Gayathri Narayanan on Buddhist Practice: Mindfulness, Tantra, and the Direct Path

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/02/09

Gayathri Narayanan is the founder and meditation teacher at Myndtree, where she integrates mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom teachings into modern life. Since 1995, she has explored contemplative traditions including Advaita Vedanta, Theravada, Zen, and Dzogchen Buddhism, grounding her work in both disciplined practice and everyday application. Formerly a leader in healthcare technology, she transitioned from corporate life to full-time teaching and service. Trained in mindfulness meditation with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, and in nonviolent parenting through Echo Parenting & Education, Gayathri brings a secular, inclusive approach to mindfulness, parenting, and well-being for individuals, families, and organizations.

In this conversation, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Gayathri Narayanan, founder of Myndtree, about Buddhism’s origins, major schools, and lived practice. Narayanan clarifies Buddhism’s roots in the Indian subcontinent and outlines the Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana streams, emphasizing their shared foundations despite differing methods. She explains mindfulness of breath and body as the universal entry point, contrasts monastic renunciation with tantric inclusion, and reflects on her evolving daily practice across Advaita, Theravada, and Vajrayana traditions. Throughout, Narayanan frames awakening not as attainment, but as subtraction—letting go of false identities so compassion, clarity, and openness naturally emerge.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: About Buddhism, just to set the groundwork, what areas do you feel the most comfortable in and have expertise in, and how many schools of thought are there? Also, where did Buddhism start, to dispel the myth that it began in China?

Gayathri Narayanan: I will answer the last part first. Buddhism began in the Indian subcontinent. The Buddha was born in Lumbini (in present-day Nepal) and taught primarily across northern India, including the Gangetic plain (now Bihar and Uttar Pradesh). From there, the earliest Buddhist traditions developed in India and then spread early to Sri Lanka. That stream of Buddhism is what is called Theravada Buddhism, which preserves an early canon and early forms of practice. Over the centuries, Buddhism spread widely across Asia. Another primary stream is Mahayana Buddhism, which developed in India and later spread through Central and East Asia. In China, it developed distinctive forms, including Chan (known as Zen in Japan), and it spread onward to Korea and Japan. Another stream, Vajrayana (often understood as a later development within the Mahayana family), developed in India and spread strongly into Tibet and the Himalayan regions. There are these different streams and lineages of Buddhism. When one speaks of Mahayana Buddhism, it includes traditions such as Chan/Zen, and Vajrayana is commonly considered a further development within Mahayana. These traditions differ in emphasis and philosophical style, but all draw on the teachings attributed to the Buddha. That answers the question.

Jacobsen: What are the introductory practices that everyone has to go through to begin practicing Buddhism, not only as a set of beliefs, but as a life practice of well-being?

Narayanan: This is where the early Buddhist teachings are at their most straightforward and most precise. If you look at the text known as the Foundations for Mindfulness, called the Satipatthana Sutta, it lays out an obvious path. The Buddha called it the direct path to liberation. He outlines four foundations of mindfulness, beginning with the first: mindfulness of the body and the breath. Whenever someone is guiding a meditation, the first thing they do is ask people to take a few deep breaths and bring their awareness to breathing. That becomes the anchor for the practice. Mindfulness of breathing and mindfulness of the body, in terms of what is called interoception—the sensations that move through the body, such as tingling, warmth, and coolness—are brought into awareness. This is present-moment awareness of lived experience in the body, with the breath moving and sensations arising. That is the starting point and the foundational practice. From there, one moves to the second foundation of mindfulness: mindfulness of feeling tones, then mindfulness of the mind, and finally mindfulness of dhamma. There are four foundations laid out. The starting place is the body and the breath. That is where practice begins. 

Jacobsen: Given Buddhism’s long history of intellectual thought and its strange mix of precision and introspection, what are some of the offbeat paths it has taken since its founding? You mentioned that the Buddha referenced a direct path to enlightenment. Let us say some thinkers took that direct path and decided to go off-road—snaking along it, perhaps even veering far into the hills.

