In this chapter of 'Buddha in the Boardroom', the wisdom of yin and yang, anima and animus, Shiva and Shakti, meets the reality of burnout, corporate files overwhelming corporate life, and what it costs.
Because the river doesn’t stop flowing just because you’ve put a desk in front of it.
In every city tower, rivers run that you cannot see. They run under the concrete.
Some dam them up, pile stones under the water until the water forgets its own sound. Others remove the stones and let the current carry everyone further than they thought they could.
This is the story of the River and the Mountain. Sun and the Moon. The story of Shiv and Shakti. Anima and Animus. Yin and Yang.
And today, I want to bring this to your boardroom, your work floor, and your leadership principles.
But, a childhood memory first
I did not grow up with the pain that many of my female counterparts carried, the pain of being told that the male child mattered more, or that daughters existed as burdens to be married off, or that their lives would always be tethered to dependence. For me, that secondhand pain came later, through stories of others, through empathy, but it was not my origin. I don't say this to exclude, but to lean in from a secure place for all of us.
My Grandmother, Mira, is one of my earliest teachers in feminine and masculine consciousness, though I didn’t know to identify it that way at the time. My grandfather, a poet and vice principal, stood beside her while she ran schools of her own. She is fierce, rebellious in silence, but when she speaks, it is a thunderbolt, clear, loud, unshakable.
She walks with her hands behind her back, one fist clasped in the other. That fist is firm, not clenched in anger, but in certainty; held in the softer grip of the other hand.
And she's my North Star!
It’s why I adopted her first name as my last, as a commitment to embody everything she is. I realized I grew up in a matriarchy, and I know it is possible. That’s why some of you are tired of hearing patriarchy blamed for everything, like your dog ignoring you when you call him, the printer jamming during a client pitch, or the office thermostat being set to Arctic Tundra because “men run hot.”
Nani maintained her rigor and softness. Power naps after power meetings. Art after Assertion.
When not leading the schools, you can find her in the temple, not to sing but to serve; by cooking for the langars, serving hundreds without ceremonial theatre. She is not the kind of spiritual orchestrator who sits and sings endlessly before symbols.
When she met with Maharaj Ji, she spoke of the strategies for the events and schools, and then moved to the kitchen, solely leading a staff of 100, feeding the people in 1000's. If you ever overheard what Maharaj Ji and Nani spoke of, that would be a crash course in Karma Yoga and Business Chanakya sprinkled with only one spiritual guidance, "meditate and relax."
She, to me, is the goddess who chose to fall into form. A feminine and masculine mode of consciousness in full expression: strength without hardness, service without submission, clarity without cruelty. She cultivates this fierceness in everyone: students, teachers, and her workers.
Now, Cut To
[Scene] Your corporate boardroom.
A central male figure at the head of the table; gentle, calm, listening more than speaking, soft-spoken in a way that inspires trust. Women feel comfortable around him. Your favorite leader. Those best managers you can count! These aren’t figures from fairy tales. I’ve experienced them.
That’s flexibility. That’s softness. That’s how rivers flow. And that’s the path of least resistance mentioned in Zen. Or, as the Tao says: “The soft overcomes the hard; the yielding overcomes the strong.” And, “Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water, yet nothing can better overcome the hard and strong.”
In contrast, we have also witnessed leaders, regardless of gender, who are restless, controlling, and convinced they are always right. They grip the steering wheel of every conversation, control the narrative, and micromanage the measures. Secretly, they may be watching for guidance. Secretly, they may know their one-man show is failing. But still, they stick with the control.
I’m not saying masculine traits are bad; discipline, decisiveness, and assertiveness have their place. I have worked with wonderful female leaders; if you worked with them, you'd not go around giving fake trophies for Women's Month. Why? because they leaned in with the harmony and balance that moves mountains, and the gentle, caring flow at the same time.
When Selina Meyer said "man up!" maybe in the context of our times, many women have had to.
But over the past few years, my disillusionment has been crushing, and we all share that. I was recently having a conversation with my coach where I asked her, being very vulnerable, if my sense was correct that people keep parroting the advice to “find a mentor in your company” or “rely on your manager,” while in reality, everyone is in self-preservation mode right now. And that's where the phrase "Erasure of Feminine Consciousness" was born. What’s been taken from people, or what they’ve selfishly parted with, is care. Genuine care. Care that doesn’t arrive laced with self-interest. The hard "my way or the highway" policies demanding "MORE PRODUCTION" are ripping away what "creates in the first place"; the feminine. This isn't about the silent rage women are feeling underneath, screaming to have a "softer life." This is about a gradual suffering anyone could be heading towards. Even your favorite male manager or coworker.
Feminine Creates, Births, Nurtures! It's the Great Tao. The Mother of All.
The greatest minds have spoken of balance: yin and yang, anima and animus, Shiv and Shakti, as modes of consciousness, manifesting in the form and the formless. We all carry that within us.
Zen itself came from Taoism, and Taoism has always been about the Mother, the great, nurturing force that births and nourishes all things but doesn't laud it over. Which is why a highly evolved writer once told me, “You seek the schools of philosophy founded by men because they were seeking their own feminine modes of consciousness. They created these schools to find what is already in you,” and in all of us, all of us! In the entire existence.
She pointed me to Steve Jobs. I love that at one point in his life, he ran away to be an ascetic. Something we have in common. I love that he sat with nothing, searching for something unnamed. And somewhere on that path, he found Zen calligraphy, a practice that flowed like a river through his hands. That is what you hold now in your palm when you pick up an iPhone. That’s not just technology. That is the path of least resistance made into form. That is Zen in glass and aluminum. There are times when I am enjoying my mystical mind, simply observing everything, and it naturally comes up as feminine to me. In non-doing, non-forcing, non-striving: I witness Shiva and Shakti. The ancients had a way of saying it. They spoke of Purusha and Prakriti. The unmoving eternal, and the force that dances it into form.
Shiva without Shakti is pure stillness—vast, eternal, but silent. Shakti without Shiva is motion without center—beautiful, but unanchored. The masculine gives structure to the feminine’s creation; the feminine gives life to the masculine’s vision. And the cosmos is that dance.
Carl Jung said that each of us carries both the masculine and the feminine within. Our task isn’t to suppress one and magnify the other, but to integrate them, to lead with a consciousness that reflects the wholeness of being human. Which is why in many female-male bonds, they transcend gender once they both feel safe.
This is not a corporate theory. This is not a feminist movement. This is not an attack on patriarchy.
This is the story of rivers and mountains, of the wind shaping the stone. This is the story of you and I, when we remember to lead with both the sword and the open hand.
And until we do, the boardrooms will keep echoing, and the rivers will keep waiting to flow. Burnout will slowly chip away, not just driving the women away but anyone who's striving to be whole.
Mehar Mira
The Foolish Monk
Tat Twam Asi
