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Mindfulness: The Practice of Will Change You
Mindfulness: The Practice of Will Change You
MINDFULNESS
Will Change You
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• 66
• Male
• Caucasian
• Born in Canada
• Resident in USA
• Religion of origin: Protestant Christian
• College education
• Retired business man
• Practice of meditation: 11 years
meditation practice has been part of my life. I will say that, al-
though I have not always meditated faithfully, I have tried to
live a meaningful life. In my last sit I was wondering if maybe
the Dhamma found me.
• 58
• Female
• Vietnamese
• Buddhist
• BA in French literature
• Nun
• Practice of meditation: 23 years
W hen I was 35 years old I very deeply realized that all life
is suffering. I had never been interested in ‘conventional’
life, and I had no interest in getting married and having children.
From very early childhood I had liked spending time at our
monastery, which I frequently visited with my grandmother. I
always wanted to stay there and I was very sad when we had to
go back home.
However, we moved to a different town when I was about 8.
I immersed myself in school and play, and forgot all about reli-
gion. When I was 19 my mother became very ill and the Chinese
doctor said she would die. I went to our small shrine room to
pray, and I promised to become a nun if my mother survived.
She fully recovered, but I forgot all about my promise until many
years later. By this time I had seen a lot of suffering and had real-
ized that life was inherently unsatisfactory.
10 | The Practice Of MINDFULNESS Will Change You
• 26
• Male
• American
• Degree: Bachelor of Music
• Religion by birth: Roman Catholic
• Buddhist
• Practice of meditation: 4 years
ing to bed and, although I did not really understand what I was
doing, it felt very natural and enjoyable.
During high school my search for meaning in life became
a more conscious and directed undertaking. I was thirsting for
transcendental experiences that would expand my perception
and view of the world and reality. I came to seek this through
music and, for better or worse, the use of drugs. I had already
been playing guitar, trombone, and piano for a number of years,
but it was in high school that I really dove in. Sports soon fell by
the wayside as I immersed myself fully in music, especially gui-
tar. When that mixed with marijuana or psychedelics I started to
have the expanded mental states and mystical experiences I had
been searching for – or so I thought. It was a period of experi-
mentation, excitement and wonder. I really thought I had found
what I had been looking for.
This buzz carried over into college, at which point smoking
marijuana and cigarettes had already become a heavy addiction.
At the same time I was becoming a quite accomplished jazz gui-
tarist, playing with really good musicians professionally in Bos-
ton and New York. The drugs I was taking started losing their
initial awe-inspiring powers, which led me to drinking and more
serious drugs. Getting drunk and high became a daily necessity,
and by around the third year of college I was living the classic
romanticized lifestyle – sex, drugs, and rock and roll – except
for me it was sex, drugs, and jazz. I was living the life! All this
time I managed to keep up good social and family relations, and
I always made the dean’s list. For many years I was able to keep
all these overindulgences well hidden from my family and those
people that I did not think should know about them. In a sense I
was leading a double life.
The Practice Of MINDFULNESS Will Change You | 15
have simply looked like I was swinging from one extreme to the
other. On the other hand, they were clearly open to the possibil-
ity that it was actually helping me. My second retreat ended up
lasting for about two months. It was truly the beginning of a new
life. I was so inspired and found a completely new source of en-
ergy with which I threw myself wholeheartedly into the practice
and study of the Dhamma. By now I was utterly convinced that
I had found my path.
At the beginning of the next semester I returned to college to
complete my degree. It was a challenging time for me to try to
integrate my new lifestyle in a setting where until recently I had
lived such a destructive life. I was sharing a house with seven
other musicians, none of whom were meditators, and who often
rehearsed in the basement until late at night. Yet, my resolve to
stay sober and keep practicing was very strong and this situation
ended up being a really positive challenge. In those months, I
learned what it meant to take refuge in the Dhamma – it became
my base of security and balance and I developed a lot of grati-
tude for having been given such a wonderful tool for my life. I
sat for hours every day, often late into the night with this loud
music coming up from the basement. It was a difficult time but
also a time of rapid growth.
Since my graduation I have spent a lot of time living and
practicing in meditation centers in both America and Asia. In be-
tween retreats I have worked in education as a substitute teacher
and as a teacher’s aide working with children with disabilities.
I am very fortunate to have found the Dhamma before being
tied down to a career, because it has allowed me a lot of time to
do retreats and get a firm foundation in the practice. This was
18 | The Practice Of MINDFULNESS Will Change You
son, and patience seems to have been thrown out of the window.
