Present Still

A few months ago, I came across a talk on YouTube by Dr.  Hyunsu  Jeon , a psychiatrist who is also a Buddhist practitioner. He described a moment when a patient asked him a simple question. “Doctor, are you happy?” He said he wasn’t sure whether he was happy, but he wasn’t suffering. It was an unexpected answer, and it has stayed with me ever since. We treat happiness as one of life’s most important values.  “Are you happy?”  “You’re happy, right?”  “I just want you to be happy.”  These questions come up in everyday conversation all the time. We tend to think that happiness is what life is all about, and that we should keep striving for it. And yet, when I heard “I don’t know if I’m happy, but I’m not suffering,” something in me relaxed. So what would a life without suffering look like? Photo by the author Why doesn’t happiness last, even when we get what we want? More recently, I heard a teaching from the Korean monk Venerable Beopsang that touched ...

A nice home. A beautiful car. Investments and property. A healthy bank balance. By society’s standards, you might be considered wealthy. Yet you still feel that something is missing, and that you need to keep accumulating more. Photo by the author Even as your wealth grows, you may still feel anxious or trapped. Could it be that you’re measuring your wealth against other people’s standards rather than asking what matters to you? Having a certain amount of money and feeling that you have enough are not necessarily the same thing. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider what we mean when we call someone rich or poor. In a Korean essay, Venerable Wonbin asks a question that stayed with me: "Do you want to be objectively rich, or subjectively rich?" You can read Ven. Wonbin’s original essay in Korean [ here ]. You don’t have to be wealthy to relate to this question. What you own and what feels like enough to you are two different things. Why Do I Feel Anxious Even When I Have So Much? A...

Some days feel heavy when I keep telling myself that I have to do well, take responsibility, and see everything through . When that voice runs all day, the exhaustion can feel close to burnout. It often comes less from the work itself than from the weight the mind carries while doing it.  This thought is so familiar that we rarely notice it is a thought at all.  But is the "I" we take for granted, the "I" who does everything, actually real? Photo by the author A Question That Came Up During Sitting Meditation: Am I Really the One Breathing? A few days ago, I did a sitting meditation, watching my breath. At first, I deliberately placed my attention on the air moving in and out at the tip of my nose.  Then I noticed my breathing growing quieter and quieter. And then, for one very brief moment, the breath seemed to be breathing itself. I was startled.  It was as if I wasn’t making the breath happen. I kept watching the in-breath and out-breath until the session ended. ...

Why did yesterday's beautiful sky suddenly look sad today? The sky hasn't changed. So what has? Venerable Beopsang suggests something simple: before putting a name to what you’re feeling, pause and simply look. We tend to believe we’re seeing the world exactly as it is. But Ven. Beopsang explains that what we experience is already filtered through thought and judgment. At some point, those thoughts even give rise to the ideas of “me” and “mine.” The more we believe these thoughts are simply true, the more we end up suffering inside the world they've created. Is the World We See Really "As It Is"? Picture a clear blue sky with pretty clouds drifting by. One person stops in their tracks to take a photo. Another only looks up after noticing someone else staring at the sky. A third walks right past that same beautiful view without a second glance. It's the same sky. Yet everyone experiences it differently. Photo by the author I've had a similar experience myse...