“Philosophical discussion will not be the best way to understand Buddhism. If you want to be a sincere Buddhist, the best way is to sit. We are very fortunate to have a place to sit in this way. I want you to have a firm, wide, imperturbable conviction in your sitting. Just to sit, that is enough.” Indeed, I say. I came to Taiwan with the intent of becoming a better Buddhist. Prior to arrival I had idealized visions of visiting temples and monasteries day in and day out, learning fundamentals from real Taiwanese monks. Obviously that would be really neat, but that’s not what I’ve encountered. Instead of an exotic study, a regular, everyday examination of Buddhism has opened my eyes up to the exoticisms waiting in every moment of living.

Where I live I do not know many full-fledged Buddhists. A good friend turned me on to the path but he himself does not follow with strong conviction. Since being in Taiwan I have met many full-fledged Buddhists. These people have is a tangible aura of benevolence and wisdom about them. Upon meeting them I feel immediately connected; I know that they are good, that they want to help me. And they do.

Take Karma Lekshe Tsomo, a Buddhist and Ph.D I had the pleasure of meeting and learning from at the Museum of World Religions. After meeting Karma I began an email correspondence with her regarding Buddhist reading recommendations. Obviously this has been impactful – the readings have already opened my eyes tenfold and accelerated my path towards enlightenment. But Karma also does something special at the end of every email correspondence – she signs off with a special phrase. Her first correspondence signed of with “Aha!” I didn’t immediately get its significance, but once I read the sign-off on the second email it clicked. “Awaken to the moment…” it read. Man, books are a great way to learn, but solitary learning is so closed-off, sometimes it can be hard to remember it all. When Karma signed off with this message it was more significant; it came from another human being just for me. Since then I’ve remembered her sign-off and used it as reminder throughout my day as a way to maintain mindfulness. “Aha!” makes sense now as well. I see it as a catchphrase to remind us of the novelty in every living moment.

“When Buddha transmitted our practice to Maha Kashyapa, he just picked up a flower with a smile. Only Maha Kashyapa understood what he meant; no one else understood. We do not know if this is a historical event or not, but it means something. It is a demonstration of our traditional way.” This quote and the one I opened with both come from Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Together they are lessons in Buddhism. The opener symbolizes not only the fortune we have in being able to sit and meditate wherever we want, but as an extension of this, the fortune we have to maintain mindfulness, sitting or not, in every moment. The second phrase is very interpretable but I see it as two men passing along this Buddhist understanding of the moment. As the two passed the flower they shared a moment in which the passing of the “flower,” the joy of transmitting Buddhism was the only thing that mattered. Taiwan has been life changing for me because I finally understand the moment myself and I’ve taken it upon myself to pass this flower as many times a day as possible. These are not the moments I will never forget – every moment is a moment I will never forget.

As I continue to strive to become the person I want to be I’ve come understand the importance in maintaining an intimate relationship with exercise. I love gyms and the endorphins that flood me after a productive date with my weights. But there’s one thing I won’t do at any regular gym facility: run. Treadmills don’t satisfy me; I require constantly changing stimuli. As a result I’ve picked up the habit of running outdoors. I embrace the requisite of the mental fortitude required in running until the end – no walking.

Being in Taiwan this semester has provided me with a gamut of running routes here – do I want to run along the local river, throughout the bustling urban jungle, or through the lively green hills to the local temple? This variety has allowed me to run more frequently than I ever have: four miles at least three times a week. I feel my overall fitness improving each week as the walk up the hill after lunch and dinner has become noticeably easier and easier.

But running has had more benefits than simply improving my health ­­­–­ it’s exposed me to aspects of Taiwanese culture I would never get pacing around a gym facility. The first week I got here one of my many new friends invited me on a pre-breakfast six-mile jog to Gong Guan. As we finished the second mile and exited the school’s campus area, firecrackers, a common occurrence during the Lunar New Year holiday, popped off in the street next to us, seemingly congratulating us for completing a third of our mission. As we continued our run, now in the heart of the concrete jungle, firecrackers continued going off, some encouraging us to run faster, others causing us to flinch with surprise. Incense, another part of the New Year festivity, sweetened the air around us and made our romp all the more pleasurable.

