Mumuksha Centre

A quiet storm, a silent tornado, a cool flame – these seemingly self-contradictory yet evocative phrases are apt descriptions for B. Nagakumar, who runs the Mumuksha Centre for Transformation. Kumar, as he is affectionately known, is a study in contrasts. He is a person who loves solitude and silence, yet is an extremely enthralling person to be around. His presence is charged with a quiet intensity, yet people find it very relaxing to be with him. Most of all, the knowledge, skills and wisdom he has gained in his life have, without exception, been gained only through great hardship and intense striving, yet seem so simple and easy to understand when he teaches. In fact, the exceptional manner in which he imparts knowledge is paralleled only by the magnanimity with which he does so.
Kumar liberally narrates his own life experiences and the lessons he learnt from them in his teachings, and his life is certainly replete with experiences that brought out his inner strength, but were very, very difficult. Born into a traditional Brahmin family in 1967 in Mysore, Kumar was the youngest of five siblings. His family moved to a small village called Talkad soon after he was born. The first six years of Kumar’s life were spent in Talkad, after which his family moved back to Mysore. The earliest influence in his life was that of his grandfather, the late Pundit Narasimha Murthy, who was a well-known Ayurvedic physician in Mysore. Kumar spent a lot of time with his grandfather, and received some of his earliest lessons in Ayurveda from him. Pt. Murthy later renounced the world and became a monk of the Hindu order.
Kumar underwent his formal education in Mysore and completed it with a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering. And it was at this point that there came a distinct shift in his outlook towards life. A deep asceticism, a yearning for the spiritual life, which had always been present in his heart, now came to the fore, with the result that Kumar no longer derived any satisfaction from mundane pursuits. He tried several occupations over the following years, but none of them brought him a sense of fulfillment. Kumar’s priorities had undergone a change – rather than simply earn a living with a mundane job, he now wanted to understand the root of human misery and the way out of it. To this end, Kumar started practicing meditation and focusing more and more on the spiritual life. It was not easy going, and what kept Kumar going was his intense energy, which made him persevere in his practices in spite of encountering several hurdles. That was the time when he used to be alone for months, reading and meditating. There were many weeks when he never came out of his room in his house.