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Ep 61: How I Built a $200M Business Without Crossing These 5 Lines ft. Ying Cong

Ep 61: How I Built a $200M Business Without Crossing These 5 Lines ft. Ying Cong

by | Aug 15, 2025 | Podcast

https://youtu.be/-Uxw9ivl8Tw


Summary

What happens when a startup founder takes Buddhist precepts seriously — not just in meditation halls, but in high-pressure boardrooms and tough layoff conversations? In this candid episode, we speak with Ying Cong, co-founder of Glints, on what it means to lead a company without losing yourself. He shares how his practice of the Dhamma has shaped everything from how he hires and manages people, to how he navigates co-founder conflict and difficult decisions — all while trying to be firm in kindness.


About the Speaker

👤 Ying Cong is a long-time meditator and the co-founder of Glints, a leading career platform in Southeast Asia. Over the past decade, he helped scale the company from an idea incubated by JFDI to a regional startup featured in major publications like The Straits Times and Yahoo News. As Glints’ former CTO and current machine learning engineer, he has worked on recommender systems, fraud detection, and data infrastructure—though he jokes that most of it is just “glorified data cleaning.”

His Dhamma journey began in his teenage years and continues to deepen through regular meditation, observing the precepts, and periods of monastic training in the Thai forest tradition. He is quietly exploring how to balance the responsibilities of lay life with the path of practice.


Key Takeaways

Holding the five precepts builds deep trust

While startup life often celebrates “hustle at all costs,” Ying Cong stuck to his precepts — even when pitching investors. Over time, however, this radical transparency became a strength. Colleagues began to trust him deeply, even sharing difficult truths others couldn’t access.

Culture is shaped by how you show up, not what you say

From hiring to meetings, people look to the leader to understand what’s “normal.” When Ying Cong opened up about uncertainty and shared his misgivings, others followed suit. But when leaders modelled secrecy or pure task-focus, people shut down.

Every employee is carrying something

After managing 40–50 people over 11 years, Ying Cong observed something simple yet powerful: “Everyone is suffering, to some extent. The only question is how much they show you.” Being present and listening with care — not just for what’s said, but for what’s held back — often reveals what’s really going on beneath performance issues or disengagement.

Transcript

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Cheryl: Has there ever been a moment in your career where you were not able to hold your five precepts?

[00:00:06] Ying Cong: No. No. It’s been, that was my inviolable principles, uh, ever since, uh, I was young. I have, okay, there are situations where I’ve come close.

[00:00:24] Cheryl: Welcome to the Handful of Leaves podcast, a Southeast Asian platform sharing Buddhist wisdom for happier life. My name is Cheryl, the host for today’s podcast, and my guest today is Ying Cong, who is the co-founder of Glints recruitment platform that has expanded to eight markets.

[00:00:46] Cheryl: I just wanted to catch on a word that you said, you know, treating people, uh, your team like a family.

[00:00:50] Ying Cong: Mm-hmm.

[00:00:51] Cheryl: Right. In one of your articles you wrote about how you always struggled a little bit about personal boundaries.

[00:00:59] Ying Cong: Ah, yeah.

[00:01:00] Cheryl: So, like, you know, you are friendly with everyone, but you also don’t want to be too close.

[00:01:04] Ying Cong: Yes. Yeah.

[00:01:05] Cheryl: How did that work with treating everyone as family?

[00:01:09] Ying Cong: I’ve since stopped adopting that lens, uh, when it comes to colleagues and you treat your employees as family, um, there’s a lot of unspoken assumptions around that. So one of it is that they will never, never leave you. Right? And, and in this lifetime at least they’ll stick to you through, uh, thick and thin and also vice versa.

[00:01:31] Ying Cong: You will never abandon them. Hmm. But it’s just not realistic in a company, right? People do, uh, underperform for various reasons. Sometimes they perform very well in the first few years, and then their motivation shift or the job scope change. In a startup, you’re always changing. You’re growing, right, and the roles expand very quickly.

[00:01:48] Ying Cong: And it does come to a point where even the people that you cherish the most, sometimes they can’t live up to the job scope or you can’t live up to their expectations and you have to have that conversation to leave. When I was treating my employees as family, um, those conversations were much harder.

[00:02:05] Ying Cong: I tend to avoid them, um, because who would ever fire your own brother or sister? It’s like, it’s very heartless thing to do, right?

[00:02:12] Ying Cong: Yeah. Yeah. But then when in a company setting, actually the more heartless thing to do is to let them to continue to underperform in a role where, you know, they’re no longer suited for. Because their self esteem will start taking a hit. And the company doesn’t benefit from it.

[00:02:28] Ying Cong: And you also, um, compromise on the other employees who depend on them. Yeah, so, so I started to draw that boundary, like, okay, we treat each other with respect, right? We also build that relationship at certain times where we are outside of work, but when it comes to work, there’s a clear boundary about, okay, this is what you have to perform, uh, and this is what the company can give to you, right?

[00:02:50] Ying Cong: So you have to make those boundaries, underlying boundaries very clear in your mind, and also when you talk to the employees. Um, but of course the close danger of that is it becomes too transactional.

[00:03:01] Cheryl: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:03:02] Ying Cong: It becomes like, oh, you gave me this, I give you that.

[00:03:03] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:04] Ying Cong: Right. So it just becomes a balance. You do have to, at some certain moments, you do find that relationships, like during one-on-ones, don’t just talk about work. Mm-hmm. I know some managers do that. They just talk about what, just what you got done, how can I help you to get the next thing done?

[00:03:17] Cheryl: Yep.

[00:03:17] Ying Cong: Right. Um, but the best managers I’ve seen, they are also sensitive to the employees underlying needs.

[00:03:23] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:03:24] Ying Cong: And once you, once you do that, when I’ve been, I, I think I managed maybe close to 40, 50 people on and off across the 11 years. Right. And I, I noticed one thing is that everyone is suffering to a certain extent. Mm. Um, it is just about how much they tell you about it. Mm. Right. Even the happiest and cheeriest employees, the most upbeat ones, there’s always something that’s bothering them.

[00:03:46] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:03:46] Ying Cong: Right. And it can be very obvious things, very immediate thing like, oh, my immediate family member passed away or is having a illness. Or it can be very subtle things, sometimes they just can’t really articulate it. Mm-hmm. Like for a lot of my employees when I was running the Vietnam team, they felt that maybe the strategy wasn’t too clear.

[00:04:04] Ying Cong: Right. But it’s a very underlying feeling and they don’t know what the next direction is for their lives because of this. So there’s some uncertainty.

[00:04:11] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:04:11] Ying Cong: And when you talk to them and you really listen, uh, with your heart then these kind of things start to bubble up.

[00:04:17] Cheryl: Mm. Yeah.

[00:04:17] Ying Cong: Because they will first tell about their work. That’s a very immediate thing. And they’re tell about immediate family life. They’ll tell you about facts. Mm. But you can just see in the way they talk to you where they hesitate a little bit or, um, they have this little bit of holding back about telling you certain things, and that’s when you can sort of pick up, oh, okay, maybe certain things are not going all too well over here.

[00:04:38] Ying Cong: So then you can ask. So you ask them for permission, “I can ask you about this?”, and then they give you permission and you can talk about it.

[00:04:44] Cheryl: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, wow, the people under you are very lucky to have you. Someone like you as a manager who really listens and want to understand them in a holistic way. Yes. Yet being firm in being kind. Yeah. Not just nice by showing respect to them.

