第一次打坐
我第一次打坐是在康奈尔念书的时候，大二。
学校附近有一个藏传佛学院，开车十来分钟，是达赖喇嘛的一个图书馆。每周会有一次活动，四十五分钟：前十五分钟诵经，中间十五分钟冥想，最后十五分钟再诵经。
我第一次去就迟到了，走进去整个人懵了——里面全是白人和中东人，没有一个亚洲面孔，而且年纪都很大。我站在门口不知道该怎么办，旁边一位白人老奶奶给我指了一下，他们诵到了哪一页。
那本经书挺有意思的：诵经用的是模仿藏语的拟声词，右边那一页配着英文翻译。但如果你只是跟着念那些发音，其实根本不知道自己在念什么。我就这么稀里糊涂地跟着念完了。
然后到了打坐的十五分钟。
那十五分钟，我觉得恍若隔世。我至少睁了十来次眼——每次都以为到时间了，每次都没有。腰疼，腿疼，哪里都不舒服。铃声终于响起来，我站起来，有种说不清楚的挫败感。
但奇怪的是，我还是去了第二次，第三次。
有一次，我和那里的一位喇嘛聊了几句。他是成都人，很小就去了印度修行，就再也没有回来。他既不会说普通话，也不会说英语，我们勉强用四川话沟通了几句。我问他：打坐的时候腿疼、腰疼，怎么办？
他笑了一下，说：继续练习就好了。
就这一句话。我当时觉得这个回答也太没用了。
然后就断了五年
疫情之后，佛学院关门了，我也就没再去。中间隔了将近五年，这件事就这么搁在那里了。
2024年的春节
我重新开始打坐，是在2024年初。说起来，是很机缘巧合的一件事。
那时候的我，其实处在一段非常混乱的时间里。2023年中，我中断了我的博士，回国做了一个项目；到了2024年初，这个项目也停掉了。感情上也不太顺，加上在美国五年没有回家，和父母之间的关系也变得有些生疏——大家还在联系，但彼此之间好像隔了一层什么。
就在这个节骨眼上，一个朋友介绍我认识了更却老师。他是从藏区来的喇嘛，那段时间到成都，说想学普通话。我那时正好闲着，就教了他将近一个月的中文。
我现在还记得第一次见到他的感觉。他就坐在我对面，我觉得他就像一尊佛坐在那里。我坐在他对面，能感受到一种很强的平静——不是刻意营造出来的，就是他本来就在那里。那段时间对我来说挺难熬的，但那一个月，我每次去教他中文，都会平静一些。
临走之前，他送给我一本书：宗萨蒋扬钦哲仁波切写的《人间是剧场》。
这本书完全打开了我一个新世界。我原来对佛教几乎没什么了解，读完之后，我第一次觉得，这个世界有一整个维度，是我之前从来没有真正看见过的。
重新开始，从五分钟开始
在更却老师的指导下，结合书里的一些讲法，我2024年中重新开始了打坐。
最开始真的很难。我最多只能坐五分钟，腿还是不舒服，腰也还是不舒服。更难受的其实是脑子——它会自己抓住白天的某件事，然后一直在那里转。说了什么话，没做好的什么事，一遍一遍地在过。有时候我以为自己已经坐了二十分钟，结果一看表，才四分钟。
打坐是一件非常漫长的事情。我坚持每天都在做，但真正感受到它对我有影响，是快半年之后的事情了。
那个影响，是从一件很小的事情开始的。
打游戏那天
有一天，我和朋友约好了一起打游戏。他临时把我咕掉了。
按照以前的我，那种情况下肯定会很生气，而且这个气可能会在我身上压很久。但那一天，我很清晰地感受到了一件从来没有过的事：我确实在前一秒很愤怒，但当我转身去了洗手间，洗了个手，从里面走出来的时候，那股愤怒——像水一样，流过了我的身体，然后就走了。
我呆了一下。这个感觉是全新的。
以前碰到情绪，它都是积在那里的，我甚至不一定会清楚地意识到自己处于什么情绪里，只是觉得不舒服，或者很久都不对劲。但那一次，我第一次感受到了情绪是有形状的，是会流动的，是会过去的。
后来我想，这其实和打坐在做的事情是一样的。
《人间是剧场》里讲，打坐的主旨叫”回来”——你的思绪会跑开，会去想白天的事、说过的话、没做好的事。修行不是不让思绪跑，而是每次跑开之后，练习从那个地方出来，回到你此时此刻的呼吸里。
那天的愤怒，其实也是一样的。我从愤怒里出来了，然后回到了当下。
打坐到底是什么
说到底，打坐没有什么特别fancy的东西在里面。它就是一种练习——练习去离开情绪和执着，一遍一遍地回来。
佛教里有一个说法：过去和未来都不存在。这个”不存在”，不是说那些事情没有发生过，我的理解是——你根本没有办法去区分，一件事到底是真实发生过，还是只是你脑海里的一段记忆。你没有办法回去核实。而未来就更是如此了。
我以前觉得这是一个哲学命题，可以拿来讨论，但和生活没什么关系。
现在我觉得，这其实是一个非常实用的提醒：你能真实停留的地方，只有此时此刻。
我现在还是每天都在坐。有时候早上，有时候晚上，十到二十分钟，多数是十五分钟，有时候一天坐两次。没有什么仪式感，就是找个安静的地方坐下来，看看今天的身体是什么状态。
那位在康奈尔说”继续练习就好了”的喇嘛，说得是对的。
The first time I meditated, I kept opening my eyes.
