Mitch Robbins and Muhyamānah: When Career Day Meets the Mundaka Upanishad
Is Billy Crystal unknowingly playing the Bewildered Bird? How the Career Day scene in City Slickers maps perfectly to ancient Sanskrit
City Slickers is one of my favorite movies. There's a scene early in the film—easily my favorite scene—that haunts me. Billy Crystal's character, Mitch Robbins, stands before his son's class for Career Day. He's a burnt-out radio ad salesman, and the kids are immediately confused.
"Are you a disc jockey?" one kid asks.
"No," Mitch sighs, "I'm not a disc jockey. I sell time… for commercials."
Another kid's hand shoots up: "So you decide which commercials to use and when?"
Mitch's face tightens. "Well… no, it's not right. It used to be right. Seems now that I even have to check with the station manager if I want to wipe my nose. The minute he took away my authority, I should have quit."
This confession of powerlessness is the real start of the speech. It's the sound of a man who has lost himself before he even gets to the part we all remember—a devastating chronicle that gets a knowing laugh from every adult in the audience:
- Your teens-20s? "You think you can do anything and you do. Your 20s are a blur."
- Your 30s? "You raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself: what happened to my 20s?"
- Your 40s? "You grow a little pot belly, you grow another chin, the music starts to get too loud..."
- Your 50s? "You'll have a minor surgery—you'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery."
- Your 60s? "You'll have a major surgery. The music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway."
- Your 70s? "You and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale. Start eating dinner at 2:00 in the afternoon. You have lunch around 10:00. Breakfast the night before. Spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate soft yogurt and muttering: 'how come the kids don't call? How come the kids don't call?'"
- Your 80s? "You'll have a major stroke. You end up babbling with some Jamaican nurse your wife can't stand but who you call Mama."
"Any questions?"
We laugh because it feels familiar. It's darkly comic, painfully accurate. But what if this isn't just comedy? What if Billy Crystal just performed a 3,000-year-old diagnosis?
The Two Birds: Samāne Vṛkṣe
The Mundaka Upanishad (3.1.1-2) offers a profound metaphor called Samāne Vṛkṣe—"The Two Birds on the Same Tree."
On the same tree (your life, your body) sit two birds:
The first bird (the jīva, the individual soul) frantically eats the fruits—some sweet, some bitter. It is completely absorbed in this tasting, this experiencing, this doing.
The second bird (the Īśa, the witnessing Self) sits higher, silent and radiant. It doesn't eat. It simply watches.
The Upanishad describes the first bird's state with devastating precision:
"Samāne vṛkṣe puruṣo nimagno / anīśayā śocati muhyamānaḥ"
"On the same tree, the person is immersed, grieving from powerlessness, bewildered."
Three Sanskrit terms. Three aspects of Mitch Robbins's entire monologue.
Anīśayā: Powerlessness
Anīśayā comes from an- (without) + īśa (lord, master, controller).
Mitch's exact words: "The minute he took away my authority, I should have quit."
This is anīśayā in modern corporate English. The loss of agency. The feeling of being controlled rather than controlling. The sense that life is happening to you rather than through you.
Mitch can't even wipe his nose without permission. His authority—his sense of being a doer, a decider—has been stripped away. And without that, he's adrift.
But here's what's profound: He knows he should have quit. He sees the problem clearly. But he didn't quit. Because the bewildered bird doesn't know how to stop eating. It only knows how to taste the next fruit, chase the next goal, grasp at the next thing that might restore the feeling of control.
The powerlessness isn't just about his boss. It's about time itself: "Your 20s are a blur... what happened to my 20s?"
He had no control over the passage of time. No control over his body's decline. No control over his children's choices. No control over the ultimate trajectory—from authority to dependency, from "deciding which commercials" to "babbling with a nurse you call Mama."
Anīśayā is the bewildered bird's fundamental condition.
Śocati: Grieving
Śocati comes from the root śuc—to grieve, to mourn, to lament. It's present tense, active voice: "he grieves."
Not "he grieved once." He is grieving. Continuously. Actively.
Every line of Mitch's speech is a lament:
- "Your 20s are a blur" = grief over lost time
- "What happened to my 20s?" = grief over unconsciousness
- "You grow a pot belly, another chin" = grief over the body's betrayal
- "The music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it" = grief over diminishment
- "How come the kids don't call?" = grief over isolation, irrelevance
- "Babbling with a nurse" = grief over the final loss of dignity
It's not one loss. It's a cascading series of losses, decade by decade, each one stripping away another layer of what he thought made him him.
And the bitter comedy is that he's warning the young man in the class. He's trying to say: "This is what's coming. This is the trajectory." But what he's really doing is grieving out loud.
The bewildered bird tastes fruit after fruit—some sweet (the power of your 20s, the purpose of raising a family), some bitter (the pot belly, the procedures, the silence from the kids)—and grieves because none of them provide lasting satisfaction.
