(why kishōtenketsu is a perfect design pattern for learning) — Abuden. My work as a facilitator of communities and processes implies the design and delivery of workshops. But how to design the perfect workshop? I have never found the ultimate answer to this. Honest. It’s trial and error — and it remains forever so. …

(together, narrative patterns, johakyū) — I have never sought to keep it a secret that I started my professional life on the humble lines of being a Sanskrit teacher. Studying love in a dead language has been a dedicated choice, a bold step taken by a somewhat otherworldly boy — but a choice that I…

(Shut Up and Write with Julien at Bukit Timah) — The craft If everybody can draw and everybody can paint, everybody can write. Perhaps you think this is something that only someone who can’t, would say. Because, as once Haresh Sharma has said with necessary gravitas (here): those who can’t, teach. Or you might be of the opinion that the fact that…

(no more self, nor more shoes) — We were twelve and I had sworn to get all twelve of us back down alive: six clients who had entrusted me with their fate and well-being, five sherpa, and me. We had tickets on a flight out of Lukla back to Kathmandu. We would be flying in 10 days…

(a short note on the practice of silence) — With my background in Buddhist studies and monasticism, it should come as no surprise that silence has always played an important role in my life and work. But who could have predicted that I would come to teach silence even in a business setting? Rest assured. I won’t be taking…

(going white and showing more) — Have you noticed? Are you just as excited as I am? Medium is bringing back the clean, minimal experience that readers and writers deserve. …

(tessellations: the magic of proximity and adjacency) — The special attraction of tessellations first hit me in the face when as a teenager I was in boarding school and rather than playing football and being with the boys I spent most of my time in the library of the abbey browsing books. It was on sunny Wednesday afternoons…

(and how it can change your life and work) — The cumbersome thing in life is that we are so interconnected in a hot boiling soup of phenomena, including ourselves and our selves (pun intended) and our environment, that the only way for us to give some kind of meaning to who we are and what we are doing here…

(no more water, no more moon) — As a human being of a somewhat advanced age, and one who has repeatedly relocated and started anew in life and career, I am supposed to be well-weathered, hardy, and easily responsive to change. But here it is: I am none of the above. Leaving still hurts. Letting go of…