As I’ve continued to run I’ve gotten to know a bevy of other charming aspects of the local Taiwanese life: the well-demeanored dogs pacing around content humans who walk them on beautifully sunny days and their wild counterparts who calmly watch with intensely emotional eyes as I jog by; the baseball and basketball players who play their games with class and skill and the dancing clubs who bounce relentlessly at seemingly every hour of the day; the beautiful cranes that sail gracefully about the blue waves of the local river and the artistic spiders that spin invisible webs across the expanses between the foliage. I can’t help but look forward to discovering other beautiful sights and sounds as I continue to forge running paths around this paradisal island.

As I sit here and write my preliminary post for this study abroad blog my mind can’t help but scan through the sheer experience of the last twenty-four hours: after packing my life away into two bags, my parents and I loaded up the car and zoomed off to the NHL’s Stadium Series game. My San Jose Sharks were taking on their diabolic southern rivals, the Los Angeles Kings. My first visit to the San Francisco 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara was both mentally and physically hectic. The corridors of the gleaming complex were jam-packed with fans chanting cheers for their teams and jeers against their rivals – you could cut the tension with a knife. All in all, the experience was rewarding. John Fogerty’s half time show sealed the deal as he played a medley of Creedence hits ­– Fortunate Son, Born on the Bayou and Up Around the Bend, among others. As I ruminate I can say surely that the spectacle provided both great sights by way of the hockey, as well as great sounds by way of CCR’s well-aged frontman.

Unfortunately, despite their ostensible effort, my Sharks fell 2-1. Luckily, in an effort to beat the crowds and arrive at SFO International on time we left before the third period and dodged what was surely depressing scene: Sharks fans moping back to their cars as triumphant Kings fans ramped up their deserved yet painful trash-talk. At this point though, my mind and imagination were elsewhere: I was caught in the vortex of possibilities of my upcoming three months in East Asia.

I’ve traveled a lot in my short lifetime. I’ve been all around sophisticated Europe, acquainted myself with rugged Aussies, and spent good time with the tangible merriment of Latin America. Never though have I been to any part of Asia. Despite the inevitable culture shock that I’ve already begun to experience – I bid farewell to personal space as soon as I boarded my flight ­­– I’m confident that I will enjoy my time learning here at the National Cheng Chi University in Taiwan.

I’m here because I enjoy learning language and I’ve discovered a personal knack for learning Chinese. But I’m also here to experience the history of East Asia; as a history major, the social factors and past events that shape a nation are always present in my mind as I venture its territory. Buddhism and meditation, among other things, will define my experience here in Taipei. Unlike mainland China which severed its Buddhist roots during the cultural revolution, Taiwan maintains its connection. I hope to explore the temples and districts where the religion still thrives and use it to illuminate my personal experience. Stand by as I venture off into new territory and share my experience with you readers.

Assuming I’ve hooked any of you Pioneer readers into the idea of meditation, I bet some of you are wondering exactly what to do once you finally sit down. The purpose of this column will be to provide a basis for how to meditate. With this basis will come several avenues to explore as your practice unfolds.

First off, it is imperative to understand that meditation is by no means the practice of flushing out your thoughts — it’s the practice of severing the connection between you and your thoughts and watching as they, be they good or bad, fly by. Second, it should be understood that meditation is not done for the sake of spiritual epiphany. Yes, realizations can happen when you isolate you with yourself, but the benefits of meditation arise subtly as a practice unfolds.

And lastly, as silly as it sounds, the assumption and maintenance of proper position is the key to proper meditation. With good posture and patience, a simple cross-legged position will provide the solid foundation of a successful practice. (I recommend a simple Internet search of meditation position to ensure proper position.)

Once you’ve internalized the above points, you can start to figure out what meditation styles work for you. Among the totality of styles most people in America usually go for Vipassana, which emphasizes mindfulness, but the more abstract Zen, with its one real rule being sitting in the correct position, is popular as well. These are the best for reducing the overall stress of the hustle and bustle urban life. In my practice I’ve studied both styles and found a middle ground that works for me. I recommend you do the same. Nevertheless, I’ve stumbled upon one basic principle that guides my practice: an awareness of senses — starting with the five senses and expanding from there.