[00:05:02] Ying Cong: Imagine right when you’re under a lot of pressure from your board or your leaders above you to achieve a certain target. Then if you are not very mindful about it and in what conditions, sometimes you’re not mindful, especially about relation, the softer stuff like, uh, you, you are maybe seen as too soft, if you are too soft to your employees too, and then you are trying to just push that down to the next level, right?

[00:05:24] Ying Cong: But then for me, as part of that whole, you know, journey of transformation, like what the startup journey meant to me, one of the things I also realized is that, you know, that connection that you have people.

[00:05:35] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:05:36] Ying Cong: That is actually what makes me come alive. Mm. No matter how momentary it is, how fleeting it is. Mm. As long as I come in the contact you and there’s a, there’s a personal connection. Mm. Right. That actually makes the day very meaningful to me. Yeah. Yeah. So little things. These are little things. These are little things.

[00:05:51] Cheryl: Yeah. Nice. And how do you translate individual meaning, individual significance to a team or even a regional team?

[00:05:59] Ying Cong: Yeah, that is the difficult part. Um, because you realize things are very difficult to change and the hardest thing to change of all is other people. Even, even though they are working in a hierarchy under you, right? You were hired, uh, they were hired by you. Uh, it is very hard to change people.

[00:06:18] Ying Cong: Right, though, uh, you can influence a certain culture. So the way I look at it is: culture — when you hire people, they usually fall within a certain range. So let’s say, let’s say for me, I do value people who are very open and transparent, who value connection, uh, who are also quite, uh, on the ball about their task, right?

[00:06:40] Ying Cong: So you can break it down into certain sort of knobs that you see, like in a culture. So like transparency, there are cultures that are very transparent and cultures that are very opaque, right. Then being on the ball: there are cultures that are more task-oriented and more relationship-oriented. Mm-hmm.

[00:06:53] Ying Cong: So each of these things that when you hire people, they fall within a certain range. Mm. And then how you act as a leader day to day influences how, where they fall within that range. Mm. Yeah. Because when people come into any certain setting, um, any certain social setting and company is one of them, they tend to look up to the leader to set the tone.

[00:07:13] Cheryl: Yeah.

[00:07:13] Ying Cong: Because they’re not, they, they’re not the ones who founded this company. They don’t know what to, to, to think or to feel yet,

[00:07:19] Cheryl: or what’s acceptable.

[00:07:20] Ying Cong: Or what’s acceptable. Yeah. What’s, what’s the norm. So they look up to the leader for a range of what the norm is as well as their peers. Yeah. So I find that if I model the behavior that I want to see in my employees, where I’m very open about sharing about my misgivings or my feelings or things that I thought about the strategy that I’m not so sure about, then it really opens them up to share also their misgivings.

[00:07:44] Ying Cong: Right. And they become more vulnerable at the same time. I also seen it the other way around when we hire new leaders and these leaders have a very different setting from me. Right. More task-oriented, a little bit more opaque. Right. And then people start to clam up.

[00:07:57] Cheryl: Right.

[00:07:58] Ying Cong: They’ll be more efficient in the short term, but they’ll clam up in the long run. And, and so it is really, it does come down from the leader. The leader, how you model your behavior in meetings, in all your interactions. It will trickle down, uh, to the, to the whole employee base after, after a certain time.

[00:08:13] Cheryl: But do you ever run into the, I guess, hiring fallacy of hiring people that are more like you? Mm, yeah. Yes. And yeah. Then how do you counter that? For example, you know, you are giving the example of the leader who was very different.

[00:08:26] Ying Cong: Yes, yes.

[00:08:27] Cheryl: But I’m sure he also brings with him a lot of benefit.

[00:08:30] Ying Cong: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.

[00:08:31] Cheryl: How you maintain that, right?

[00:08:32] Ying Cong: That is, that is one of the difficult part about… like you can never be perfect. So there’s a reason why we hired that leader and he’s still with us, and because he’s making impact in a certain way. The problem… yeah, we made the problem in the beginning.

[00:08:46] Ying Cong: We hire a lot of people who are very, uh, friendly, very warm. And, uh, a a flip side of that is that you tend to not address fundamental problems in the company so head-on.

[00:09:00] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:09:00] Ying Cong: Yeah. So, yeah. So we brought on this leader because, uh, he was a good contrast to us. Mm-hmm. Yeah. He could, right in the first interview and the first meeting, he really made it very clear to employee base, okay, these are the problems that I see in the company that I feel we have to address.

[00:09:14] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:15] Ying Cong: Right? But then the balance that he need to strike is that he has to abide by certain inviolable principles that you want to have as a company. So one of the inviolable principles that we realize that we want to have, because there are people who violated them, is that you want to do this in a constructive spirit. Do it in the spirit of “let’s build this back together”.

[00:09:35] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:09:35] Ying Cong: Because we have hired leaders who also have that critical mindset, very objective, but they have the mindset of, oh, “everyone in the past they did a bad job.” Mm-hmm. Right? “Let me take this all down. And I do it my own way.” Right. It is not a collaborative, constructive, “build this together” kind of mindset.

[00:09:52] Ying Cong: And that’s caused a tremendous amount of damage in the culture, in the business. Yeah. So to answer your question, to summarize it very succinctly, right, is you want to have a base of inviolable principles, sort of like a, in Buddhism we have the five precepts that are inviolable. Yeah. Right. The foundation.

[00:10:10] Ying Cong: But then above that base you can have very different configurations and that gives you contrast and that gives you diversity as a leadership team. Yeah.

[00:10:19] Cheryl: Beautiful. One very interesting thing that I want to ask you: has there ever been a moment in your career where you were not able to hold your five precepts?

[00:10:29] Ying Cong: No. No. It’s been, that was my inviolable principles, uh, ever since, uh, I, I was young. I have… okay, there are situations where I’ve come close.

[00:10:42] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:42] Ying Cong: And usually the principle about not lying.

[00:10:45] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:10:46] Ying Cong: There’s the principle that we are taught not to lie, but actually if you read the sutta more closely, actually there’s some variations of it where there’s stronger forms of it, where you don’t even tell white lies or you don’t embellish the truth and you try not to, you don’t gossip also.

[00:11:02] Ying Cong: Right. Nothing that’s divisive. So I come close to that when you have to pitch to investors and, and I, I made a mistake where I was sharing too openly about all the problems in the company. I remember there was this one investor meeting where my co-founder brought me and they were pitching AI, yeah, as one of the, uh, one of the value propositions or the competitive advantages of Glints, and then I just came into the meeting and this investor asked me, “Hey, so how’s the AI?” Then I say, “Oh, not very good yet. Still a lot of things to work on. Very basic at the moment.”

[00:11:36] Cheryl: Oh no.

[00:11:38] Ying Cong: Then my co-founder like, just face palm silently in the back and after the meeting he told me, “Hey, can you don’t do that or not? Doesn’t help my case at all.” The investors did join, uh, still invested eventually because of other reasons. Yeah. So I had to learn to manage that.

[00:11:56] Ying Cong: Right. So I still… but I still hold my line. I wouldn’t tell a, an explicit lie. Mm. But I would see the situation and actually the Buddha did talk about this, like, what’s the right thing to say at the right time?

[00:12:07] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:12:07] Ying Cong: Right. So I, I know that wasn’t very helpful to my co-founder at, at the very least. Right. So I, I learned that there are many ways you can present the facts that’s still being truthful.

