they’re wrong - that certainty is the cloud. You built it. You are walking into the room with it already formed. The insight helps me squint. It gets easier with practice. Weapons dissolve as I squint.​

It was a new company, a new role, and a new problem space filled with ambiguity. As a newcomer not yet used to that workplace’s culture, the most I saw was chaos and dysfunction. There was a big project ahead, and things were not going as planned. I jumped in with another colleague and started exploring options. One of those options appealed - it was an out-of-the-box idea, requiring a big change. If implemented, it would alter my role and my career path. I fell in love with that idea.

I didn’t stop at just pitching it. I imagined what would happen next. I played with, replayed, and extended the idea, and I started to love it even more. I pictured what I would do next, how I would show up, and how I would get the project back on track. I would be the new hero. It was going to be amazing. It would open a new career trajectory. The more I imagined, the more real it seemed, and the more I fell in love with it. Alternative ideas faded away. I was consumed by that idea.

That went on for a few weeks. Then, none of that happened. Things took a different turn. Another option became real. My beautiful sandcastle was washed away, just like that. It felt like a gut punch. A chill. A big defeat. The ego was hurt. I was left feeling bitterness over losing what I wanted, anger at how it turned out, and shame for my sandcastle, which was on full display for a few people before the waves washed it away. Bitterness. Anger. Shame. Those make up a new sandcastle made out of what was left. I struggled for a bit, bounced back, and went on to do what was needed, at least outwardly. It took months not to feel bitterness and resentment.

Sand Castles

That’s the nature of sand castles. I’m referring to those sand castles that our wandering prediction-making mind builds as it predicts future possibilities, like a new job prospect, a promotion, a new relationship, some extra pile of money, a new place, and so on. We don’t just perceive the world as it is; we perceive it in ways that appear useful to us. Our minds build sandcastles because they appear useful.

Initially, it was a small idea, just a thought—like a tiny mound of sand on the beach. It’s easy to miss such a passing thought, but then move more sand, build a small dome, and add some basic walls - the shape is clearer now. As the walls form, the castle begins to take shape. Sprinkle a little more sand to add structure. It starts to look real, with mass and form. Then begin to admire the work, walking around it and decorating it with shells and pebbles. It looks fantastic. It’s my creation. That’s how I built my sandcastle, and then I fell in love with it.

What was the error in this process? Was it the sandcastle or the relationship I built with my sandcastle? Building sandcastles is what the mind does during most of our wandering times for our survival. The error is the significance I attributed to my sandcastle. The error lies in the meaning and importance I gave to the sandcastle. It was my ignorance in recognizing that the sandcastle was just my thought construction. The Buddha realized it 2500 years ago. The result of not recognizing is grief. My grief was not proportional to the loss of an opportunity. It was proportional to the size of my sand castle and the time I spent entertaining it.

What did I do when my sandcastle got washed away? I turn to my mountain.

The Mountain

The mountain feels different from the sandcastle. It is built slowly with effort and experience and includes my education, career, the expertise gained over time, and prior accomplishments - all these feel more real and earned than imagined, unlike the sandcastle. The mountain has shape, weight, and history. It accumulated over time. There was effort involved. Every past accomplishment feels like yet another switchback. Past careers are boulders added for extra mass and shape. The mountain appears credible and dependable. I turned to the mountain because I knew it had the tools to deal with the situation. The mountain helped me pull myself together.

And yet, for all that solidity, the mountain too is a construction of the mind, just a slower one. This mountain includes the accumulated beliefs, principles, and preferences that appear to define me as a person. When someone asks me who I am, I don’t turn to the sandcastle - I turn to the mountain. My authenticity is right there encoded in that mountain. The mountain thus gives comfort, a sense of stability, and purpose. It acts as a reference point. It appears more useful and durable than the sand castle.

But mass and height don’t mean no grief. Where do you think the bitterness, hurt, and shame in my situation came from? They appeared because what happened in that situation didn’t agree with the mountain, my “self” definition. The wave washing off my sandcastle felt like a defeat — the self didn’t agree with it. The sandcastle’s collapse, on full display, was a source of shame because shame hurt the ego. The mountain is thus as much a source of grief as the love I had for the sandcastle.

It too can erode, and parts of it may crumble, albeit slowly. A change in economic circumstances, a war, bankruptcy, a company reorg, a layoff, or an unfortunate health challenge can upset the shape of that mountain before I realize it. Clinging to that mountain has the same effect as falling in love with the sandcastle.