I’d walked into a Tibetan Buddhist center near Cornell — sophomore year, late, not sure where to sit. The room was full of people chanting in phonetic Tibetan: sounds approximating a language none of them actually spoke. On the left page was the Tibetan script; on the right, an English translation. But if you just followed the sounds, you had no idea what you were saying. I didn’t. I moved my mouth and hoped I was doing it right.
Then came the fifteen minutes of sitting.
I must have opened my eyes ten times. Each time I was certain it had been long enough. Each time it hadn’t. My back hurt. My legs hurt. The silence felt enormous and slightly hostile. When the bell finally rang I stood up feeling like I had failed something — though I couldn’t have said what.
I went back anyway. I still can’t explain why.
A few sessions later I talked to one of the lamas there — a man from Chengdu who had left for India as a small child and never really come back. He didn’t speak Mandarin anymore, or English. We managed a few words in Sichuan dialect. I asked him what to do about the leg pain.
He smiled. “Just keep practicing,” he said.
That was it. At the time I found this a little unhelpful. It would take years before I understood he had given me everything I needed.
COVID closed the center. I stopped going. Five years passed.
I came back to sitting in early 2024, and not because things were going well.
I had left my PhD program in 2023. Came back to China and started a project, then quit that too. My romantic life was in pieces. I had spent five years in the US without going home, and my relationship with my parents had grown strange and distant in the way things do when you are technically in contact but never really present with each other.
In February 2024, during the Spring Festival holiday, a friend introduced me to a lama named Teacher Gengque, who had traveled from the Tibetan regions to Chengdu wanting to learn Mandarin. I had time. I taught him Chinese for about a month.
I don’t know exactly how to describe what it was like to sit across from him. He wasn’t performing anything. He wasn’t projecting serenity. He was just — there. Fully, completely there. And sitting in front of that, I could feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time: a stillness that wasn’t earned, just present.
Before he left, he gave me a book: What Makes You Not a Buddhist by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. I read it and felt, for the first time in years, that there was an entire dimension of the world I had never properly seen.
I started sitting again.
The beginning was hard.
I could manage five minutes. My legs hurt — same as Cornell, same as always. My mind was worse. It would grab onto something from the day and stay there, circling. An argument I was still rehearsing. Something I’d failed to do. Something someone said. I would sit for what felt like twenty minutes and look up to find that four had passed.
The book described the practice simply: your mind will wander. It will go somewhere — into the past, the future, the conversation you keep replaying. The practice is not to stop this from happening. The practice is to notice it happening, and return. Come back to the breath. Come back to right now.
I did this, badly, every day, for months.
About half a year in, I was supposed to play games online with a friend. He cancelled last minute.
I felt angry — immediately, sharply. And then I walked to the bathroom, washed my hands, and looked up.
The anger was moving. It was passing through me like water through a channel. A moment ago it had been filling everything. Now it was receding, and I was still standing there.
I had never noticed this before. Not once in my life. Every time I had felt anger — or anxiety, or disappointment — it had just accumulated, sat in me for hours or days, without me being fully aware of its shape. And now, for the first time, I could see it for what it was: a thing that passes. Not permanent. Not me.
I recognized the movement immediately. It was the same thing as meditation. You drift into a thought. You notice. You return. You don’t hold on. You come back.
That’s what I had been practicing without fully understanding it. The lama at Cornell had been right.
I still sit most days. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night. Anywhere from ten to twenty minutes — fifteen, usually. Sometimes twice. There’s no ceremony to it. Just a quiet room and whatever is happening in my body that day.
Buddhism has a teaching I used to find strange: that the past and future do not exist. Not that they never happened — but that you cannot actually distinguish between a past event and a memory of that event. You can’t step back in and verify it. What you have is the trace, the impression, the story you keep retelling yourself. The future is even less than that.
I used to think this was a philosophical position. Something abstract to debate.
Now I understand it as an instruction. It is telling you where to sit: here. In the only place that has any real weight at all.