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When Control Met Letting Go A reflection from India A trip to India made me realize something I had never fully seen before: I was a control freak in America. I planned everything. I calculated every move. Even my goodness was measured by outcomes. I practiced Buddhism diligently, yet I still negotiated with the future. Layla must attend an Ivy League school. I must meditate correctly. I must produce results. And yes— I did achieve many of the things I wanted. But it was in India that I finally saw the hidden cost of that control. The First Cracking It began in an Uber from Varanasi Airport to the Vipassana meditation center. Eight of us. Two tiny cars. Luggage stacked on the roof, jammed into every empty space. I sat squeezed in the middle between two beautiful meditator friends. My first question was automatic: “Where is the seatbelt?” My Vietnamese friend looked at me and laughed: “What seatbelt?” That was it. The moment I knew: I have entered another world. The car w...
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Vipassana meditation is all about sensation. We react to the world through our six sense doors — the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. What we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or think is first interpreted by the mind. That interpretation then creates a sensation in the body. When the sensation feels unpleasant, we call it pain. When it feels pleasant, we call it pleasure. But the pain or pleasure is not truly coming from the outside world — It is born from our reaction to what we experience. This is why the practice is not about changing what happens, But about observing the sensation without reacting. When we simply watch the sensation — without craving the pleasant, without resisting the unpleasant — We train the mind to stop reaching. And when we no longer reach for pleasure or push away pain, The mind begins to rest in equanimity. This is the art of letting go. This is the freedom Vipassana offers. Note: This is why the monk walking (tudong) barefoot - to feel more sensation.
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  The Results of the Meditation with My Daughter I can’t quite find the right word for what I felt—disappointed? Heartbroken? Neither fits exactly. For years, I had been holding onto one vision. In it, Layla would complete her first ten-day meditation course—the one I had carefully planned for her—and walk away transformed. She would be ready to step into the world of college life with a calm mind and a strong heart, to cross that invisible bridge into adulthood without her mother hovering nearby, constantly adjusting the sails to keep her ship steady. I imagined her as grounded, resilient, and self-assured. No more late-night visits to my room at 2 a.m., her eyes swollen from tears over a fight with a boyfriend or a falling-out with a friend. No more running to me for quick fixes to life’s messiness. From across the country in California, I wouldn’t be able to pick up the pieces for her anymore. For years, I’ve been her safety net. Last summer was proof: I cut my own meditation se...
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  Three Traditions, One Heart Last week, I woke up in the mountains of West Virginia at a serene Sri Lankan monastery. Around 4:30 a.m., I opened my cabin door to find the full moon glowing so brightly that its light streamed through the tall forest, turning the ground into a world of silver and shadow. It was breathtaking. A deer stood quietly at my front door, as if greeting me with gentle compassion. Then, something remarkable unfolded again this weekend. I found myself immersed in a completely different expression of Buddhism—the Mahayana tradition—at Chuang Yen Monastery, wrapped in the golden beauty of fall. The stillness, the architecture, and the chanting revealed another facet of the same timeless truth. I concluded the weekend in the warmth of my own Thai tradition, at a temple in upstate New York. Three paths, three traditions, yet one heart of Dhamma. Tomorrow, my journey continues at Thich Nhat Hanh’s Blue Cliff Monastery. I’m deeply looking forward to it—and to th...
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The Final Companion I have always felt a deep resonance when listening to Alan Watts—his words touch something true within me. In the same way, I am drawn to visiting patients who are nearing death. Strangely, sitting beside them brings me peace. When I hold their hands in silence, I feel they carry a knowledge that the rest of us cannot grasp—a closeness to the truth I am seeking, the truth of life itself. What will happen when the end comes? How will it feel? How do we prepare? Sitting with them gives me courage. It pushes me to step off the well-worn path, to move in a different direction, to keep searching for what is real. Because when the end comes, all we strive for—money, fame, recognition, even love—what meaning do they truly hold? Sitting there, holding her hand as it trembled violently, I could almost feel her fear. Was she afraid? Her husband, who had spent nearly a lifetime by her side, leaned close to the bed and whispered: “Honey, Ms. Connie is here to visit you. She br...
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My First Landing in America I arrived in America carrying both fear and comfort. Fear from the scars of refugee life, but comfort knowing my mother was beside me. As long as she was with us, we would be okay. Seattle was our first stop. After years of moving—from Laos, to Ubon camp, to Panatnikhom—suddenly I was standing inside an American hotel. One king-sized bed, a glowing television, lights so bright they almost erased the memory of dim kerosene lamps. My little brother and sister laughed and played, unaware of how extraordinary this moment was. My mother’s smile told me everything: her children were safe at last. That evening I watched my very first American movie on the big color screen. I couldn’t understand the words, but the story was clear: a woman was dying of cancer, her husband broken with grief. I cried. That was my first American night—tears and wonder, all in one. And then I noticed something miraculous. It was 9 p.m., yet outside the window, the world was still bright....
