Advaita After Hours

On Vijayadashami, Rajesh Ramanathan and Narayanan take a ten-thousand-foot tour of the Upanishads. They cover Tat tvam asi, neti neti, the chariot of Katha, the two birds of Mundaka, the five koshas and witness consciousness. They also ask how ritual, practical living and the Bhagavad Gita fit into a lifelong spiritual journey.

Living in the present sounds simple—until worry about tomorrow and regret about yesterday get in the way. Rajesh Ramanathan, Narayanan, and Aishwarya explore how spiritual ideas, meditation, and everyday practice can help us return to the moment. Drawing inspiration from Swami Sarvapriyananda’s banana-peel story and Swami Ramanacharana Tirta’s lecture on creating space for spirituality, they reflect on Navratri, making plans without getting lost in the future, meeting discomfort with awareness, and making rituals meaningful.

In this reflective conversation, Rajesh Ramanathan and Narayanan explore the Vedantic idea of the “little I” and the “big I.” They unpack how ego creates the sense of being the doer, enjoyer, and sufferer—and how recognizing a deeper, shared consciousness can shift the way we respond to life.Through examples from teaching, family frustration, compassion, Rama’s humanity, and the pressure of expectations, they discuss how to live with emotions without becoming bound by them. The episode offers a practical meditation on self-awareness: meeting praise and criticism with steadiness, loosening comparison and validation-seeking, and learning to see actions without reducing people—or ourselves—to labels.

A single joke about “I am Brahman” opens into a practical conversation about Advaita, self-inquiry, and what it means to stop identifying with the wrong things. If you’ve ever repeated spiritual ideas without feeling them land, this discussion explores why that can happen—and what other approaches may help.

What can Hindu mythology reveal when we look beyond the surface of its stories? This conversation explores the symbolism behind Ganesha’s wisdom, Muruga’s search for knowledge, Ayyappa’s spiritual journey, and Hanuman’s forgotten strength. Along the way, we discuss the value of interpretation, the tension between tradition and changing circumstances, and how stories can become invitations for reflection rather than rules to follow blindly.