[00:12:18] Ying Cong: Right. But it’s more aligned to what this, what the situation cause for. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. So, so I learned in, in certain meetings I would say, uh, when you ask about the situation of the AI, I tell them, “okay, this is the current foundation that we are building and this is where we, we feel like we can get to. And this, uh, this is a roadmap to getting there.”

[00:12:36] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:12:36] Ying Cong: Instead of just being saying, “oh, we’re not there. It’s very basic.”

[00:12:39] Cheryl: Yeah. It is about packaging the truth in a way that’s beneficial for yourself and others. Yes. It’s a very difficult, um, thing to balance, especially when there’s so much pressure to, to get some investors money and, and all that.

[00:12:55] Ying Cong: Correct. Correct. Correct, correct, correct.

[00:12:56] Cheryl: But have you seen how the five precepts protected you in the workplace?

[00:13:02] Ying Cong: Yeah, it’s protected me in other ways. I think the biggest one is when you are consistently truthful, and when sometimes to your own detriment, then people will trust you actually.

[00:13:14] Ying Cong: Mm, yeah. People will trust you. So the people in my company know me as like the principal who, who was a monk before. And, and they do trust me with very, uh, some very personal sharings.

[00:13:27] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:13:27] Ying Cong: Because they know that I always tell them, I always share the truth, even when it’s ugly from the management team or the leadership team, from a strategy perspective.

[00:13:37] Ying Cong: I tell them, okay, this is what exactly is difficult for the next phase that we are going into. I still remember, um, this, this also during the COVID period, uh, where we have eventually to, to lay off, uh, a portion of employee base in order to save the company. PR/ marketing team person, she wanted me to lead that message first, right?

[00:14:00] Ying Cong: Because in the past, uh, we, we had slightly different, slightly different approaches like with me and my co-founder, my CEO. So he’s more polished, right? Mm-hmm. You try to frame the message in a way that’s palatable, um, easy to digest for the employee base. So in the past, for example, the PR crisis, you try to frame it in a way that saying that, okay, yeah, we stand strong.

[00:14:21] Ying Cong: It wouldn’t affect us so much. But then my approach was slightly different and I was like, okay, this is exactly what happened. This is exactly what we screwed up and this is what we can do better. Mm-hmm. Right? And I find employees over time, they, they respond to the second way better. Mm-hmm.

[00:14:37] Ying Cong: Right? Um, when you, when you treat them as intelligent human beings, they also respond in kind. They’ll see you as someone trustworthy. Right. So, so yes, it is helped me in that way. So we find that many times right when employees leave us, it is not because, the company was going through difficult times.

[00:14:54] Ying Cong: Mm. It’s because when we go through difficult times and we didn’t tell them the whole truth. Mm. Then that’s when they felt like the trust has been broken. Yeah. There was a period in time when our, after our Series A, uh, before our Series A, we were running out of cash. We were actually down to two months of payroll and it was a team of 15 people.

[00:15:10] Ying Cong: And we sat him around the table and we, I, I… and we told them very, very honestly. We only have two months of payroll left. We’re not sure whether we can close this next round.

[00:15:20] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:21] Ying Cong: But if you want to leave, you can. We are, we can leave on good terms. We can pay you the last two months of pay.

[00:15:27] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:28] Ying Cong: And then everyone stayed. Mm-hmm. Everyone stayed for that. The reason because we were honest and, and they wanted, they wanted to stick through to see what happened next. Mm-hmm. But then there were periods where we were less than honest, less than open about what’s going on in the company.

[00:15:41] Ying Cong: Like a leader left, right, because of some mismanagement on our part. And we didn’t tell them the full truth. We told them, oh, this person left because of their personal reasons. Mm. And people just immediately after the announcement come ask me, “Hey, is that true or not?”

[00:15:56] Cheryl: They know you will tell the truth.

[00:15:57] Ying Cong: “Tell me the real truth.” So I tell them.

[00:16:03] Cheryl: But can you also tell me about the biggest disagreement that you’ve had with your co-founders and how did you use Buddhist principles to overcome that?

[00:16:12] Ying Cong: The biggest one, the hardest one was when our third co-founder, uh, left us, we split. So we started off with three co-founders and we ran it for five years, and then we, around the fourth to fifth year, my current CEO, Oswald, and this co-founder who left, they started having major disagreements around vision, right? Where the company should go. That’s the biggest one, but also the underlying one that has been pegging them is difference in philosophy.

[00:16:44] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:45] Ying Cong: Um, this other co-founder who left, he was more process-driven. He’s much more about being very scrappy and going for quick wins. Right. Whereas Oswald, he’s about the bigger vision, where we can go in the long run and let’s not do things just for this small quick win in the short run. Yeah. And it is both perfectly valid, right. Um, both have very valid approaches.

[00:17:06] Cheryl: And what was your philosophy?

[00:17:08] Ying Cong: Me. Back then I was just interested in building the tech. Mm. Right. So I was like the neutral third party. Sometimes I come in to try to manage it, but unwillingly, begrudgingly. Uh, so I was also caught in between both of them.

[00:17:19] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:17:19] Ying Cong: Right. Uh, but this was building up for quite some time already. Even when we first —

[00:17:23] Cheryl: simmering.

[00:17:23] Ying Cong: Yeah. Just simmering in background, you know. When we first started the company, we already knew there were some differences, but we didn’t, we thought, okay, you can, people are really like, you can, you know, just be resolved over time.

[00:17:32] Ying Cong: So we just started building and building and building until eventually there was this, uh, internship business where we are helping polytechnics do internship trips to Jakarta, to different Southeast Asian markets. And we were charging for that. It was doing a good, a good amount of, uh, cash flow but that was it. They can’t, the business, you know, is not scalable. It cannot grow.

[00:17:54] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:17:54] Ying Cong: So this co-founder, like who eventually left right, he wanted to keep growing, growing that, trying to keep pushing and putting more resources in it. Um, but Oswald and I saw that, okay, maybe it, it’s quite clear this can’t scale, um, but we avoided a conversation for a while. Um, we just skirted around it and say, Hey, can you, yeah, this, there’s this problem, but you just keep running and see where you can go.

[00:18:16] Ying Cong: And then eventually the, the truth was very obvious. It can’t, it can’t grow anymore and we have to, uh, shut it down in order to grow this other part of business, which is more promising.

[00:18:25] Ying Cong: And it became very personal because this was his idea, this was his baby, and it was like him versus us, kind of a dynamic, uh, at the very end. So there, there came a point where we felt like, eventually Oswald and him couldn’t work together anymore. And now I was caught in between and they asked me to decide, oh, what should next step be?

[00:18:46] Cheryl: Oh no they (push the responsibility) taichi it to you to make the tough decision.

[00:18:48] Ying Cong: Yeah, because I was a neutral third party right. So I was caught in between and I really didn’t know what to do. It was, it was so, such a difficult, I was close friends with, uh, both of them. And then I thought, okay, in such situations, what would the Buddha do?

[00:19:05] Ying Cong: Like what, what would I be taught when I was learning from my teachers in the past? How would they approach this kind of situation? And first of all, what I did was, um, I, I first took away the emotions. Just from a very detached point of view, look at, from the business fundamentals, what’s the path that we will approach.