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  From Refugee to Mother: A Different Kind of Journey As a Lao refugee, I’ve often thought of my childhood in terms of loss—fleeing my country, arriving in a new land without choice, and growing up with the shadow of displacement. For years, I carried the story as something tragic, a misfortune etched into my past. But lately, as Layla prepares to leave for college, I’ve been seeing it differently. I’ve asked myself: Have I given her enough of the world before letting her go? I think I have. Together, we’ve wandered the French countryside and coastal towns, riding trains that stitched the land together. We’ve walked the streets of Thailand and Laos—despite her protests about the heat—each trip leaving quiet lessons along the road. In America, we’ve covered the Northeast, Southeast, and West Coast. She’s even flown alone to Morocco, learning what it’s like to navigate a foreign terminal airport on her own. And yet, when I hold her experiences up against mine, the contrast is st...
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  Time to Grow The work of the mind is not a one-time repair. It is not like fixing a broken chair and being done with it. It takes years, maybe a lifetime. I know that because I am living it. When I look back, I can divide my life into two distinct worlds: before I met the Dhamma, and after. The difference is astonishing. Before, I was sad, restless, and angry. Now, I am — most of the time — happy and peaceful. But Dhamma isn’t just about replacing sadness with happiness. It is more than that, and it progresses in phases and at its own time. In the first phase, those first few years of mindfulness, I felt as though I had been reborn. I was like a child again, noticing everything as if for the first time. I would run in the mornings and feel joy in every season: In summer, the deep green of the trees. In spring, the sweet smell of honeysuckle drifts in the air. In the fall, the bright orange and golden leaves were in my hands, and I carried them home like treasures. In w...
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  Fixing Ourselves First Life is amazing—but you have to work so hard for it. It does not come easily, especially for those of us who carry the weight of early-life trauma. I have seen a family break apart—siblings who no longer speak, parents whose choices have crossed into the criminal, and a son who cannot contain his hurt, unleashing it on the mother who is already so fragile. From the outside, their lives appear ordinary. But beneath that thin surface lies a storm—restless, volatile—like an atomic bomb waiting for the moment to erupt. What no one told me early in life is how sensitive our emotions really are—how easily they bruise, how long they carry the imprint of pain. If we want to give our children something better, it can’t just be the appearance of a good home, the polished shell society approves of. It has to be real—solid, concrete, a foundation that will hold steady no matter what storms come. And that begins with us, the parents. We cannot hand our children pea...
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The Illusion of Cure For years, I believed that family and children would fix me. I told myself, If I could just have a husband, a child, a home—then I would be happy. I thought love could act like a medicine, that it could erase the ache that had followed me since the camp. So I went searching. Desperately. The dating scene in Washington, D.C., looked glamorous on the outside—like something from an American movie—but in reality, it was an endless loop of noise, alcohol, and false promises. Party after party, night after night, the same faces drifting from one bar to another in Dupont Circle. Music pounding, laughter too loud, eyes scanning the room for something—or someone—that could fill the emptiness. We were all wasted. I went from one man to the next, trying to find the one , but no one stayed. Or maybe I was the one who couldn’t stay. The truth is, it all felt like an illusion—bright lights and empty rooms. Underneath it all, I was still so alone. So scared. Still waking from th...
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Lost By the time I reached my college years, things had begun to unravel. It was as if every decision I made went in the wrong direction, every action I took landed me somewhere I didn’t want to be. I was depressed almost all the time—an invisible heaviness I carried everywhere. I was skinny—too skinny, ninety-five-pound skinny—from an overactive thyroid. I had no health insurance, no money, and no sense of direction. I was working at a gas station, but I got fired because I was always late. I couldn’t even explain why. My life felt like a mess I couldn’t untangle. Nights were the worst. I couldn’t breathe—my nose was so congested I had to sleep with my mouth open. It went on for months. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t even think about going to a doctor. No one told me how. My sister didn’t know either. My mother, still living in Michigan with my stepfather and my younger siblings, didn’t speak English well enough to navigate the healthcare system—and she didn’t even know I had gradu...
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My First Year in America How can I forget? My first year in America felt like stepping into another world—one with no fences, no guards, no one to stop me from going where I wanted. I could walk, run, drive—forever if I wished. The open road stretched out like an invitation. After years behind barbed wire, that freedom felt almost unreal. I still remember my first snow. It was late at night, maybe three in the morning. My younger sister, younger brother, and I were huddled at the window in my mother’s bedroom—though really, it was all our bedroom. We all slept together in one cozy space, our breath fogging the glass as we pressed our faces close. Outside, the sky was letting down a gentle shower of white. The flakes floated silently under the streetlight, piling on the dark pavement, softening the world. My little brother’s smile was wide and bright as he watched it fall, as if magic had finally found its way to us. My mother was happy. We were happy. We didn’t have much—just a two...