Narayanan: One example that comes to mind is Vajrayana Buddhism. I would classify it as fitting that description. It is often described as tantric Buddhism and represents a very different model of awakening. Vajrayana Buddhists will say this is a more direct path than the long, gradual road outlined in texts like the Satipatthana Sutta. They argue that it is even more direct.

When you look at Vajrayana Buddhism, it is very colourful. It includes deities, mantras, chanting, ritual practices, and elaborate visualizations. Some practices involve symbolic offerings of the body to deities. It is a highly esoteric tradition—very ornate, symbolically rich, and experiential—especially when contrasted with Theravada Buddhism, which emphasizes seated meditation, mindfulness, and sustained attention to the present moment. Vajrayana practices can be described as off the beaten track in terms of method, but practitioners also regard them as very powerful.

Jacobsen: Everyone should understand what tantra means. On one side, you have people who take vows of celibacy or chastity and proceed in their tradition through meditation and mindfulness. On another path, people are, to quote Will Smith, “Getting jiggy with it.” How do those taking vows of celibacy or chastity make the case for enlightenment through that path, while tantric practitioners argue that their approach is more direct? People are clearly making a marketing case for their camp, but what is that case?

Narayanan: When you read the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha is primarily addressing bhikkhus—monastics. The term bhikkhu refers to someone who lives by alms, meaning a monk who lives an austere life without possessions and relies on the community for food. In that sense, many early teachings are framed for monastic audiences.

At the same time, those teachings are understood to apply to everyone. When you read the Satipatthana Sutta, it addresses not only monks but also laypeople—those living with spouses, families, and ordinary social responsibilities. The practices are meant to be universal, even if the early emphasis was on monastic discipline, including celibacy.

It is also important to clarify that tantra is often misunderstood as being primarily about sex. While some tantric traditions do incorporate sexual symbolism or ritualized practices, tantra more broadly refers to methods that work with desire, embodiment, symbolism, and intense experiential states as part of the path. The distinction is not simply between celibacy and sexuality, but between different strategies for transforming human experience into a means of awakening.

Tantra is much more than that. It is one avenue of exploration, but what tantra really emphasizes is the affirmation of everything that is. It does not deny anything. It says, “yes—this, and this, and this.” All of it is sacred. All of it is an expression and manifestation of a single reality. There is nothing to be denied, nothing to run away from, nothing that is impure. The body, in all its forms, is perfect and beautiful, including sexuality. There is nothing outside of the sacred. Tantra is fundamentally affirming.

By contrast, monastic traditions tend to emphasize renunciation. They say, “not this,” because certain things are seen as distractions. The logic is that by removing distractions—such as sex and sensuality—one can arrive at the truth more directly. Both approaches are understood to lead to awakening, but they differ significantly in their methods and underlying premises.

There is room for both approaches. Even within Vajrayana traditions, there are monasteries and monks. Likewise, Theravada has long-standing monastic traditions. The difference lies primarily in emphasis: tantra emphasizes inclusion, while monastic renunciation emphasizes restraint.

Jacobsen: Are there practitioners or thinkers who practiced one path and then switched to the other, and later reflected on both?

Narayanan: I am not sure. I have only recently begun engaging with the Vajrayana tradition. Most of my practice and exposure have been within the Theravada tradition. I am thinking of Theravada teachers who later became Vajrayana teachers, but I cannot recall a name immediately.

One example of crossover in another direction is my teacher, Gil Fronsdal. He currently teaches primarily within the Theravada tradition, but he began in Zen. He trained in a Zen monastery, was ordained there, and received Dharma transmission in Zen before later focusing on Theravada teaching. So there has clearly been crossover, though I cannot immediately think of someone who moved specifically from Theravada to Vajrayana. I am sure such examples exist.

Jacobsen: So they exist. What do you find yourself needing to practice daily—a centring practice, a foundation—to live this as more than philosophy, as a life stance and a life practice?

Narayanan: I have a daily practice. My personal practice has evolved because my roots are in Advaita, in the Advaita tradition. I began with meditations taught by my guru and with chanting. There is also a tantric lineage within Indian spiritual traditions, so I practiced some of that as well. Later, I moved into mindfulness practices, and now I am engaging with Vajrayana, particularly Tibetan Buddhist practices. My practice has changed over time.