[00:19:21] Ying Cong: Mm-hmm. Right? And that, that came much more naturally to me because of the meditation practice. You’re always taught to, at a certain point, look at your emotions. Look at feelings from a third person’s point of view. Mm. Okay. Yeah. How much suffering is it causing you? And I was doing that for the business.

[00:19:37] Ying Cong: Mm. Then after I made the business decision, it is around how do you then execute that business decision in a way that’s the most compassionate, uh, to both parties, to everyone involved. And, and, and, and that was the approach I took. So you, you first approach it with wisdom, a little bit more calculated, but with wisdom then you then apply it with, uh, compassion after the decision has been made.

[00:20:01] Ying Cong: Yeah. So that’s the approach I took, I first told everyone, this is the, the cold hard facts, right? We can’t avoid this. This business cannot grow. This is where it’s more promising. Uh, this is where we need to go. Right. And then it was about, uh, approaching with them in the, in the most compassionate way.

[00:20:18] Ying Cong: So it’s like telling the co-founder, “I know that you have built this for this, this amount of time. I know it’s your baby and we acknowledge all the efforts that you put in. Um, but this is why I think we cannot go on any further.” Mm.

[00:20:29] Cheryl: Right.

[00:20:29] Ying Cong: So, and then

[00:20:30] Cheryl: so compassion seems to me, um, is by acknowledging the effort that a person put in. Yeah. Um, and showing a lot of gratitude to the, to what they’ve done and contributed.

[00:20:39] Ying Cong: Correct.

[00:20:39] Cheryl: Anything else?

[00:20:40] Ying Cong: Correct. Correct. I think those two actually go very far already.

[00:20:44] Cheryl: Yeah.

[00:20:44] Ying Cong: Because, I’m not sure, if you have been in the business world for 10 years, you realize that sometimes it is in quite short supply just acknowledging a person’s efforts, being grateful for what they’ve done. Right. Um, and also it’s, and also acknowledging that the friendship between both of you isn’t affected by this decision. Right.

[00:21:03] Cheryl: Is it really though?

[00:21:07] Ying Cong: For me, it was true, like I kept it because a big part of why sometimes people don’t dare to make these kind of decisions about letting people go or shutting down a business is because they are affected. They’re afraid that this person might feel, uh, excluded, right, or left out. And I’ve been on the other, I’ve been on the receiving end too, when I have to, I’ve been informed that my business unit has been shut down.

[00:21:27] Ying Cong: Mm. Right. And the biggest fear that I have is, well, I lose my, uh, my identity in this group where they start to reject me. Will I be, will I be ostracized? Yeah. So that is something that you have to assure, uh, right up front also. Yeah. So this is a part of that connection. You, you start to see these fears when you are open to that person’s, uh, inner, inner thoughts and inner feelings.

[00:21:50] Cheryl: Yeah. Wow. And that really reminds me about a sutta about metta, which is, I think it’s in the Dhammapada. Mm-hmm. Where, you know, all beings just like us, fear death, fear pain. Yes. And only want to be happy. Yeah. Um, I think we will find a quote later and insert it somewhere here. Yeah. Um, but yeah, really being able to see the same fears that you have, um, exist in other people, even in difficult situations.

[00:22:19] Ying Cong: Exactly.

[00:22:19] Cheryl: And speak to that.

[00:22:20] Ying Cong: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. For me, one of the biggest change that helped with that empathy right, was when I stood down as a CTO. Uh, and then, uh, I was leading a small team, and then there were, then, now I stood down, stood out that position again from complete management perspective, and I played a individual contributor role. Mm. And from a very conventional perspective, that seems like a demotion.

[00:22:44] Cheryl: Mm. Right.

[00:22:44] Ying Cong: But for me, it would just open up so many perspectives. Now I see things from also an individual contributor’s point of view. Mm. And I can empathize a lot of what the leaders say, how, how it actually affects the employees.

[00:22:55] Ying Cong: Mm. Right. There are a lot of fears that I have as leaders, uh, actually the employees have it by a slightly different form. Right. So, so to me that was very eye-opening, being able to play different roles and then you can see, oh, this is what they, how they felt when I say that, okay, now I’ll approach it differently the next time. Yeah, yeah.

[00:23:12] Cheryl: There’s a massive learning ground when you take on all the different hats without the ego of like, oh, this is demoting me. Correct, correct, correct. I’m co-founder.

[00:23:20] Ying Cong: Can always lean on the co-founder title.

[00:23:25] Cheryl: I’m very inspired by Ying Cong’s sharing and how he applies various aspects of his business from growing a, a team, leading a team and even to navigating disagreements between his co-founders and what I’ll be taking away is to have a giving competition with my friends and my colleagues. So thank you very much Ying Cong for coming on today’s episode. I hope you join us again. So, so to all our listeners, see you in the next episode. Stay happy and wise.


Resources:

Ying Cong’s article on giving: https://handfulofleaves.life/how-seeking-to-balance-everything-nearly-cost-me-my-relationship/


Special thanks to our sponsors:

Buddhist Youth Network, Lim Soon Kiat, Alvin Chan, Tan Key Seng, Soh Hwee Hoon, Geraldine Tay, Venerable You Guang, Wilson Ng, Diga, Joyce, Tan Jia Yee, Joanne, Suñña, Shuo Mei, Arif, Bernice, Wee Teck, Andrew Yam, Kan Rong Hui, Wei Li Quek, Shirley Shen, Ezra, Joanne Chan, Hsien Li Siaw, Gillian Ang, Wang Shiow Mei, Ong Chye Chye, Melvin, Yoke Kuen, Nai Kai Lee, Amelia Toh, Hannah Law, Shin Hui Chong, Dennis Lee


Editor of this episode:

Aparajita Ghose

Website: aparajitayoga.com


Transcriber of this episode:

Tan Si Jing, Cheryl Cheah, Bernice Bay


Visual and Sound Effects

Anton Thorne, Tan Pei Shan, Ang You Shan


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Ep 60: The $200M Entrepreneur Who Meditates 2 Hours a Day ft. Ying Cong

Ep 60: The $200M Entrepreneur Who Meditates 2 Hours a Day ft. Ying Cong

by | Jul 18, 2025 | Podcast

https://youtu.be/RQl0yPGC9ho


Summary

Startup founder Ying Cong shares his journey of building Glints while applying Buddhist teachings to navigate the intense emotional highs and lows of entrepreneurship. He reflects on lessons in generosity, impermanence, and leadership through real-life challenges like layoffs and PR crises. His story reveals how Dhamma helps reframe success and suffering in business.


About the Speaker

👤 Ying Cong is a long-time meditator and the co-founder of Glints, a leading career platform in Southeast Asia. Over the past decade, he helped scale the company from an idea incubated by JFDI to a regional startup featured in major publications like The Straits Times and Yahoo News. As Glints’ former CTO and current machine learning engineer, he has worked on recommender systems, fraud detection, and data infrastructure—though he jokes that most of it is just “glorified data cleaning.”

His Dhamma journey began in his teenage years and continues to deepen through regular meditation, observing the precepts, and periods of monastic training in the Thai forest tradition. He is quietly exploring how to balance the responsibilities of lay life with the path of practice.


Key Takeaways

Meditation as a Leadership Tool

Regular practice helped Ying Cong stay grounded during stressful moments, including public controversies and internal crises.

The Power of Giving

Practicing generosity, even during financial strain, builds deeper trust and personal growth, dismantling ego-based attachment to money.

Everything is Impermanent

From funding offers to core team members, Ying Cong learns firsthand how clinging leads to suffering—and why letting go brings freedom.

