Tillitonse - A Transformational Journey Together

  I caught up recently with an old friend — let’s call him  Krish  — one of those unusual people who somehow stay cheerful even when the world misbehaves. He’s a senior professional in the financial world, a man who deals daily with numbers, volatility, and boardroom storms… yet somehow always manages to find something funny in everything. As we talked about the usual highs, lows, and in-betweens, Krish shared something that instantly made me smile — and think.   “But they couldn’t prevent Jack from being happy.” He said one of his guiding philosophies comes from an old  song by The Who  called  Happy Jack. He quoted this line, with that trademark twinkle in his voice: “But they couldn’t prevent Jack from being happy.” And then a few more: “Happy Jack wasn’t old, but he was a man. He lived in the sand at the Isle of Man. The kids would all laugh as Jack played all day — But they couldn’t prevent Jack from being happy.” At first it sounds playful, ...

  🪷 Negation: The Art of Doing Less, Seeing More A reflection and response from the lens of Buddhist psychology ❓ The Question During a six-day Śamatha and Vipassanā retreat at the Buddhapada Retreat Centre in Kalimpong in September 2025, which focused on the Four Noble Truths , one idea quietly took root in my mind — the concept of negation . I began to notice that in Buddhist practice, the emphasis is not so much on achieving a particular state, but on removing what obscures it. The teacher spoke often of working on causes and conditions, not chasing outcomes. This left me pondering: “In Buddhism, is the path really less about striving toward something — like peace, calm, or enlightenment — and more about negating what blocks them? Because when I strive, there’s always an ‘I’ that wants to get somewhere. But when I work on removing what obscures clarity, the sense of ‘I’ itself seems to dissolve. How does this work psychologically? And how is this kind of doing d...