Here’s how it works: Once you’ve assumed the position, begin scanning through each one of your senses. With your eyes closed, begin to feel throughout your body. Maintaining an unwavering awareness of your breath and the sensations of your inhale and exhale, scan your body. Start with your feet and feel your toes. Feel your toenails and the way your socks are pulling on your hairs. Move up your legs to your upper body. Hands are highly sensitive, so examine the way they pick up the temperature of your environment or how each finger interacts with its neighbor.

Move on to the next sense, maybe hearing. It’s best to have all controllable noises off such as your AC unit or your computer modem. Listen to the natural music that plays outside your window — the wind bursting through branches of trees, or the natural drone of civilization. Purists advise against it, but playing some calm, textured music can be revelational. Listen to the layers: the booming base, the timbre of each instrument and even the subtle effects that populate the soundstage’s background.

After you’ve taken the tour of what your body is capable of sensing, move on to what your mind senses. This is where things get fascinating. Start with time. Feel each second pass by and the duration of each of your breaths. Examine how quickly you can feel each second pass by or conversely, how slowly. Then move on to the sense of consciousness. This one is a bit harder to get a hold of for beginners, but in my opinion, the most rewarding.

Detect your emotions and separate yourself from them; realize that you have control over what you feel. As you speed up and slow down your breath — your pace of living — you can feel your brain pulse in unison with your heartbeats. You’ll begin to see light shows and enter realms of mind you didn’t know existed.

I won’t spoil it for you, but once you gain awareness of your consciousness, that’s when you’ll really begin to dig deep within yourself. Other senses will surface as your practice continues but never force them. Explore yourself. As you begin to examine the possibilities of your existence, more senses will arise — senses that differ between each person. Take note of them and let them reorder your way of living.

Illustration by Eric Rannestad.

Life is easier when you don’t put things off — the things that scare you, that pain you, that take away from your Netflix addiction. This column is dedicated to all the people who know, deep down, that meditating (or ending their addictions and tackling their fears, for that matter) could benefit the trajectory of their lives but refuse to establish a practice.

First, let’s do some math. Let’s say you have a presentation due in a week and today is Monday. It has to be 12-minutes long and cover a comprehensive history of something liberal artsy: 20th century art practices. You have to do some research and you have to put a PowerPoint together. All in all it will take around 10 hours: eight to do the research and two to put the presentation together and rehearse it. How would you normally go about this? I’m sure many of us would squeeze the assignment’s reasonable due date for all its worth. We might spend Monday watching some shows and getting some studying done for tomorrow’s quizzes. Tuesday passes by hanging out with friends, hitting the gym and writing a short paper. Now it’s Wednesday and you know you should start the project but you can’t muster up the strength. Instead you do some readings for your other classes, do some more socializing and pass out with Breaking Bad playing on your laptop. Now it’s Thursday and you have 10 hours of work ahead of you, sleep deprivation and a B- waiting for you in the grade book… if you’re lucky.

Now let’s travel to an alternate dimension where procrastination doesn’t exist. As you watch yourself go about your business each day you put a steady amount of work into the presentation. From Monday through Thursday you spend two and a half hours a day on it, and by Friday you have a product that will leave you with pride and high marks.

Now replace this anecdote’s presentation with the practice of meditation. If you spend your life engulfed in stress, assuming anxiety a staple of modern living, you’re wrong and you’re headed for a B- life. But if you take up the practice of mindful sitting, life will reward you with an A. Let me prove this with some research.

Firstly, meditating will get you further in life because it oils your brain. According to a study done on the Dalai Lama’s peer, Lama Oser, meditation facilitates increased cognitive speed. Sitting for 30 minutes a day will clear you mind of mental clutter. With all that extra space your brain’s functions improve. Recall and mental calculations will become quicker and more reliable. Memorization takes less effort and tests off all kinds, be they short answer, long answer or multiple choice will kneel before your intellectual ability. Hand-in-hand with this increased brain function was a rise in general creativity. Those who meditated were able to develop free associations more quickly in both divergent and convergent thinking.

