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 was old, battered, barely holding together.
Outside, life unfolded wildly—
villages that looked like markets,
cows and people sharing the same road,
massive trucks swinging past us with only inches to spare.

The driver was calm.
I was not.

I remember thinking:
My life could be taken at any second.

And in that moment, I whispered inside:

“I leave this to the Buddha.”

That was my first surrender.

---

The Second Cracking

Then came the meditation center.

Even though I arrived with an open heart—
even though I remembered Ajahn’s words,
“Let India be India”—
the first three nights broke me.

I had practiced for over eight years,
but this was the hardest ten-day course of my life.

The room was damp, cold, dusty.
My body ached.
My mind rebelled.

I judged the environment.
I judged the people.
I judged the center.

My sitting became hell.

But something shifted after the seventh day.

---

Seeing the Roots

I began to see the machinery of my own mind:

how it reaches,
how it clings,
how it believes it must hold on
to feel safe.

I remembered the Buddha’s First Noble Truth:

There is suffering.

Not as punishment.
Not as failure.
But as the simple truth of being human.

And slowly—
everything softened.

---

Letting Life Be

The rest of the journey became just that:
a journey.

Nothing disturbed me.
Not even a child begging on the street.

I gave.
But I did not cling.
I did not turn away.
I did not harden.

I simply allowed life to be as it was.

This is what Dhamma has been teaching me:

Not to escape life,
but to meet it with equanimity.

Suffering still arises.
Cold still hurts.
Fear still whispers.

But now I see—

I do not have to become it.

Sometimes, the greatest freedom
is not in changing the world,
but in seeing clearly,
and letting go.