In Hindu mythology, there is an idea that sometimes the universe becomes too full.
Over time it gathers the weight of billions of human desires, habits, and egos. People
cling to things that should have ended long ago, and old systems keep running long after
they stop working. Slowly, everything becomes heavy and rigid—until nothing new can grow,
because nothing old is allowed to disappear. When things reach that point, mythology says
that Shiva begins the Tandava, his cosmic dance. This dance shakes the entire universe. Stars
fall from the sky. Oceans rise and swallow the land. Mountains crumble. Cities vanish.
Everything that once looked permanent breaks apart and returns to the dark,
formless space from which it came.From the outside, it sounds like the end of the world.
Total destruction. But in the myth, it’s a reset. A clearing of space so that life can begin again.
Hindu tradition explains the universe through three major forces, known as the Trimurti.
First there is Brahma, the creator, who brings things into existence. Then there is Vishnu,
the preserver, who keeps the world stable and running. And finally, there is Shiva,
the one responsible for ending things. But here, destruction is not simply violence or chaos,
it represents the natural process through which things dissolve when their time is over.
You see this pattern everywhere in life. A song ends in silence. A breath is followed
by an exhale. In the same way, every phase of life has to end before another one can begin.
Think about what would happen if nothing ever finished. If flowers never wilted,
fruit could never grow. If childhood never ended, adulthood could never begin. Endings
make space for change. Still, letting go is one of the hardest things we have to do.
Shiva shares the philosophy of Tantra with his wife Parvati. The word "Tantra" literally means
"tool" or "technique", teaching practical ways to understand life, offering methods that help
people let go of the past and reconnect with the natural flow of existence. In
this video we will be talking about how to let go and move on from the philosophy of Tantra.
1. Neti Neti Neti Neti is a
Sanskrit phrase that translates to "Not this, not that." This is the realization
that anything you can observe, anything you can describe, and anything you can lose - is not you.
There is a story of a seeker who approached a Tantric master, desperate to find his "True Self."
He began by listing his achievements: his vast wealth, his noble family lineage, and his sharp,
academic intellect. The master looked him in the eye and simply whispered: "Neti Neti." Not this,
not that. The man, confused, then tried the opposite. He confessed his darkest failures,
his paralyzing anxieties, and the sins he carried. The master’s expression didn't change: "Neti
Neti." The seeker became frustrated. "If I am not my success, and I am not my failure, then who
am I?" The master replied: "You are the one who is left when everything else is stripped away."
The lesson is most of our suffering comes from the fact that we have "glued" our
identity to temporary things. We think we are our bank accounts,
so when the market crashes, we feel like we are dying. We think we are our relationship status,
so when a break-up happens, we feel erased. When a relationship ends, for example, the reason
it hurts with such physical intensity isn't just because you’ve lost a person; it’s because you’ve
lost the version of yourself that existed only in their eyes. You have "fused" your identity with a
role, and now that the role is gone, you feel like you are being erased. By saying “not this” first,
you first negate the Role: when your mind screams that you are a "husband," a "protector," or a
"partner," you whisper Neti Neti - I am the one observing this role, but I am not the role itself.
Next, you negate the Future: you look at the mental movies of the trips you didn't take and
the house you didn't buy, and you realize these are just projections of the mind,
not the reality of the present moment. Finally, you negate the Emotion itself: you
feel the physical ache in your chest, but instead of saying "I am heartbroken," you realize you are
merely the witness of the sensation of heartbreak. By slowly peeling away these social masks and
psychological labels, you begin to see that the person you believed was “broken” was
never a fixed self. It was only a collection of temporary roles and identities. Over time,
you realize that many of the things you call “me” are simply labels that appear and
disappear throughout life. And as those labels begin to fall away, something quieter remains.
Not a title. Not a role. Not a story about the past.
Just the awareness that has been watching everything all along.
2. The Myth of Sati One of the most powerful
stories about attachment in Indian mythology is the story of Sati. Sati was the wife of Shiva
before Parvati. In the story, after a deep conflict with her father, she threw herself
into a fire and died. When Shiva learned what had happened, he was overwhelmed with grief.
Instead of accepting her death, he lifted her lifeless body from the fire and began
wandering across the universe with it in his arms. His sorrow became so intense that it
started to disturb the balance of the cosmos itself. Even though Shiva was one of the most
powerful beings in existence, he was unable to let go of something that had already ended
Sati’s body represents any part of your life that has officially ended, but you refuse to bury.
