What if You’re Not the Doer?

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Clenched stone fist surrounded by flowing golden energy and stars

The thing exhausting you may not be your workload, your family or your boss. It may be the belief that it all depends on you.

That’s the idea behind a line from the Ashtavakra Gita, an ancient Indian text:

“You have been bitten by the deadly black serpent of the ego and you therefore consider yourself as the doer. Drink the nectar of the faith that you are not the doer and be happy.”

Ouch. But think about it for a second.

The bite: “It’s all on me”

Most of us walk around with a quiet belief: I am the one making everything happen, so I’m the one to blame (or praise) for how it all turns out.

That belief is exhausting. It’s why you replay that awkward meeting at 2am. It’s why a bad review ruins your week. It’s why you grip your kids’ choices, your career, your relationships and your reputation like a drowning person gripping a rope.

That grip is attachment. And the strange part is that we’re rarely attached to the thing itself. We’re attached to what it says about us.

You’ve been told this for 2,500 years

Almost every wisdom tradition has spotted the same trap:

  • The Buddha said suffering comes from craving and clinging, from insisting life be different from how it is. The mystic Osho explored this in his talks on the Dhammapada, a collection of the Buddha’s sayings, and on the Heart Sutra, a short, ancient text on the idea that there is no solid, separate “you” to defend. See through that, and there is far less to cling to.
  • Epictetus, a Stoic who was born a slave, opened his handbook with a simple split: some things are up to us, and some are not. Peace comes from knowing which is which.
  • Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, reminded himself that he had power over his own mind, not over outside events.
  • Viktor Frankl, who survived Nazi concentration camps, observed that everything can be taken from a person except the freedom to choose their attitude.
  • Alan Watts put it playfully: the way to make sense of change is to move with it and join the dance.
  • Nisargadatta Maharaj, in I Am That, taught that the feeling of being a separate “doer” is just a mental habit. Life happens, and you are the awareness it happens in, not the one carrying it.
  • Eckhart Tolle, in The Power of Now, says most of our suffering comes from the mind’s running story about past and future, and that coming back to the present moment loosens its grip.

Different centuries and cultures, same message: you are less in control than you think, and that’s good news.

Hawkins: it’s about feelings, not facts

In Letting Go, psychiatrist David Hawkins says we don’t suffer because of events. We suffer because of the feelings we stuff down, fight or lash out with. Underneath those feelings, he says, are three big wants:

  1. Approval (“Like me.”)
  2. Control (“Do it my way.”)
  3. Security (“Keep me safe.”)

His fix is refreshingly simple. When a feeling shows up, don’t fix it, blame anyone or push it away. Just feel it, fully, until it passes. Then ask: Could I let go of the wanting?

“Not the doer” doesn’t mean “do nothing”

This is where people get nervous. If I’m not the doer, why bother?

You bother because letting go is not giving up. The Bhagavad Gita says to act fully but release your grip on the results. Do the work, love hard, show up, and stop demanding a guaranteed payoff.

And here’s the surprise: you usually perform better. Think of a tennis player choking on match point versus one who’s relaxed and in the zone. Fear of failing makes you clumsy. Let go of the outcome and you free up your energy for the task.

Letting go is also not the same as detaching from people. You can love someone deeply without needing them to behave a certain way so you can feel okay.

The nectar

The serpent’s venom says: everything depends on you.

The nectar says: you’re part of something bigger. Do your part, and let the rest go.

Attachment is a clenched fist. Letting go is an open hand. It can still hold things, but it doesn’t have to in order to be okay.

Your turn

You don’t need to rewire your whole life. Pick one thing you’ve been gripping this week, a deadline, a person, an opinion of you, and ask: Is this really mine to control? Then unclench, just a little.

-One Tusk supported by Claude

Understanding Brings Silence, Not Speech

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Empty armchair beside a small table with a lit candle

“Understanding brings silence, not speech”

It sounds backwards. Yet think of the wisest people you’ve known. Often they were the quietest in the room.

