The power of not doing what I would’ve done easily.

🌱 Dharma #1: Breaking the karmic cycle through meditation

One of the biggest things I noticed after training Anapanasati for two straight months this year—at least four hours a day of meditation—was how sharply my awareness changed.
I mean, I’ve meditated for over 15 years now. Yet yes, I reassure you it was sharper. Something effortlessly, unforcibly, became clear.

My very first meditation was when I was eighteen.
Ten to thirty minutes after 108 bows—or 300 bows—simply because it was part of the temple ritual and program. And most days, I fell asleep.
A rebellious eighteen-year-old girl at 4 a.m. during morning prayer? There was no such thing as awareness. Cooling down my body temperature after the bows and tasting that little piece of my mind for a few minutes felt like enough. And I did that every day for two years.

“Beginners always have to use their body and practice synchronized with what your mind and intention are trying to do. Is your mind too stiff to be grateful or apologizing? Then go as low as your body can go. That’s why bows are important for you all.”

My master, Ven. Pomnyun always instructed us to lay our heads on the floor while doing 108 bows, so the egoistic mind could soften a little. We, practitioners and postulants, had loads of physical work and additional 300-500 bows every day just to become unbothered by unnecessary thoughts (and literally all thoughts were considered unnecessary and wasteful).

While training that hardcore physically and mentally, my mind—especially the prefrontal cortex—always felt foggy. So foggy that the analogy I used was ‘an old mirror’: layers of dust, rusty stains, fingerprints everywhere. The mirror was my awareness; the layers were my karmic footages, the things I had never resolved or even seen… probably.

Then I went on my first 7-day Vipassana + Samatha retreat.
The first couple of days, of course, I slept. My body swung back and forth like a tree in the wind. But around Day 3, I began actually meditating. Observing. Feeling.

I started with my physical sensations, always. What was happening in my body—deeply, closely.

I placed careful attention on the tip of my nose, but then the breath felt like a tsunami-like wind. Then I sensed my blood pumping into my lips, beating against each other with heat and pressure. Then inside my mouth, I could feel every pulse. Then every tooth in my mouth shook from the rhythm of my bloodstream. It was almost like an earthquake.

My body had been working that hard my entire life.
I had simply never paid attention to the natural elements of my own physical system. I noticed how intentional attention has power—how closely it can observe phenomena, like micro zoom-in effects.

And that was just one day, one session on a seven-day retreat.
Another day, I observed emotional sensations.
Another day, I observed thoughts.
Another day, external sounds—I followed them, traveled through them.

Fifteen years of meditation, and still I was discovering layers I didn’t know existed.