As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. – Robert Anton Wilson

Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it’s there it doesn’t require your belief- and if it’s not there why should you believe in it? – Terrence McKenna

I recently finished my second 10-day silent Vipassana retreat.

As I said my goodbyes, I got into conversation with Vishal, the man I’d been sitting next to in the meditation hall every day. Since there’s no talking or eye-contact allowed, the other meditators (about 24 men and 24 women) are more like blurry shapes of energy than actual personalities. You can’t help but think about what they are like in the outside world, but we’re reminded that this is just another distraction.

Yet, with only occasionally glances at him in my peripheral, I’d noticed his quiet determination. Compared to others, he took every sitting as seriously as possible. Sometimes you can just tell.

When I said this to him, he smiled politely. “You take it seriously too.” 

Two years prior, I had signed up and sat my first retreat quite spontaneously. I had no meditation practice or even theoretical knowledge to prepare me. But after a short ‘dark night of the soul’ on Day 3, where I was close to packing my bags, I was suddenly all-in. When the gong was struck at 4am, I didn’t flinch. I was often first in and last out of the hall. I started to deeply enjoy the simple, vegetarian meals. 10 days went by in a blur. On the final day, when ‘noble silence’ was lifted, others came up and congratulated me. “You were sitting like a statue.” “How did you do that?” I felt surprised and sheepish. I didn’t have an answer. I shrugged, “I guess I just took it seriously.”

I shared some of this with Vishal, who nodded. He was tall, and pious looking, with carefully groomed hair. It had been ten years since his last retreat, due to a busy family life, part of the reason he’d tried to make the most out of the last ten days.

“We’re serious because we’ve done this before.” 

Due to his beliefs, karma and previous lives explained my disciplined almost reverent approach to meditation, something relatively unfamiliar to me and not connected to my parents or society I grew up in.

In 2023, encouraged by a Taiwanese co-worker, I booked ‘Tour de Taiwan’, and rode around the island in 9 days. Having never visited before, I felt strangely at home with the strange people and places we discovered. Why was that? As we made our way along roads that snaked over mountain passes and rice paddies, familiar faces crossed my mind. 

There was Emily, a Creative Director at a tech startup. She was high energy, put on art shows in her spare time and was half Taiwanese. In 2014, after a summer of unsuccessful interviews, my US visitor visa had run out and I’d travelled to London. I was calling her from a loud Starbucks with dodgy wi-fi. But she hired me, and I ended up living in America for the next 6 years.

Four years after that call, another Taiwanese woman took a chance on hiring me, and so I moved from New York to San Francisco. She was also a Creative Director, a single mum, loud, un-filtered and Taiwanese. 

At that job, the Taiwanese-American Head of Content, who moonlit as a spin class instructor, encouraged me to sign up for a triathlon, which would become an interest for me over the following years.

Finally, my girlfriend in New York. One weekend we took a trip to upstate New York where we stayed at her family’s house. She was born in the States but her parents were from Taiwan and seemed to be Buddhists by the look of some of the paintings and sculptures dotted around the house. On the way back to the city we stopped at a temple. “We’re not really that serious about it” she said as I gawked at a giant statue of Buddha.

Do these coincidences make me believe in reincarnation? The short answer is no. I like to remain open and flexible in my thinking, which is just not compatible with being certain about stuff like that. But I think it is worthwhile to consider and be grateful for our unique strengths, preferences and affinities – whether you know where they came from or not.

This was also posted on Substack