We talk to convince ourselves

When we half-understand something, we explain, argue and repeat. Much of that talk is for us: proof that we know. Real understanding settles that restlessness. There’s nothing left to prove.

Some things are bigger than words

Grief. Love. Awe. Anyone who has truly lived them knows that words fall short. Saying more would only make them smaller.

Even everyday things escape us. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked: “Describe the aroma of coffee. Why can’t it be done? Do we lack the words?”

Try it. Rich, warm, bitter, earthy… Every word circles the smell, but none of them is it. Yet you know that aroma instantly, the moment it reaches you. We can know something deeply and still be unable to say it.

Silence is a kind of care

When someone shares their pain, we rush to fix it. Understanding doesn’t rush. It listens. It stays.

An old truth

“Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.” So says the Tao Te Ching. Zen teachers and Christian mystics say the same.

Centuries later, Wittgenstein arrived at the same place: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Across ages and traditions, the deepest truths are met in stillness.

Try this

The next time you feel the urge to explain, correct or win, pause for one breath and ask:

Have I really understood yet?

That quiet isn’t empty. It’s full: settled, attentive and at peace.

-One Tusk supported by Claude

The Three Doors to Wisdom: Silence, Humility and Suffering

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Lantern beside a mossy stone path through an autumn forest pond

The path to wisdom, I have found, asks three things of us: silence, humility and suffering. Deepak Chopra arrives at the same three in his new book, Awakening in the Final Chapter, where wisdom is one of six qualities he sees deepening in life’s later years. Silence makes room to listen, humility reminds us there is always more to understand, and suffering, if we let it teach us, shows us something of ourselves (Chopra, 2026).

1. Silence

Not the absence of sound, but the willingness to stop the inner commentary of opinions, judgments and plans. Meditation trains exactly this: returning, again and again, to the still point beneath the chatter (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). In that stillness a luminous receptivity opens, and we begin to hear what the busy mind would miss.

2. Humility

Not performed modesty, but the honest recognition that the unknown vastly exceeds the known and every perspective is partial. The Vedantic neti, neti (“not this, not this”) warns us never to mistake a concept for the reality it points to (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.3.6). The map is not the territory (Korzybski, 1933); the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

The Tamil poet Avvaiyar put it more simply still:

கற்றது கைம்மண் அளவு, கல்லாதது உலகளவு

Kattrathu kaimman alavu, kallathathu ulagalavu

What we have learned is a handful of sand; what we have yet to learn is the size of the world.

3. Suffering

Not because pain is noble in itself; it is not. But loss, failure, illness and betrayal, if we don’t harden against them, can crack the persona and show us what is real.

Viktor Frankl, writing after the concentration camps, observed that when we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves (Frankl, 1946). Modern psychology has given this a name: post-traumatic growth, the positive change many people report after profound struggle (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004).

Suffering teaches us, at a level deeper than the intellect, that we are more than our circumstances, and more than our stories about our circumstances.

Three doors, one house

Silence lets us hear, humility lets us admit we have not yet understood, and suffering, met with an open heart, breaks the shell that keeps both out. Wisdom is less something we acquire than something we make room for.

References

  • Chopra, D. (2026). Awakening in the Final Chapter: Aging with Grace, Love, and Freedom. Deepak Chopra LLC.
  • Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever You Go, There You Are. Hyperion.
  • Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, trans. P. Olivelle (1996). Upaniṣads. Oxford World’s Classics.
  • Korzybski, A. (1933). Science and Sanity. Institute of General Semantics.
  • Frankl, V. E. (1946/2006). Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press.
  • Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18.
  • Avvaiyar. Kattrathu kaimman alavu, kallathathu ulagalavu. Traditional Tamil verse attributed to the poet Avvaiyar; English translation by the author.