For me, as you said, it is a lived practice. Through quieting down, going inward, and investigating the causes of my suffering, I begin to look deeply into the nature of the mind. Questions such as “What is the mind?” “Who am I?” “What is my relationship with the world?” and “What is my relationship with my inner life?” become part of the practice itself.

As you become quiet, you start to see the details of your experience more clearly. That clarity informs the way you live, because you begin to see the causes of your suffering. You recognize, for example, that if you act in specific ways—such as yelling at your children—you will experience suffering later. You see the patterns of action and reaction more clearly because you are paying attention to your experience as you move through life.

At that point, practice is no longer limited to the cushion. It becomes a lived experiment. You begin to see how suffering leads to contraction—more fear, anxiety, and stress—and how love, compassion, and equanimity lead to expansion. There is a sense of openness and expansiveness that arises internally and then translates into how you interact with the world.

You start to observe both contraction and expansion, and you increasingly choose the more expansive states. Practice becomes applied and embodied. You grow in compassion and love.

I was telling my husband recently that when I speak with people now—even friends—and say goodbye, I often feel a natural impulse to say “I love you.” This was not something I used to experience. Of course, it is not always appropriate to say aloud, but the impulse itself is there. It feels like the heart is opening. That opening has been my experience of practice.

This is also why I feel a sense of urgency about sharing these teachings. They are deeply needed in the world right now. They are a kind of medicine—more people with open hearts, more capacity to include difference, dialogue, and disagreement without hatred or violence. There is a way to live with disagreement without harming one another, and practice offers a path toward that.

Because of that, I feel an intense urgency to share these teachings and to help people come to know and practice them.

Jacobsen: This one is a bit trickier, and it is critical—not of you or me—but of early practitioners. People often come to the philosophy of the Advaita tradition by reading about it before practicing. They absorb some of the philosophy, engage in some early practices, and believe they are reaching the tradition’s aim. Yet they are not. They think they are doing things correctly, but in reality, they may simply be breathing calmly. This becomes a mistaken self-identity of achievement.

It is like someone saying that one should have no attachments, while their attachment becomes the achievement itself. They think they have attained something, but that “attainment” is itself an attachment. It is a contradiction. What are some early signs of false consciousness in this process, where people believe there is a symmetry between the aim of the tradition and what they are doing, but they fundamentally misunderstand it?

Narayanan: This is a prevalent trap among spiritual seekers. What you are describing arises from the idea that there is a person who is seeking enlightenment or liberation. It is assumed to be a path, a destination, and someone who walks the path and reaches the destination. That entire structure is illusory.

You do not truly see that illusion until there is an experience of the dissolution of the separate self. In Advaita, much like in Christianity, there is an account of a fundamental error. In Christianity, this is expressed as original sin—Adam and Eve seeing themselves as separate from God. That experience of separation is the root problem. In Advaita, this is called avidya, or ignorance: the belief that one is individual. The delusion is the belief in a separate self.

All the practices and teachings are intended to reveal that there is no separation—that you are not separate from reality, but are inseparable from it. Once this is seen, it becomes clear that the path, the goal, and the seeker were all constructs. They were part of the illusion from the beginning. You were already complete and whole before you ever began the path.

From this perspective, no one becomes enlightened, because the one imagined to be separate never truly existed. In that sense, the entire structure is a myth. But you do not reach that understanding until you do. Until then, there is striving. You need to read more, practice more deeply, and sit in longer retreats. That striving itself becomes a hindrance.

As practice deepens, you begin to let go of all of that. You even let go of the idea that you are a seeker or a meditator. Those identities must also be released before there can be insight into what is sometimes called Buddha-nature or the emptiness of the self. The process is not one of accumulation, but of letting go.

I recently wrote about this using Michelangelo’s metaphor of the angel in the marble. He said he saw the angel in the stone before he began carving. The work was not about adding anything, but about removing what did not belong. In the same way, the spiritual path is a process of subtraction. Through that subtraction, wholeness, completeness, and perfection are revealed. That, ultimately, is the journey.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Gayathri.

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