Dealing with people will become effortless as well. Researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn conducted an eight-week long experiment with a meditating experimental group and non-practicing control group. The results were overwhelming: the experimental group experiencing drastic drops in their levels of social anxiety while the control group was unchanged. The same experiment as well as tests done on Lama Oser showed signs of increased left-to-right brain ratios in their prefrontal cortex’s activity. This evidence is scientific testimony of increased overall happiness.

Meditation also offers several more tangible benefits: deeper sleep cycles, clearer skin, lower blood pressure, increased sensitivity to other’s body language and a stronger immune system. But besides these tangible benefits — all of which could benefit us as students and citizens destined to live our own independent, adult lives — meditation offers one intangible benefit that rules over all others: a nurturing of the soul. Those who meditate actualize their spirits as the reasons above amalgamate. Less anxiety means spending more time working for goals and less time wondering if they’ll ever come true. More compassion means establishing meaningful connections with other human beings rather than simple surface relations. When you put these results together you find yourself honoring the whims to your spirit, making connections with people that matter and choosing life paths that inevitably lead you to the situations your spirit craves most.

Illustration by Emma Rust.

This week I’m tackling something that pervades many of our young minds: anxiety. The Whitman experience can breed persistent distress. There’s the desire for academic success, a need to find romantic fulfillment, figuring out how to pay for an expensive private education and the basic questions of the human condition: Am I happy? Am I headed toward a fulfilling career? How can I make a difference in the world?

Thankfully Buddhism is jam-packed with universal ways to deal with suffering, which in this case stems from anxiety. First of all, Buddhism at its core is a method of combating suffering. Its main tenets, the Four Noble Truths, acknowledge the existence of suffering but assure us that tranquil existence is obtainable. The Truths are as follows: 1. Suffering exists. 2. Suffering stems from a desire to be and to have. 3. We can remove these wants from our lives. 4. The noble Eightfold Path (which I will touch on later) is the method of moving towards freedom.

Centuries ago Buddhists applied these rules to their lives in a way that bred asceticism — they left their homes as nomads, begging for food once a day, wandering the land in search of separation from human desire. Personally, I enjoy many aspects of this modern life: my warm bed, the books that offer infinite knowledge, the music that fills my mind with soundscapes and textures, the technology that connects me to friends and family. So, I, like many others, have sought a middle ground to maintain modern life without the anxiety and materialism it can breed.

To do this, I have acknowledged that suffering awaits all of us in the form of death. Our personal mortalities and those that surround us ensure its role in the course of existence. I could be enjoying a gorgeous Pacific sunset as a coconut falls and bumps my life away, or I could be punching a criminal vending machine before it comes crashing down on my hopes and dreams.

Acknowledging death liberates us in life. Applying this to myself, the worry that I have not started a 13-page research paper due next week becomes pretty insignificant. In the face of our erratic existence, obstacles are minimized; now we can tackle them in an unattached way that leads to success; we stop worrying about the due date and instead concentrate on excellence.

So while suffering is life’s inevitable result, recognition allows us to take advantage of living. The Eightfold Path is an important resource in gaining the upper hand. It advises: 1. Right understanding. 2. Right thought. 3. Right speech. 4. Right action. 5. Right livelihood. 6. Right effort. 7. Right mindfulness. 8. Right concentration. In essence, these eight rules breed intent. When we do anything, be it sitting silently or conversing with friends, keeping these rules in mind will ensure conscious action that results in the actualization of ideal character.

For example, when I talk to people, I often over-analyze their reactions to what I say. Do they think I’m uninteresting? Do they think I’m uninterested? Did I say something that insulted them? A meditation on these eight truths has led me to one basic anxiety-crushing rule: maintain benevolence. By avoiding an assault on other people’s feelings and sensibilities in all situations, I have found comfort in my dealings with people.

Lastly, it is important to realize that anxiety is a worry that life won’t go well, that you won’t be happy, that you won’t make grades, that you won’t find your soulmate. To this I say, “balderdash!” because, in the end, we are not oracles. We cannot tell the future — these self-defeating thoughts draw us nearer to failure than their complete absence.

