Present Still

You’ve just been promoted from manager to senior manager. Colleagues are gathering around to congratulate you, and you’re smiling.  But somewhere in the back of your mind, a quieter thought is already forming: now I need to work even harder to make it to director .  The joy is real, yet you barely get to sit with it before your mind is racing ahead again.  If this feels familiar, you’re not alone. We achieve something we’ve wanted for a long time, and within days — sometimes hours — that same restless emptiness creeps back in. We chase the next thing to fill it, and the cycle repeats. Buddhism sees this pattern through the idea of dukkha . It’s often translated as “suffering,” but that word misses something crucial.  Dukkha points to a deeper, more persistent kind of dissatisfaction that runs underneath our lives, even when things are going well. There’s a verse in the Dhammapada that says, “Health is the greatest gain, contentment is the greatest wealth.”  At...

Is knowledge a medicine, or a poison?  Sometimes, knowing itself is the problem. A few days ago I watched a dharma talk by Venerable Wonbin , and one line has stayed with me ever since: "Stay at ease like a fool."  Without meaning to, I found myself repeating it under my breath — be at ease, be at ease, like a fool. We replay things constantly. Things that already happened, things that haven't happened yet. And somehow we can't let go of the thoughts they leave behind. But in his talk, Ven. Wonbin says something striking: 99.9 percent of what we think of as "problems" are actually fake — pure fiction we've built in our own minds.  Knowledge, he says, isn't always medicine. Sometimes it's poison, and we need to recognize that. Instead of clutching at what we think we know and picking it apart, what if we simply set it down — pretended, for a moment, not to know?  Just doing that can make the heart feel lighter almost instantly. Photo by the author...

Have you ever said something you shouldn't have, and regretted it—or felt embarrassed afterward? Not long ago, I went through exactly that. Before I even picked up the phone to call my niece, I told myself: don't say this . And yet, in the end, I said it anyway. The regret hit me hard, and I had to ask her for forgiveness. The moment the words were rising in me, I should have noticed that feeling first, and stopped. It doesn't even have to be something you swore not to say. Before any words leave your mouth, it helps to pause—just for a few seconds. Is this true? Is this actually helpful? And is now the right time to say it? That brief pause matters more than we think. Instead of reacting on impulse, driven by emotion, it opens a small gap — a moment where we can choose whether to speak or hold back. And as for what to examine in that moment, the Buddha left behind teachings on this, specific and clear, a very long time ago. Photo by the author Why We Keep Saying the Same T...

Anger can feel like a perfectly natural part of being human. Of course I'm angry — I'm only human, we tell ourselves. And then we go on wounding each other with the words we choose. The moment someone pokes at us, even a little, something in us bristles: Why would you provoke me when I wasn't bothering anyone?  Before we even decide to, the body has already shifted into attack mode, preparing to protect itself. Buddhism asks us to pause right there — before we lash out at the other person — and notice something first: anger has arisen . Photo by the author Here are seven teachings from Buddhism that can help us understand anger, and maybe change how we respond to it. 1. Fighting Anger with Anger Never Ends the Cycle ( Dhammapada , verse 5) The Dhammapada puts it simply: "Hatred is never appeased by hatred. Only by non-hatred is hatred appeased." This isn't a call to pretend nothing happened when someone wrongs us. It's closer to a warning: meeting anger...

A few days ago, I had plans to meet a friend.  She showed up about twenty minutes late, and while I waited, a thought popped into my head: This friend is always late. I'm always the one waiting. I hadn't even seen her yet, but I was already seeing her through an old memory. This happens to all of us. Before we even meet someone, or the moment we do, a thought fires off automatically: "Right, this is the person who always does that." Why can't we let go of an impression once we've formed it? Why do we keep assuming the person in front of us is the same person they were back then? Maybe the problem isn’t the other person.  Maybe I’ve been reacting to who I remember them to be, rather than to the person standing in front of me now. I recently came across a helpful trick. Whenever irritation or hurt rises up, whenever that "there they go again" feeling shows up, you pause and ask yourself one question: "Am I reacting to this person as they are righ...