The sweet fruits don't last. The bitter fruits hurt. And in between, time accelerates incomprehensibly.
Śocati is the soundtrack of the bewildered bird's life.
Muhyamānaḥ: The Bewildered One
Muhyamānaḥ comes from the root muh—to be confused, deluded, perplexed, bewildered.
It's a present passive participle: "the one being bewildered." Not someone who was once confused and figured it out. Someone who is actively, continuously in a state of bewilderment.
This is the heart of Mitch's monologue.
"Your 20s are a blur."
Why? Because he was so consumed by doing, experiencing, reacting that he never witnessed what was actually happening. The decade passed in unconsciousness.
"What happened to my 20s?"
Pure muhyamānaḥ. He was there. He lived through them. But he has no idea what happened. The bewilderment isn't philosophical—it's existential.
"Breakfast the night before."
Time itself becomes scrambled. The natural order—night, morning, breakfast—collapses. This is what happens when the reference point (the witnessing bird, the unchanging Self) is completely absent. Without that stable center, even basic temporal markers dissolve into confusion.
"Looking for the ultimate soft yogurt."
After 70 years, he's still searching. Still believing the next thing will satisfy. The goal has shrunk from career success and family pride to soft yogurt—but the pattern persists. The bewildered bird still thinks: "Maybe this fruit will be the one."
"How come the kids don't call? How come the kids don't call?"
The repeated question. The muttering. This is moha—delusion—in its purest form. He followed the script: worked hard, raised a family, made money. He did everything "right." So why isn't he happy? Why is he alone? Why didn't the fruits satisfy?
The bewildered bird cannot answer these questions because it cannot see the pattern. It's too close. Too absorbed. Too identified with the tasting.
"You end up babbling with some Jamaican nurse your wife can't stand but who you call Mama."
The final image of bewilderment. Identity dissolves. Time collapses. The authority he lost at the radio station, he never recovered. Now he's calling a stranger "Mama"—regressed, confused, unable to distinguish past from present, self from other.
Muhyamānaḥ from beginning to end.
The Mantra of the Bewildered Bird
When you put all three terms together, you get the complete picture:
"Anīśayā śocati muhyamānaḥ"
Powerless, grieving, bewildered.
This is Mitch Robbins. This is the first bird. This is the jīva trapped in experiencing without witnessing.
And here's what's stunning: Billy Crystal performs this state with such precision that it maps exactly—not approximately, not loosely, but exactly—onto the 3,000-year-old Sanskrit description.
He's not quoting the Upanishads. He's not trying to illustrate Vedanta. He's just being honest about what an unexamined life feels like.
And that honesty reveals something the ancient rishis knew: This state—anīśayā śocati muhyamānaḥ—isn't culture-specific. It isn't time-bound. It isn't unique to modern capitalism or ancient India.
It's the default human condition when we live as the first bird without knowing the second bird exists.
The Question the Speech Raises
Mitch ends with "Any questions?"
The young man is speechless.
But there IS a question—one Mitch himself never encountered:
"Is there another bird?"
The Upanishad says yes. Sitting on the same tree, on a higher branch, there's a second bird. It doesn't eat. It doesn't grieve. It doesn't get bewildered.
It just watches.
And the teaching—the part Mitch never heard—is this:
"Juṣṭaṁ yadā paśyaty anyam īśam asya mahimānam iti vīta-śokaḥ"
"When he beholds the other, the Lord, and His glory, he becomes free from sorrow."
Not through eating better fruits.
Not through getting the kids to call.
Not through keeping his authority or avoiding pot bellies or finding the ultimate soft yogurt.
Through beholding. Through turning the head. Through recognizing: "That peaceful observer—that's also me."
But Mitch doesn't know this. So he delivers his devastating diagnosis and moves on to the next thing, the next decade, the next fruit.
Anīśayā śocati muhyamānaḥ.
Powerless. Grieving. Bewildered.
The Perfection of the Parallel
What makes Billy Crystal's performance so powerful—and so haunting—is that it isn't trying to be spiritual. It isn't trying to teach anything. It's just honest.
And that honesty accidentally reveals the same truth the Mundaka Upanishad pointed to millennia ago:
When you live as the bewildered bird—absorbed in tasting, reacting, grasping—you will grieve.
Not because you're doing something wrong.
Not because you chose bad fruits.
But because fruits—sweet or bitter—cannot provide the lasting satisfaction you're seeking.
They're designed to be tasted and to pass.
That's their nature.
And if you don't know about the witnessing bird—if you never turn your head—then your entire life becomes Mitch's monologue:
A blur. A series of losses. A muttered question. A babbling end.
Anīśayā śocati muhyamānaḥ.
That's the diagnosis.
The Upanishad offers a cure.
But Mitch never heard it.
Note: The Mundaka Upanishad verse is 3.1.1-2. "Samāne vṛkṣe puruṣo nimagno / anīśayā śocati muhyamānaḥ" — "On the same tree, the person is immersed, grieving from powerlessness, bewildered."