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A Childhood Behind Barbed Wire The air in the Ubon Refugee Camp was always thick—thick with heat, with dust, with the smell of cooking fires and unwashed clothes. I grew up in that heaviness, in a place where the horizon was broken not by trees or rooftops, but by strands of rusted barbed wire. Our home was a small bamboo hut with a dirt floor. The roof leaked in the rainy season, and in the dry season, fine red dust coated everything—our blankets, our hair, even the rice we ate. Privacy didn’t exist. The walls were thin, and life was lived in full view of neighbors, family, and strangers. I never went to school. My classroom was the camp itself: learning how to carry water in heavy metal pails without spilling, how to cook rice over a wood fire, how to wait—always wait—for food rations, for aid workers, for news that might change our lives. We waited years. Some days, the waiting felt like suffocation. As a child, I didn’t have words for politics or displacement. All I knew was that m...
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A Pink Rose and the Seed of Hope I remember a few years ago, just before the pandemic. I was on my way to a meditation center in Texas, having signed up to serve the course. As a server, my role was to prepare food for the students—supporting them silently and mindfully while they undertook the inward journey of Vipassana meditation. At the arrival point, waiting for the shuttle, I noticed a young man—white, maybe in his early twenties. He was thin, with delicate features, almost too beautiful for this world. His face reminded me of a soft pink rose, but there was no light in his eyes. He looked hollow, fragile, like something that had already withered. He carried a sadness so deep, it seemed to cling to him like fog. Then I saw him take out a small syringe and, without much care or secrecy, inject himself in the lower part of his hip. It looked like a diabetic needle, but I couldn’t be sure. What I do know is how numb and lifeless he appeared—like a dried-up fish left on a sponge, lon...
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  Do I Know Grief? I have not known that kind of grief— not yet. But I have touched a pain that lives in silence. Ten days. No words, no eyes to meet, just the breath, and a body that would not let me flee. I sat still— two hours at a time, from before the sun rose until the stars returned. Day after day, the world fell away, and only the storm inside remained. My mind screamed. My heart pounded so loud I thought it would break open my chest. My legs burned as if carved from fire. My kidneys throbbed with such rage I feared they’d rip themselves free. There was no escape. The more I moved, the deeper it hurt. So I stayed. And I surrendered. To the muscle’s cry, the aching bones, the fire in my belly, and the ghosts of fear dancing in my spine. In that stillness, I met sorrow without story. I met the brokenness that doesn’t come from losing someone— but from losing everything you thought you were. And maybe, in that quiet devastation, I caught a glimpse of what it means to grieve.
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A Journey Through Fear and Freedom A few months ago, during my New Year retreat at Bhavana Society, I found myself walking alone through a dark forest path. It was around 9 p.m. The trail was silent. Still. Too still. It felt like a ghost could reach out and grab me at any moment. I clutched my flashlight, heart pounding, and focused on my breath: In… out… in… out… Then—something happened. The fear vanished. In its place came joy. Love. Comfort. Peace. And in that surreal stillness, I understood the mind. For days, I had been walking that path to attend group meditation— every morning at 4 a.m. and every night at 9 p.m. Fear always walked with me. But on the  fourth night , everything shifted. I didn’t just  think  about the mind. I  saw  it clearly—without words, without theory. This was insight, not intellect. The mind is not truth. It’s a processor. A machine. You give it input, it gives you output. A few seconds earlier, I had been terrified of the dark. Now...
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We Can't Outrun Our Own Pain Life has taught me one thing above all: if we want our children to grow up whole, we must first become whole ourselves. I spent years trying to outrun my own pain—through marriages, through my child, through the illusion of freedom, through the distractions of parties, nightlife, friends, and family. But no matter where I went, the storm followed me. Only when I began to face it—to sit with it, to watch it without running—did I start  to understand the way out.
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  Make A Vision  Make a vision for your life—one that lights up your heart. Write it down on a beautiful piece of paper. Keep it close. Look at it first thing in the morning. Let it guide you. Let it root you. Build your goals around that vision. And each morning, ask yourself: What will I do today to honor this vision? List the small steps, the daily actions— Let your life become a quiet devotion to what matters most. Four years ago, my vision was simple, but it meant everything: To help Layla heal, to nurture her mental health, and to surround her with love and friendship. I held that vision close—and I reached it. Now, my new vision is to allow myself the space, time, and freedom to explore my passion for the Dhamma. To walk deeper into truth. To live with awareness, peace, and compassion. To understand this mind. To be free.
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