Seeing it Clearly is a Practice

I still build sandcastles to stay curious, explore possibilities, and venture into unknown territories. But I know they are impermanent and depend entirely on external conditions. Waves are coming by? Build the castle elsewhere. Still difficult and imperfect to put into practice, but it becomes easier with practice. What used to take weeks to bounce back now takes hours or days.

I keep adding boulders to the mountain, too. The lessons learned, books read, and insights from experiences add more bulk to the mountain. As I age and add different experiences, the mountain takes a more complex shape. It is built upon decades of experience and effortful curation. It’s the source of identity. It’s hard to treat it as less important, even fully knowing that it too can be a source of grief, when it does not agree with situations. There are moments when I catch myself defending the mountain even as it causes the very pain I’m trying to understand.

The practice, then, applies to both — clearly seeing sandcastles and the mountain as sources of grief and mental discomfort. I have not mastered this. With a pause and some effort, I can now recognize the source of mental discomfort. It’s either the love for the sandcastles or the disagreement of the mountain with the situation. The pause makes space for alternative framings of the situation. That recognition alone — not the mastery, just the seeing — tells me what I am dealing with. Gut punches now land like soft blows.

Why do people like Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama wear childlike smiles, unlike most adults in our daily lives, who wear stress and tension on their faces? Didn’t they go through much harder times than most of us?

Why do some people respond to setbacks with more elegance than others? Why do some people stand still in front of obstacles or back off when others find ways to crack those obstacles? Haven’t we all read the same books and heard the same advice? Yet, when the moment arrives, why does most such advice disappear?

When something we don’t like happens, self-saboteurs like blame, victimhood, judgment, and helplessness kick in. Where do those come from? What needs to change?

While I decorate my public profile with things I have done, degrees accumulated, and accomplishments, what about all the situations where I got stuck with routine things or had setbacks — like when I didn’t get the role I wanted, when the promotion didn’t land, when I thought I was ready, when the job I secretly hoped for didn’t land, or when an organizational change ejected me out?

I read all the usual self-help books from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People to Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence to Carol Dweck’s Mindset to Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. But where was my growth mindset when I was stuck? Why didn’t I stay present and emotionally intelligent when I needed them most, say, after a work situation brought an unpleasant conflict, and I showed how emotionally unintelligent I could be?

What makes all such advice and help go invisible when I need it most? Why? Is there a more fundamental obstacle that I have not been seeing?

Such questions led me from my day job in software engineering leadership to the psychology of leadership, biographies of some leaders, the neuroscience literature, the Ubuntu philosophy, the Upanishads, and eventually to Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and Yogācāra philosophy. My instincts for finding answers grew stronger as I delved into the abstract aspects of Buddhism, such as Śūnyatā (emptiness), Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination), and Madhyamāpratipada (middle way).

At first, things made sense, but I began to notice a major disconnect between those abstract ideas and the real world. Buddha taught Pratītyasamutpāda, but how could I deny my free will and actions? Nāgārjuna implored Śūnyatā, yet nothing in front of us seems empty. As long as I am alive, healthy, and living comfortably in a suburban home, why bother with the suffering that Buddha spent so much of his life addressing?

I kept digging deeper. I began examining everyday situations and behaviors. It was uncomfortable at first. I started working on myself. That’s when the fog started to clear. It still takes effort and frequent squinting, but the fundamental obstacle began to reveal itself.

The fundamental obstacle is not in front of me, but it is what I have been holding and defending. Years ago, I felt bullied by someone. I labeled myself a victim and moved on. On reexamination, I now see a silent judge seeking vindication behind that victim.

It is also what you have been holding and defending. Check when you were upset and raised your finger at someone who cut in front of you in traffic. Was the same you reading this? How about the situation when someone hurt you so deeply that you took months to recover inside? Or think of the situation when you cut your ties with a dear friend because they offered a different point of view of yourself that you didn’t agree with.

It is the notion that we have a stable self that can be coached, optimized, and expressed authentically. Call it the mountain. It has accumulated over the years, feels solid, and does not give way easily. It feels credible and dependable. It feels worth holding on to and defending because we built it.

What if we release that hold? What if we examine how those mountains are formed to detect that hold? These days, my best days are when I see the hold and loosen it. This Substack is my attempt at exploring what you and I have been holding and defending.

Some of the material will be difficult at first. You might even find me delusional at times, but I urge your patience. There won’t be listicles of advice — there won’t be a need since the root issue is simpler. But the journey shall be unsettling.