Transcript

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Ying Cong: Running a startup is like a compressed samsara on steroids because…

[00:00:05] Cheryl: Compressed samsara on steroids is the worst combination.

[00:00:09] Ying Cong: It’s very high, it’s very low.

[00:00:10] Cheryl: The gains and loss.

[00:00:11] Ying Cong: The gains and loss. Correct. Correct. The eight world winds actually shows up very strongly when you’re founder. Grew up as a very frugal and some might say stingy person.

[00:00:21] Ying Cong: Mm. Yeah. I still remember one of my friends… I think one day he just told me, Hey, actually you’re quite kiam siap, a weakness I have to work on, especially coming into contact with Buddhism, they talk a lot about giving, about dana, right? Giving, the joy of giving. And it’s not just about building good karma, it’s also about piercing that ego that you build up and letting it deflate a little bit when you give what is dear to you.

[00:00:50] Cheryl: Welcome to the Handful of Leaves podcast, a Southeast Asian platform sharing Buddhist wisdom for a happier life. My name is Cheryl, the host for today’s podcast, and my guest today is Ying Chong, who is the co-founder of Glints, a recruitment platform that has expanded to eight markets. Today we will be talking about how Ying Cong applies the Buddha’s teachings to grow and build a successful regional business.

[00:01:14] Cheryl: Let’s have Ying Cong introduce himself.

[00:01:17] Ying Cong: Hello. Thank you so much, Cheryl. Hi everyone. My name is Ying Chong. I’m one the co-founder of Glints. I started this company about 11 years ago now. We actually dropped out school to start this internship platform back then, and eventually it grew and right now we are one of the biggest job platforms in Indonesia, primarily.

[00:01:37] Ying Cong: We also have presences in Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and a few other Southeast Asian markets. So for my role at Glints, I started off as a CTO at Glints but eventually I stepped down and I explored different roles within the company. So more recently I ran the Vietnam job marketplace and right now I’m also in charge of the machine learning operations within Glints.

[00:02:01] Ying Cong: As for Dharma, I was exposed quite young, when I was 10 years old. I still remember my uncle told me that you can see your past life if you meditate. So that was a hook and it got me, it got me addicted to this whole journey. And I also ordained as a Samanera for quite a few times when I was…

[00:02:20] Cheryl: what’s a Samanera?

[00:02:21] Ying Cong: Oh, I was a… it was a novice monk. Yeah. So you go there, you follow like 10 rules, 10 precepts and it just a 10 days kind of experience for you. So I did it a few times when I was in primary and secondary school. And then more recently I have been going for meditation retreats as well as pilgrimages with Cheryl actually, quite recently.

[00:02:42] Cheryl: And that’s how we recruited him to come on to today’s episode.

[00:02:45] Ying Cong: That’s right.

[00:02:47] Cheryl: So fast forward to today, Ying Chong was just sharing that he meditates two hours a day. Can you share with us how you… why do you prioritize meditation in your life and yeah, how do you find the time managing such a big business?

[00:03:02] Ying Cong: Yeah, so I was actually inspired on the pilgrimage by our teacher who brought us along — Ajahn Achalo. He is very big about the faith-based, way to approaching Buddhism and as well as making aspirations at the different, Buddhist sites.

[00:03:10] Ying Cong: So one of my aspirations was to continue the daily meditation practice I have but to step it up a little bit even more. So, I gave myself the goal to meditate 600 hours before my next birthday, which is…

[00:03:33] Cheryl: 600 hours. Wow.

[00:03:35] Ying Cong: About two hours per day if you do the math. Yeah. So that’s, that was, that was when I made that aspiration. And it is honestly… it is not easy, right? So for me, I do it a little bit before I go to work, about half an hour, 20 minutes, then one and a half hours after I come back from work. So that is how I try to fit it in. Mm.

[00:03:57] Cheryl: Your commitment and dedication is really inspiring. Could you perhaps share with us a time where meditation has helped you in a very pivotal moment managing Glints?

[00:04:07] Ying Cong: Mm, well, it’s only been a month since I made the aspiration, right? So we shall see. But I’ve been meditating fairly regularly since about five years ago, about halfway through my journey at Glints.

[00:04:20] Ying Cong: And I would say, I mean, it just helped me, like throughout the whole journey, a lot of very stressful moments as well as any good moments, right? You learn not to.. You learn not to attach to them. So there was a very particular… I remember there was a very particular PR crisis that happened to us about three, four years ago.

[00:04:41] Ying Cong: That was actually very, very stressful for the management team and the meditation practice actually helped me just very gently in the background. Right. So, as I explained earlier, we are a cross border hiring platform. So we have portals from different markets. So there was this one particular company, there was an Indonesian company.

[00:05:01] Ying Cong: They were hiring in Indonesia, actually, but they mis-listed their job listing in Singapore. Right. So it showed up in our Singapore portal. A Singaporean candidate applied for it, and this employer thinking that this candidate is not suitable, he just added a very blunt rejection reason. Say, no Singaporeans allowed. He thought it was a, he thought was a rejection reason that only the system can see, but actually we sent it to a candidate.

[00:05:27] Cheryl: Oh no.

[00:05:28] Ying Cong: And you must keep in mind that this was near the general elections period where there was this hot topic of foreign talent, right. And Singaporean is keeping their jobs here.

[00:05:39] Cheryl: That’s such bad timing.

[00:05:40] Ying Cong: Yeah, it was a terrible timing. So this, this candidate was super pissed off. he posted it on Reddit. Mm. And it initially was, it was fine. Like a few employees saw it and they flagged out to the management team. And as a management team, as a startup, you are always stretched, you’re always out of time, out of resources. So initially we didn’t really take it too seriously, right?

[00:06:07] Ying Cong: But then this thread started gaining some traction on Reddit. People started saying, oh, Glints is such a, you know, such a… is funded by Singaporeans right? But why is it not supporting Singaporeans? So this kind of comments started coming up, and eventually our CEO had to address it to the whole company.

[00:06:25] Ying Cong: But then understandably back then when he first addressed in the company he was slightly dismissive about it because you can imagine from his point of view, he’s trying to raise money. He trying to get a company to survive for the next round. And then this thing from Reddit came about. Mm. So he thought, okay, this is like a small thing, right?

[00:06:43] Ying Cong: We can just let it pass. We know that it’s, it is not our fault. Mm. Right. But then it started getting bigger and bigger. The fire started burning, so people started sharing that on their social media, on Facebook, on Instagram, and our employees flag it up to us again, this time with more like, more worry.

[00:07:02] Ying Cong: And I felt like, okay, this summer we really have to address it and address it the right way. So during all hands, I first of all apologized for the management team’s response in the first instance. And then we quickly got together a team to do that, coordinate the whole PR effort. So we contacted the candidate, apologized.

[00:07:22] Ying Cong: We also put out a statement. It was like a whole overnight thing that we did. And eventually it managed to get resolved. Mm. Right. But then, my reflection learning from the whole experience was that, you know, when you are running a company, a lot of things that happen to your company, you feel like it’s not your fault.

[00:07:40] Ying Cong: Mm. But you really do have to address it. You can’t ignore it. And a very short while later, when I reflect on this whole incident, I realized, oh, actually it’s a little bit like meditation. Hmm. Where, you know, sometimes a little bit of suffering comes up or some craving comes up. Right. And my tendency is to ignore it.

