Joo-Hyung Kang / Research Professor, Department of Physics, Korea University

After I graduated from Science High School, I entered KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). Then I began to wonder about my life. The university was a strange place for me, who was always used to doing what I was told to do in a fixed time frame every day. The free life was good, but as time passed, I lost interest and my mind wandered away from my studying. I was skeptical about “why I should live competing so fiercely with others, and for what purpose?” We will just die in the end.

Anxiety, nervousness, regret… I wanted to end the wandering

My wandering became worse; I skipped half of my classes every day, because I was playing games and sleeping late. I was nervous and anxious about my grades when exam time came. After spending one semester like that, I would regret wasting my time.  “If I work hard tomorrow, I can do better than anyone else.” I tried to comfort myself with those thoughts. However, when the new semester began, it was still the same.  I had more regrets and gradually lost my confidence.

Later I became desperate enough to consider giving up school completely thinking that “this is not my path.” I wasted over three years. My grades dropped and I almost failed to graduate. 

At the end of the third year, my father recommended meditation to me. I agreed, “let’s break this vicious cycle.“ I firmly felt that if I did not change this attitude, it was obvious that I would continue to live like this. I took a semester off and focused on meditation.

In meditation I learned to clear my mind of all the pictures that were stored in there. As these pictures were cleared out, my original nature was naturally revealed.  All the philosophical questions that were not solved were solved one by one. I felt so glad as if I had found an entirely new world.

After overcoming laziness, I finished my Ph.D. in three years

It might be because I found the answer to the fundamental questions of life but eventually, my wandering mind ended. The first thing I felt when I went back to school after the meditation was that the world not hard but very easy to live in! It was an obvious truth that if you do your best you get good results. I was fully confident that I could live by practicing and acting in the truth that I found.

As I continued to shed deeper levels of my old mind through meditation, I felt like I could fly. I had to take up to 28 credits a semester including retakes, to make up for my earlier poor grades, but it was not difficult at all. It was a pleasure to study for long hours. I was even able to work part-time because my mind was so clear. Even while doing so much, I was able to get much better grades than when I took only 12 credits. I was able to get into KAIST Graduate School (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), which I couldn’t even have been able to consider before because of my poor grades.

The changes in my daily life were also amazing.  When I was given work to do before, I used to roll my head, dodging the work, and repeatedly finding excuses to avoid the work. Now, it seems like the word “laziness” has become a word that has nothing to do with me anymore. Thanks to this meditation, I think I could complete the doctoral program in 3 years, which usually takes about 4 to 5 years.

I will go to the Stanford University, in the United States as a postdoctoral researcher soon.  In the past, I was anxious and nervous about whether I could do well at anything. However, I am not like that anymore.  Now I am only excited and looking forward to the new environment. I have confidence that I can live anywhere in the world and enjoy living without any regrets or anxieties.


source: meditationlife.org