To sum this up, I’ll leave you with a quote from Sadhguru, an Indian mystic who offers powerful and unconventional insights: “Your fear is always about what’s going to happen next. That means your fear is always about that which does not exist. If your fear is about the non-existent, your fear is one hundred percent imaginative. If you’re suffering the non-existential, we call that insanity.”

Live every moment purposefully and you will know at the end of life that you existed just as you intended.

It is easy in this advanced age to lose sight of our Homo sapiens evolutionary childhood. We’ve disassociated ourselves from the hunting and gathering of those who came before us, from the everyday struggle of defending ourselves against predators and working hard to secure a bloodline. Nowadays we walk around concrete jungles, clutching caffeinated beverages, habituated to the innovations that surround us. We find ourselves summoning, like magic, organized sounds recorded in separate spaces and separate times. We talk through rectangular screens to people thousands of miles away and arrive at far off destinations by the guidance of an electronic woman’s dignified voice.

Yet, in this privileged modern life, we still manage to agonize over so many things. “Damn! Did I just pass that girl without saying hi? I wasn’t trying to diss her or anything.” “My phone is too slow, it’s wasting my precious time. I should probably order the latest model.” “I’m getting a B in Intro to Sociology. I’m never getting a job after school!”

People often say, “Everybody has problems.” I don’t know if this is just a comforting lie or a truth. Either way, I’ll be the first to admit I worry about things too: Will my history major mean anything in the real world? Will I find a peaceful, enjoyable career or will I rot inside a never-ending cubicle of doom? Finally, the most important question: Do I even want to subscribe to the idea of a 9:00-5:00 life through my early sixties? In his book “The Happiness Trap,” Russ Harris theorizes on our collective modern agony. Citing the evolutionary struggles of our ancestors, he says, “These days it’s not saber-toothed tigers or woolly mammoths that our mind warns us about. Instead it’s losing our job, being rejected, getting a speed ticket.” To extend Harris’s metaphor, these days we are not hunting and gathering sustenance in the same manner our ancestors once did; we are now instead hunting for academic excellence and gathering the sweetest companions.

Some might resign themselves to this painful life of fear, anxiety and inner conflict. Not I. In my quest for a solution I’ve encountered a world previously unmentioned by anyone I knew: the world of meditation. On a particularly awful night of my first-year fall, a semester in which life threw my several curveballs, I came home from the library to a Facebook conversation with one of my closest friends. Eventually I mentioned the stress I could feel compounding atop my shoulders. Now, this friend is particularly similar to me in one way: we have overactive minds. Our need to question, take-in and understand what surrounds us has always united us. But this trait can also lead to deep, superfluous, never-ending introspection — overthinking. Empathizing with my plight, he recommended meditation. As soon as he described it to me I intrinsically knew that meditation was right for me. My respect for Asian culture and its age-old wisdom swung me in its direction. Since that night I’ve been meditating to cultivate the garden of my mind.

The practice, pioneered centuries ago by the early inhabitants of India’s Indus Valley, is an exercise of mind whereby one maintains a certain state of consciousness for a given amount of time. For me, and many other practitioners, meditation encompasses breathing deeply while attempting to clear the mind of wandering thought. In this way, mindfulness — an awareness of the present moment — is established. Essentially, meditation helps to cut the cognitive fat out of everyday life. It trains a body to live in the present, to readily dissociate from the mind, eventually arriving at a state where one only entertains thoughts, ideas and even emotions they find desirable. The benefits of this are tenfold: better grades, better friendships and, my personal favorite, actualization of the human spirit.

To illustrate meditation’s function I would like to employ a metaphor. Imagine life as a television set. As you switch from place to place, activity to activity, person to person, the channel changes. Obviously you want to enjoy each show, but commercials keep getting in your way. These commercials mention and discuss things that don’t matter to you, things that even disgust you. Yet they are incessant; they keep coming back. One day you start meditating. Change comes slowly at first. Then one morning you come to the sudden realization that you have acquired DVR. You waste no more time on modern anxiety — now you skip the commercial breaks. This column will entail a discussion of meditative theory, principles and lessons that will accelerate our paths toward unshakable control of our own DVR remotes.

Photo by Hayley Turner.