[00:07:58] Ying Cong: Mm-hmm. Like to look away from that suffering. But then when you look away then the suffering can still proliferate. Mm, yeah. So that was like a very interesting analogy that I saw from this incident where, oh, you have to sort of look straight at it, don’t flinch away, and then sort of address it in the wisest way you think is possible.

[00:08:18] Cheryl: It reminds me of the very famous quote, whatever you resist, will just keep persisting.

[00:08:23] Ying Cong: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Whatever you resist, persist, right? Mm. Yeah. Is exactly the same.

[00:08:27] Cheryl: And that’s what meditation helps us with, right? To really train our attention to go to the root cause of our suffering. Correct. And then finding the right way to address it.

[00:08:37] Ying Cong: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So it applies internally and in a company setting, it also applies externally to a bigger group of people. Yeah.

[00:08:45] Cheryl: So I’m curious. After, after the whole PR crisis. How, I guess, how has your company rebuilt its reputation?

[00:08:55] Ying Cong: Hmm. So that’s the tricky thing about reputation. It, it gets… it takes a long time to build and just a day to get destroyed. And thankfully we contained the situation. Mm-hmm. It didn’t go too far beyond those few people who were posting on social media and then the Reddit, the poster eventually agreed to take it down. Mm-hmm.

[00:09:16] Ying Cong: So that was contained, but within those people who knew about it, I mean, you then have to spend the next few years doing the right thing to rebuild it again. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So. That is the hard truth about reputation. Yeah.

[00:09:28] Cheryl: Yeah. So easy to just break apart. Exactly. Exactly. And it takes years to build trust. Yeah.

[00:09:34] Ying Cong: Takes years to build. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:35] Cheryl: So I’ve come across your writings in the Handful of Leaves platform. Mm-hmm. And something very interesting that came up to me was the concept of giving.

[00:09:44] Ying Cong: Ah, yes. Yeah.

[00:09:45] Cheryl: You mentioned that, you know, givers experience the most joy. Yeah. And that’s almost counterintuitive in our normal corporate world today, where everyone’s about taking, getting ahead. Maybe you can share a personal story where choosing selfless giving in your business actually benefited you and your team.

[00:10:02] Ying Cong: Hmm. The reason why I picked that topic to write about in Handful of Leaves is because I grew up as a very frugal and some might say stingy person. Yeah. I still remember one of my friends, one day he just told me, “Hey, actually you’re quite kiam siap”. So I realized that was a weakness I have to work on, especially coming into contact with Buddhism.

[00:10:26] Ying Cong: They talk a lot about giving, about dana, right? Giving, the joy of giving, and it’s not just about building good karma, it’s also about piercing the ego that you build up and letting it deflate a little bit when you give what is dear to you. So, it is a really a lesson that I have to learn the hard way.

[00:10:43] Ying Cong: And Glints, I mean, in the beginning, I have to be honest, when I started this company, one of the big goals for me was financial freedom. Mm-hmm. Right? To build up a base of financial freedom for myself. But then we really quickly realized that if you want to build something meaningful and big and impactful, you need people to jump on board together with you. And for that to happen, you have to give. People who won’t work for someone who is not gonna give to them. Mm-hmm. Right? So that is just the basics of human relationship. I still remember it very clearly, this one incident during the COVID period.

[00:11:24] Ying Cong: This was the early period COVID, early 2020s, where people didn’t know what was gonna happen to the economy and everyone just froze up. Like the whole economy just froze up. Everybody stopped hiring. Mm. And we are a recruitment platform, so when people stop hiring, our businesses dried up and we very, very quickly realized we have to cut down our cost in order to survive.

[00:11:48] Ying Cong: So there was this very dreadful meeting, like I still remember where basically the whole management team sat down together. We say we had to cut our costs by this much. The biggest cost in most companies is the labor. Yep. Right? So we have this whole spreadsheet of everybody’s names and their salaries beside them.

[00:12:00] Cheryl: Oh, that gives me the jitters, because I have been through a layoff before and what he’s saying is scary.

[00:12:06] Ying Cong: Oh yes. Oh yeah, yeah. HR, right? So yes, HR was at the table too. Yeah. So basically we had to… each leader has to commit to cutting a certain amount of costs from their team and like basically letting go a certain number of team members from their team. Yeah. So me, I was running the engineering team back then as a CTO and also product and design.

[00:12:27] Ying Cong: So I also had to commit to a number of cuts. And there was this one designer, he was our designer lead back at the time, and he was one of our very early designers who really helped us in the beginning. But unfortunately part of that decision I had to let him go. And I remember I did a call with him.

[00:12:44] Ying Cong: He was based in the Philippines. It was a Zoom call and I told him the situation, right? And I say, we have to, you know, let you go. And at that moment he started crying. Mm, yeah, he started crying. He was very scared and very sad. And he told me that he, yeah, he has a new baby coming along the way, and maybe because of this situation, he has to move back to his hometown away from Manila, where the costs are lower.

[00:13:11] Ying Cong: And at that moment I didn’t know what to say. Right. So we ended a call very awkwardly back then. I said, yeah, I mean, sorry that this has to happen, but yeah. Sorry about this. And I ended the call. And then after I ended the call, there was a moment that I wanted to, you know, revert the decision and say, okay, we can keep you, right.

[00:13:32] Ying Cong: But then imagine, right, I already made a promise to my management team. We had that call, everyone has already made that decision, right? So it’s like a decision that we have to go through and it’s about how you can make it as easy as possible for this person. So, you know, we have a few conversations after that and eventually he agreed to go, but he also asked for an extra month of severance.

[00:13:56] Ying Cong: And then, as you know, in HR and also in our management team, they teach you never to give exceptions in this kind of situations to any employees because they will incur like unfairness and resentment in everyone else. So it’s a very difficult situation and I thought very long and hard about it. And I also meditated on it a little bit.

[00:14:13] Ying Cong: Eventually I decided to give him, but out of my own salary, right? So I told him, okay, I’ll give yeah, this one month, I understand your situation. But this, it is a personal favor, right? It’s not, it is not a company policy, right? And he said, yeah, thank you so much. I know it’s very hard, but it’s hard for all of us.

[00:14:32] Ying Cong: So eventually we parted on good terms and he managed to do well for himself. And actually a few years later he did rejoin us for a while as a designer again. Yeah. So that was very hard for me. Back then, I was so tight on money. We all took pay cuts as founders too. And for me, when growing up, money was a very scarce resource in my family.

[00:14:53] Ying Cong: So it was like a… it’s like a thing for me, like, to give up money. And so that was a difficult situation. Yeah. But eventually when I did that, I also instantly just felt more relieved. Yeah. For some reason I just felt relieved. I felt I did the right thing.

[00:15:08] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:15:08] Ying Cong: Yeah.

[00:15:08] Cheryl: What do you think you let go of from being someone who’s kiam siap –yeah, right, holding on tightly to the money — to taking out portion of your income when times are tough for you as well. What do you let go of?

[00:15:20] Ying Cong: Hmm. So one thing I realized is that money is a story that we tell ourselves, right? Back then when I was young, I thought it was a resource that we owned. But actually beyond being able to sustain, feed yourself, feed your family, have a place to stay, it is a story that we tell ourselves.

[00:15:37] Ying Cong: So the story I was telling is that money represented how well I doing, how safe I feel in life, how much status I have. Right? There was a story I told myself at the beginning of Glints. Then I have to let it go. Right. Still had to let it go.

