Kang Dong-hoon / Office Worker

Company life was really hell for me. I always felt heavy and fear was always ahead of me in my work. I was introduced to mind meditation by a friend of my wife when I felt that I could not do it anymore after eight years of work. When she said that a week would make me feel at ease, I finally decided to  participate in a meditation retreat there to find an answer . By emptying my mind, I could find out why I was so tired at work.

The extreme stress of working life

My mother passed away when I was in fourth grade and my stepmother came into my life, but I couldn’t accept the situation at all because I was young. I kept my heart closed off and didn’t want any interference. I think I was trying to console myself by taking care of my own work and receiving the praise of being a model student. Even when I joined a company, I felt that I had to do well and that I had to suffer from the desire to be recognized.

After two weeks of training at the Main Meditation Center, I came back to work and the first greeting I made to my boss was ironically not “I’ll work hard” but “I won’t say I’ll work hard but I’ll try to stay true to the work itself.” As such, my career before meditation was just consuming energy on greed and obsession rather than being faithful to the work itself. As I continued my mind training in the local center, I was able to gradually abandon such greed and obsession, and one day I had a great and precious realization.

A comfortable working life with no greed and fear

I looked at my colleagues at the company and said, “Ah! I am here thanks to those people!’ I shed tears of gratitude to my colleagues because I was so grateful. So far, I’ve lived a life of asking people around me to give me something, so I’ve decided not to live for myself anymore, but for others.

I no longer work to satisfy my greed. As a result of  the meditation, I was not afraid of the evaluation I would receive, but I was faithful to  the course of my work. As a result, the work produced a better  outcome. By choosing the direction or method  of how to do the work from the perspective of a colleague, from the perspective of a department, or from the perspective of a company, everything was done by itself. My boss is no longer subject to the presumption that he should acknowledge me, but he is comfortable with me as my brother. Even my colleagues  are no longer the subject of competition. I feel  like this is all a miracle.


Source: www.meditationlife.org