We often carry these "corpses" - the ghost of a failed business, the betrayal of a friend
from a decade ago, or a version of ourselves we’ve long outgrown. We think holding on is
“loyalty," but in reality it can become a burden that keeps us trapped in the past.
To save the world, Lord Vishnu followed Shiva and used his golden disc, the Sudarshana Chakra,
to cut Sati’s body into pieces, one by one. As the limbs fell to the earth,
Shiva’s burden physically lightened. He wasn't choosing to let go; the universe was forcing him
to let go. Once there was nothing left to carry, Shiva was forced to look at his empty hands. In
that emptiness, his "madness" dissolved, and he returned to Mount Kailash, where he
meditated and became the "Silent Witness" again. Imagine you spent 15 years building a career in
a specific industry, but that industry becomes obsolete. You refuse to let go. You sit at your
desk every day, obsessing over "how it used to be," and your mental health is spiraling.
You are wandering with a "dead career." Then, the company goes bankrupt, and you
are barred from the building. You are devastated. That bankruptcy is Vishnu’s Disc. * It cuts the
"corpse" of your old job away from you. You are forced to stop "carrying" that
identity because there is literally nothing left to hold onto.
Six months later, you find a new passion in a completely different field—one you
would have never seen if your hands were still full of the old "corpse."
In Tantra, the places where Sati’s body parts fell became the Shakti Peethas—some
of the most powerful spiritual centers in the tradition. The story carries a deeper message:
when something from the past finally falls away, the energy tied to it doesn’t disappear.
It changes form. Only when the last piece of Sati was gone could Shiva recognize her when she
returned in a new and stronger form as Parvati. For those unfamiliar with Hindu philosophy,
Hindus believe in the concept of Reincarnation - the idea that life doesn’t simply end,
but returns again in a new form. The lesson is simple:
you cannot step into the next chapter of your life while still holding on to the remains of
the old one. When something truly ends, it also makes space for something new to begin.
3. Identify with the Bhasma Bhasma, meaning sacred ash, and
identifying it means recognizing the part of you that cannot be destroyed.
In many images of Shiva, his body is covered with a thin layer of white ash and is often
described as sitting in the cremation grounds, the place where bodies are brought to be burned.
In these places, all the roles people carry during life disappear. Job titles, wealth,
social status, and reputation no longer matter there. The fire reduces everything
to the same simple truth - that eventually you will one day die, and none of the labels matter.
In the story of Sati, after her death and after Vishnu separated her body
so the universe could return to balance, something remained behind - the ash from
the fire. Instead of trying to hold on to the grief any longer, Shiva covered his
body with that ash. It was a reminder of what remains after everything else has burned away.
You can think about it in simple terms. Imagine a large piece of wood placed into a fire. Before the
fire, the wood has a clear form. It has weight, shape, and texture. But when the fire burns,
that form disappears. The wood turns into smoke and heat. What remains at the end is ash. The ash
cannot burn again. It has already passed through the fire. It is the final state of that material.
Most of us build our identities around "flammable" things: our physical appearance,
our career titles, or our current financial success. Because these things can be taken away
in a heartbeat, we live in constant, low-level fear. A job loss or a health crisis feels like
our entire identity is being incinerated. The teaching of Bhasma asks a question:
what part of you would remain even if those things disappeared?
If Neti Neti helps you recognize that you are not your job or your status. The lesson of the
ash goes one step further. It reminds you that even when those roles burn away, the experience
and strength you gained from them remain. For example, you might build a reputation
as a successful executive. If you see that title as your entire identity, you’re a flammable log.
Losing a job can feel like losing yourself. But if you identify with the inner qualities that
made you successful - your ability to adapt, your focus, your grit—then those qualities
are your Ash. They go with you wherever you go. They cannot be fired, and they cannot be stolen.
When a person understands this, they no longer feel the need to protect every
temporary role or identity, and when you stop protecting something, you let it go.
4. Stay in the Gap Recognizing the 'ash' within you
is an internal realization. How do you actually experience it when the world is crashing down
around you in real-time? You look for the Gap. In Tantra, the "Gap" is the silent space between
two things: the space between two breaths, the space between two thoughts, or the pause between
two heartbeats. Letting go is simply the act of sliding into the gap where nothing is happening.
When you face a massive failure, your mind usually goes into overdrive.