[00:15:51] Ying Cong: I started to see, okay, that actually that’s not true. Right. You can, you save in other ways and then sometimes, yeah, people don’t really ask you how much you have in your bank account. It’s not like you’re gonna stop next month also right, for a lot of us.

[00:16:05] Ying Cong: So I began to let go of the story and when you let go the story, then things like this become easier. Oh, this is a story. I can, yeah, it’s fine if I give like a portion of my salary. Right. It’s fine. Yeah.

[00:16:16] Cheryl: Oh, that’s really beautiful.

[00:16:19] Ying Cong: Thank you.

[00:16:19] Cheryl: And initially you also shared that when you wanted to create something meaningful, you have to bring people on board. Yes. And that’s by giving? Yes. So what does “meaning” mean to you now? After this 11 years journey with Glints and… 11 years and ongoing.

[00:16:37] Ying Cong: Oh yeah. And ongoing. It never ends. It’s like Samsara.

[00:16:40] Cheryl: Oh no.

[00:16:42] Ying Cong: Yeah. Oh yes. Okay. So that has been a huge transformation for me. I always joke with my co-founder because he’s also a Buddhist. Ah, yeah. And I joke with him that running a startup is like a compressed samsara on steroids because…

[00:17:00] Cheryl: Compressed samsara on steroids, that’s the worst combination.

[00:17:03] Ying Cong: …there’s so much pain and pleasure and it’s very high, it’s very low.

[00:17:07] Cheryl: The gains and loss.

[00:17:08] Ying Cong: The gains and loss. Correct, correct. The eight worldly winds actually shows up very strongly when you’re founder.

[00:17:14] Ying Cong: Mm. And people join you, but people also leave, and this also happens on a very compressed timeline. So in the beginning, when I first started Glints, what it meant for me partly was what I mentioned earlier, right? The financial stability, the financial freedom it can grant me. Mm. And of course I have dreams of becoming someone of status within the tech community.

[00:17:38] Ying Cong: So that was my initial founding motivation. Not the noblest or brightest, but that was honestly how I started. And then very quickly you realize, okay, those things, first of all, they don’t come that easily. Mm. Right. And even if they came, they also go away quite quickly. Mm. Right. I remember when we were running the business, we bootstrapped it for the first few years, and then all of a sudden there was this CIO from a competitor firm, I shan’t name, but they are a much bigger firm in our space. And then they, he came…

[00:18:07] Cheryl: Was it blue?

[00:18:11] Ying Cong: (laughing) So yes, he came and he basically had a few conversations with us, coffee chats. Mm-hmm. And then suddenly at the end of those coffee chats, he asked, you know, you guys seem to be doing something quite promising. What if I give you a few million dollars, like two or $3 million?

[00:18:27] Ying Cong: And then, you know, back then we were so poor, right? So my co-founder kicked me under the table and was like, yeah, don’t say anything.

[00:18:34] Cheryl: Go for it!

[00:18:35] Ying Cong: And then , we tried to hold ourselves and be serious, right? But after he left, we just like, whoa, banging the wall. Okay. We made it. wow, that’s the most money that we ever seen in our whole life.

[00:18:48] Cheryl: And that’s the ultimate success in the startup world, right? Yeah. Bought out by someone else.

[00:18:51] Ying Cong: Correct. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And then we were so happy we thought we made it. And then at the next meeting he ghosted to us. That’s why I didn’t wanna name the company. He ghosted to us. He didn’t reply our calls. He didn’t show up anymore for our meeting. And that was it. Just like that. Oh, so…

[00:19:12] Cheryl: Wow. Your hopes are just dashed.

[00:19:13] Ying Cong: Yeah, just dashed immediately. Ah, yeah. So in that few… and this all happened over one week. Yeah. So in that one week we saw that whole… this whole thing, right? Where you had this gain that you thought you had, and then it was immediately lost and it was just so painful and it’s so obvious to me, how fickle all these things were.

[00:19:30] Ying Cong: Mm. Right. So that was in the beginning, right? So it was about fame, a little bit of money. But then eventually I started to build a team and I started building very strong relationships with the team. And at that point in time, this is about like four, five years in, right?

[00:19:44] Ying Cong: I thought, okay, because maybe this, the startup is about the relationships that you built along with you, the people around you. And I started forming very strong, close relationship. I treated them like family almost. Mm. So, that was my middle phase. And then eventually I realized no matter how well you treat people, eventually they will still leave.

[00:20:05] Ying Cong: Mm-hmm. Yeah. They’ll leave your company, and for different reasons. Right. Sometimes it’s mistakes that you made as a manager sometimes because the company’s not going the direction they want, you’re not providing the growth they need, and sometimes it’s just impermanence. Mm-hmm. They just need to leave because they have been here for too long.

[00:20:21] Ying Cong: Yeah. And when, at first, when a few of these core members started leaving, I felt very impacted. Because this was my family. Mm-hmm. And this was the meaning of why I was building this startup. Mm. But then I realized, okay, maybe this what the Buddha meant. Mm. Even the most… with the noblest of intentions, with the biggest of efforts, things that you treasure will still leave you.

[00:20:42] Ying Cong: Mm. And this was the case in the middle phase. I realized, ah, eventually, eventually, all of the core team that I build up in that phase after three to four to five years, all of them left. All of them left except for the few founders, and new people came in.

[00:20:57] Ying Cong: And I realised, okay, well this, I thought this was a very… higher level of meaning, right? Compared to money to the fame, but even this was impermanent. Even this was impermanent. And now I’m into the third phase now where I see everything just changing. Mm-hmm. And you do your best in that situation. There are some things that are still durable in a business. Right. Like your customer relationships, like your brand reputation, that last longer in the context of a human lifetime.

[00:21:23] Ying Cong: Mm-hmm. But you have to keep reminding — eventually they will still fade away. Right. So you try to do this in a way to develop yourself. Also, you treat it as a vehicle to develop your giving. For me it was part of that your sort of impact to the world. Right. So it’s more like a training and those kind of qualities, they tend to stay with you longer than money, than people. Yeah.

[00:21:46] Cheryl: This really reminds me of the sutta, the noble and ignoble search sutta where the Buddha say, why bother — i’m not quoting like exactly, but — why bother searching for things that are liable to break down, liable to, you know, impermanence. Yeah. Why not search for things that, you know, go beyond the deathless, go beyond the cycle of Samsara, the deathless.

[00:22:10] Ying Cong: Correct, correct, correct, correct, correct. That was, that was actually, yeah, it took many years of pain to actually see what the Buddha is talking about in that sutta, right. In the beginning, I was exposed to Dhamma and I did it firstly for the past life psychic power. And then in the middle it was like, maybe the jhanas are very nice and samadhi is very nice and can maybe help you with your worldly life.

[00:22:35] Ying Cong: Right? With my school, with concentration. And then you start to experience all this, like you really just put your best effort and try to hold things right, like people, and they still leave and you’re, oh, okay, yeah, maybe there was something else. Yeah. And I think that’s what the Buddha was pointing to.

[00:22:51] Cheryl: That’s where you start to develop the wisdom to see things as they are. That’s really nothing that can be satisfactory in things that are just liable to change and break down.

[00:22:59] Ying Cong: Exactly. Exactly. And there’s this phase where I was actually quite burnt out. I was quite burnt out. I didn’t know why , I was just feeling a bit down. And I realized it because, you know, life just doesn’t give you what you want.