Before I practiced mindfulness, I simply was swept away by this
fast pace of life. If things did not go according to schedule or
even if I had a long wait at a traffic light I would easily get very
agitated. Anytime I had to do anything that seemed to be a has-
sle, I would try to get it done as quickly as possible (and suffer
a lot of aversion in the process) so that I could get back to what
I wanted to do. I would usually fulfill all my responsibilities but
it was rarely done wholeheartedly because I just wanted them
out of the way quickly so that I could reward myself by getting
high. Anyone who has had an addiction will know the process
of craving and aversion and the stress and agitation that goes
along with it.
Meditation is teaching me to appreciate patience, a quality
that is very important on the spiritual path. This relatively small
understanding has effected a very big and positive change in my
life. I do not get agitated or angry as often as I used to and, when
I do, it is not as intense and does not last long. I have learned to
simply observe impatience when it is there, to not identify with
it, and then it usually dissipates much more easily. Developing
more patience has been a real blessing.
The last thing I want to mention is gratitude. Before I prac-
ticed Dhamma, I did not really feel gratitude for anything. This
is perhaps not entirely true but I certainly took a lot for granted,
and the sort of gratitude I had was pretty different from the grat-
itude I am talking about now. The Buddha said that the gift of
the Dhamma excels all other gifts. I feel this is true. I really feel
a deep sense of gratitude for being freely given such a precious
tool to use in my life. I am confident that I have found the path
The Practice Of MINDFULNESS Will Change You | 23
that leads to truth and liberation and this gives life a deep sense
of meaning, purpose, and direction amidst all the seemingly
trivial pursuits of the mundane world. The feeling of gratitude is
not just limited to Dhamma though. I have become more grateful
to my parents, my friends, my teachers, and to all the positive
forces working in my life. This type of heartfelt gratitude brings
immense happiness in itself. If I had received no other benefit
from meditation besides this sense of gratitude, it would still
have been worthwhile.
Vipassanā meditation is a meditation that is based on change
and so, naturally, my experience and understanding of the prac-
tice is something that is ever evolving and changing. Had I writ-
ten this a year ago or in a year from now, much of it might be
different. I have tried to represent truthfully what is meaning-
ful to me now and how meditation relates to my life. I hesitate
even to call it meditation anymore because this tends to catego-
rize it and calls up all sorts of preconceived notions and ideas
in people. I know that my own understanding and reasons for
practicing have changed quite dramatically over the years and I
imagine this process will continue. I no longer make a distinction
between my life and my practice, as the practice really permeates
every aspect of life. One of my teachers calls meditation an ‘art of
living.’ I like this very much.
I hope this account of my experience with mindfulness medi-
tation proves to be helpful and perhaps even inspiring to you.
If you already meditate, I wish you all the best and if you have
never tried meditation, I would like to encourage you to give it a
try. It is not something to be missed.
PROFILE
• 46
• Female
• Born in Asia
• Attended a Roman Catholic school
• Buddhist
• Resident in North America
• High school, university, and graduate studies
in North America
• Worked in both private and public sectors
in North America
• Practice of meditation: 6 years
• 45
• Male
• Chinese
• Buddhist
• Studied: Science
• Work experience: owner and manager
of a textile trading business
• Practice of meditation: started meditating at 13,
regular and intensive practice for the past 15 years
also started drinking and taking drugs more and more regularly.
So I kept going from one extreme to the other, from the wild
life ‘out there’ to the disciplined life in the monastery and back
again. When I was 20 years old my teacher wanted me to be-
come a permanent monk (bhikkhu) but I refused and ran away
– I found life at the monastery too boring in the long run.
Then, at 27, I had what you might call an early mid-life crisis.
I returned home from an 8-month stay at the monastery but for
some reason no longer enjoyed the worldly life. At this time, my
parents also told me not to return to university but to take over
the running of our family business instead.
Despite this new challenge, I never felt happy anymore and
was all the time very agitated. Life felt pointless, and I fell into
a deep depression. This was the third time in my life that I had
become very depressed: the first time I somehow snapped out of
it again for no apparent reason and the second time I became so
very angry at some stage that I managed to overcome the depres-
sion. This time was very different though, this time it lasted for
nearly three years. I became more and more depressed. Nothing
seemed to help. Taking drugs made me even more depressed,
and I neither had the will nor the energy to meditate. I spent
more and more time on my own, going to secluded spots in the
mountains or on the beach. I revisited many places where in the
past I had been happy, but that never made any difference to my
state of mind, it never uplifted my spirits. The depression simply
followed me wherever I went.
Finally, about half a year into the depression, I realized that
I could not escape it, that I needed to face it and try to work
with it. I wanted to find out why I was depressed. So I started
30 | The Practice Of MINDFULNESS Will Change You