If a project you worked on for months collapses, or your partner tells you
it's over, your brain starts a loud, frantic narrative about how you aren't good enough
or how unfair the world is. This is where you use the three techniques of the Gap:
The Sudden Shock: Shiva explains that in a moment of extreme joy or sudden fear—like the
exact second you realize you’ve failed—the mind actually stops. For a tiny fraction of a second,
the ego's grip loosens because it doesn't know what to do yet. Most people rush to fill
that silence with panic. The Tantric does the opposite. You stay in that shock. You recognize
that the "Gap" created by the failure is actually an open door to pure awareness.
The Breath: In the middle of the crisis, you focus on the still point between the inhale
and the exhale. When you are in that pause, the attachment to "doing" or "fixing" vanishes. You
realize that for that one second, you aren't a "failure" or a "success." You are just a witness.
The Void: You visualize your mind as an empty room. The failure is just a piece of
furniture that was moved out. Instead of trying to rush in and buy something new to replace it,
you learn to appreciate the empty space. When the container is empty,
there is nothing for the "clinging" to stick to. Imagine you’re in a high-stakes meeting or a
social setting, and someone publicly calls out a massive flaw in your work or your character.
In that exact second, the "Shock" hits you. Your heart rate spikes, but your mind—just for
a split second—goes completely silent. Usually, we rush to fill that silence.
We immediately start making excuses, getting defensive, or thinking about how to save face.
We want to "fix" the discomfort. But if you practice the Gap, you do the opposite: You
stay in that immediate silence. You don't label the moment as a "disaster." You don't argue with
the person. You just reside in the space between the person you were, the one who felt secure,
and the person you are becoming, the one facing a new reality. In that silent gap,
the rejection hasn't actually touched you yet—it has only touched your social image.
By staying in that space, you begin to see that the reaction, the embarrassment, the need to
defend yourself—these all belong to the social identity you carry. But there is another part
of you quietly observing the entire scene. That observing awareness is not damaged by the moment.
Letting go isn’t something you do once - it’s something you do in every pause. Each moment
releases the last to make space for the next. A mistake or rejection is simply the space between
chapters. When you stop fearing the gap, the world loses its power to rattle you.
5. Release the "I-Maker" In Tantra, there is a specific psychological
term for the ego called Ahankara, which literally translates to the "I-Maker." It is a biological
mechanism in your brain whose only job is to create ownership. It takes a neutral object or a
person and glues the word "mine" to it. It is the narrator in your head that convinces you that your
identity is built out of the things you collect. The radical insight here is that you never
actually have to let go of the object - whether that’s a sum of money, a job, or a partner,
or a person. Instead, you have to let go of the internal story the I-Maker has built around it.
Tantra is built on the idea of Non-Dualism. It teaches that the entire universe is one single
field of energy, which they call Shiva. If everything is one, then there is technically
no "other" to lose. If you lose a large sum of money, that energy hasn't vanished from existence;
it has simply moved from your bank account to somewhere else. From the perspective of
the whole universe, nothing has been lost. It’s just energy changing its zip code.
To practice this, you have to make a conscious shift in your language. You stop saying,
"I am losing this," and you start realizing, "This energy is simply changing its state."
Take the most painful example: the death of a partner or a parent. The I-Maker starts a frantic,
painful narrative: "I am alone," "I have lost my half," "I cannot exist without them."
As we mentioned before, Hindus believe in the concept of Reincarnation. In this view,
death is not the disappearance of a person, but a transition of form. The body, which was made from
the elements of nature, returns to those same elements. But the deeper essence of a being—the
consciousness or the soul—is not believed to vanish. It simply continues its journey. From
this perspective, what feels like complete loss can also be seen as a change of form.
The suffering we feel is often just the friction between our desire to hold a person in one fixed,
familiar shape, and the universe’s natural requirement that they keep flowing.
Tantra asks you to look at your life like a weather pattern. You are the vast, open sky,
and your loved one was a beautiful, golden cloud passing through.
The sky doesn't become "less" when a cloud moves past the horizon.
The sky isn't "broken" because it’s clear again. The sky is the thing that allows the cloud
to exist in the first place. When you realize you are the Sky,
your Awareness and not the Cloud, the Relationship, the grief changes. You still
feel the quiet of their absence, but that absence doesn't threaten who you are. You realize that
you weren't "owning" that person; you were just the space where they got to happen for a while.
In the end, Letting go means letting go of the I-Maker. It is about realizing that while people,
money, status, love, come and go, the "you" that is watching it all remains untouched and whole.
And that’s our video - As ever, I’ve been Dan, you’ve been awesome
and if you enjoyed what you saw or found it helpful, why not check out our full philosophies
for life playlist? And for more videos to help you find success and happiness using
beautiful philosophical wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.