–One Tusk supported by Claude

Useless Nourishment: Ashtavakra on Feeding the Mind

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“Useless nourishment is not only what you eat. Every meaningless word, opinion, and impression you consume feeds the mind. Ashtavakra calls you to drop this burden. When the unnecessary ends, revolution begins within.”

Dark foliage releasing leaves into a bright, glowing abstract landscape
Dark foliage dissolves into drifting leaves and radiant light, evoking renewal and freedom.

We are so careful about what we put into our bodies. Yet from the moment we wake, we feed our minds a steady diet of news, notifications, opinions and other people’s noise, and we rarely stop to ask whether any of it actually nourishes us.

The mind eats too

The Chandogya Upanishad (7.26.2) teaches that pure food leads to a pure mind. The Sanskrit word for food, āhāra, simply means ‘that which is taken in’, and Adi Shankara reminds us this includes everything we see and hear. In other words, the headline that unsettled us and the careless comment we keep replaying are all meals we have eaten, whether we meant to or not.

Why we feel so heavy

What we don’t need doesn’t disappear. Words keep echoing, borrowed opinions start to feel like our own, and the mind grows so restless that the moment things go quiet, we reach for our phones.

The sage Ashtavakra, teaching King Janaka, puts it simply: “If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free, and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound” (Ashtavakra Gita 1.11). The weight comes not from the world, but from what we take in and refuse to put down. And, anything we are holding on to, we can let go of.

The revolution is in letting go

We usually try to grow by adding more. Another course, another book, another answer. Ashtavakra invites us to do the opposite. “Don’t let the mind hold on to anything,” he says. “You are free by nature” (15.20).

This is the revolution within. Nothing dramatic happens on the outside. We simply stop ‘doing’ long enough to remember our ‘being’.

Try this

  1. Before you scroll, pause and ask, “Will this nourish me, or just fill me up?”
  2. Notice how you feel afterwards, and take note of what leaves you drained.
  3. Give yourself a few minutes each day with nothing coming in, and let the mind rest and digest.

Peace is already here, sitting quietly beneath the noise. Our work is simply to stop feeding the noise. When the unnecessary ends, the revolution begins within.

References

  1. Ashtavakra Gita, tr. John Richards, verses 1.11 and 15.20. realization.org
  2. Chandogya Upanishad 7.26.2, on purity of food (āhāra-śuddhi). Hindupedia
  3. Adi Shankara’s commentary, quoted in Swami Yatiswarananda, Meditation and Spiritual Life (Advaita Ashrama), p. 172. Hindu Blog

The opening quote is a modern reflection on Ashtavakra’s teaching rather than a verse from the text itself.

-One Tusk supported by Claude

Book of the Month – October 2026 :

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Awakening in the Final Chapter: Aging with Grace, Love, and Freedom  By Deepak Chopra

Awakening in the Final Chapter: Aging with Grace, Love, and Freedom Book Cover

Awakening in the Final Chapter is a deeply personal meditation on what it means to live fully in the face of impermanence. Drawing on a lifetime of inquiry into consciousness, spirituality, science, and human experience, Deepak Chopra reframes aging as an awakening into greater vitality, wisdom, love, beauty, creativity, and freedom. What many fear as an ending becomes, in these pages, an invitation to a more authentic and luminous way of being.

With warmth, humility, and insight, Chopra reflects on the lessons of nearly eighty years of life, exploring how presence transforms ordinary moments into sacred ones. Through personal stories, contemplative practices, and timeless spiritual teachings, he reveals that true fulfillment comes not from achievement or accumulation, but from deepening our relationship with ourselves, others, and the mystery of existence itself.

Ultimately, this book is a celebration of the enduring nature of consciousness and the extraordinary gift of being alive. It invites readers of every age to embrace life with greater wonder, gratitude, and courage, reminding us that the final chapter opens into life’s deepest meaning.

(Suggested by N.Satyendra)