[00:23:17] Cheryl: And the problem with it is we delude ourselves into finding different objects and hoping the same thing, that it won’t change.

[00:23:24] Ying Cong: Yes, yes, yes. But after a while we see the pattern.

[00:23:26] Cheryl: Yeah. Then like, ah, shit, the Buddha is still the genius.

[00:23:29] Ying Cong: There’s no running out of this samsara. Yeah. There’s no getting permanent satisfaction.

[00:23:34] Ying Cong: Yeah.

[00:23:35] Cheryl: But yes, saddhu. I really loved how you find meaning now, which is to find a way to treat everything that you experience as a way to develop and train yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Which is much more lasting and beneficial for you as well.

[00:23:48] Ying Cong: Yes, yes.


Resources:

Ying Cong’s article on giving: https://handfulofleaves.life/how-seeking-to-balance-everything-nearly-cost-me-my-relationship/


Special thanks to our sponsors:

Buddhist Youth Network, Lim Soon Kiat, Alvin Chan, Tan Key Seng, Soh Hwee Hoon, Geraldine Tay, Venerable You Guang, Wilson Ng, Diga, Joyce, Tan Jia Yee, Joanne, Suñña, Shuo Mei, Arif, Bernice, Wee Teck, Andrew Yam, Kan Rong Hui, Wei Li Quek, Shirley Shen, Ezra, Joanne Chan, Hsien Li Siaw, Gillian Ang, Wang Shiow Mei, Ong Chye Chye, Melvin, Yoke Kuen, Nai Kai Lee, Amelia Toh, Hannah Law, Shin Hui Chong


Editor of this episode:

Aparajita Ghose

Website: aparajitayoga.com


Transcriber of this episode:

Tan Si Jing, Bernice Bay


Visual and Sound Effects

Anton Thorne, Tan Pei Shan, Ang You Shan


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Being Gay, I Was Taught I’d Go to Hell. Then I Found the Buddha’s True Words.

Being Gay, I Was Taught I’d Go to Hell. Then I Found the Buddha’s True Words.

by | Jun 27, 2025 | LGBT, Read, Relationships

TLDR: This article explores the struggle of growing up gay in a conservative society and the conflicting messages from different Buddhist traditions. It highlights the Buddha’s early teachings, which focus not on sexual orientation but on living ethically, with compassion and non-harming.

Growing Up Gay in a Conservative Society

Being Gay, I Was Taught I’d Go to Hell. Then I Found the Buddha’s True Words.

At fourteen, I noticed something different about myself—something society deemed abnormal. I found myself attracted to the same sex. I attended an all-boys’ school where masculinity and heterosexual norms were paramount. Anything even remotely feminine was ridiculed, and being called “gay” meant mockery and marginalisation.

I began my long performance: a straight boy in disguise. It was the only way I felt safe.

There was no one I could trust. Friends, classmates, even my own parents—none offered support. I still remember the sting of hearing my parents comment on the news of a gay DJ who had murdered his ex-boyfriend. “See, gay people are crazy,” they said. “That’s why they end up like this.” Their words pierced deeper than they knew and I was scared of being found out.

With nowhere to turn, I sought solace in religion, hoping for compassion and understanding. Yet even there, I faced rejection. In major faith traditions, homosexuality is often condemned. In certain sects of Traditional Chinese Buddhism, being gay is seen as morally deviant, a karmic transgression.

Renowned masters like Venerable Hsuan Hua had openly declared that homosexuality “plants the seeds that lead to rebirth in the lower realms.” In one of his teachings, he said: 

大家要知道，同性戀是違背天地之理，忤逆人倫之惡行。在他們後面都由妖魔鬼怪所慫恿、煽風點火，叫人直奔地獄門。(Everyone must understand that homosexuality goes against the natural order of heaven and earth and is a vile act that defies human ethics. Behind them are demons and evil spirits inciting and fanning the flames, leading people straight to the gates of hell.)

Those words haunted me. (I thankfully found closure on his comments which I will cover at the end of the article). 

I bore a heavy burden of guilt and self-doubt, questioning my worth, my sanity, and my right to exist. For years, I silently wrestled with feeling unworthy in the eyes of society and religion. How could I reconcile my faith with who I was? How could I accept myself when everything around me screamed that I was broken? 

This is not just my story. It is the story of many others who suffer quietly in the shadows—longing for acceptance, for love, for peace.

Encountering Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda

Perhaps this is exactly what the Buddhist concept of causes and conditions (因缘) is all about. One day, while in search of a Dharma-based perspective on sexual identity—still unconvinced by Venerable Hsuan Hua’s interpretation—I came across the writings of Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda an esteemed Theravāda Buddhist scholar-monk widely revered in Malaysia and Singapore.

His article, titled “A Buddhist View of Homosexuality”, immediately caught my attention. I felt drawn to its perspective, hoping to find a voice of clarity and compassion. One bold line stood out to me:

“There is nothing intrinsically wrong with sex. What is wrong is attachment and slavery to it, on believing that indulgence in sex can bring ultimate happiness.”
— Ven. Dr. K. Sri Dhammananda (1919–2006)

Reading that, I was overwhelmed. Finally, an affirmation that my sexuality was not something inherently wrong or abnormal. Tears of relief and quiet joy welled up inside me.

Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda offered an insight that was refreshingly non-condemnatory. In essence, he explained that homosexuality—like heterosexuality—arises from ignorance, but it is not “sinful” in the Abrahamic religions’ sense. All forms of sexual desire, regardless of orientation, can increase lust, craving, and attachment to the body. Yet with wisdom, we gradually outgrow these attachments. 

The goal of the spiritual path is not to single out or condemn homosexuality, but to transcend all forms of clinging, recognising that they all delay our liberation from Samsāra.

Initially comforting, this balanced and compassionate perspective soon gave way to confusion. I noticed stark divisions among contemporary Buddhist masters. Though some teachers of Traditional Chinese Buddhism take a critical stance on homosexuality, Buddhist scholar Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda emphasises inner transformation over external condemnation.

This left me with a burning question: How do we, as queer Buddhists, navigate such contradictory views within the same spiritual tradition?

Turning to The Historical Buddha 

Being Gay, I Was Taught I’d Go to Hell. Then I Found the Buddha’s True Words.

In the face of contradictions among contemporary Buddhist voices, what could be wiser than to return to the earliest sources—to take refuge in the Early Scriptures that contain the voice of the historical Buddha, Gautama, himself? 

I embarked on a personal journey into the Early Suttas and Āgamas, with a focus on the Chinese Āgamas (《阿含經》), familiar to me through Chinese-language sources. My goal was to explore within the Chinese Buddhist tradition itself—not relying solely on later interpretive views but delving into the Buddhavacana, the words of the Buddha as preserved in scriptures Chinese Buddhists regard as authoritative.

I turned to the CBETA digital archive of the Taishō Tripiṭaka, accessing the Āgama texts to study what the Buddha had to say about topics like sexual misconduct. While there is a notable silence on LGBTQ-specific issues, what I discovered instead was wisdom and compassion from the Buddha who neither condemns nor excludes, but invites all beings onto the path. In Saṃyukta Āgama (SĀ) 10391:

行諸邪婬，若父母、兄弟、姊妹、夫主、親族，乃至授花鬘者，如是等護，以力強干，不離邪婬。[Engaging in sexual misconduct — if a woman is protected by her father, mother, brother, sister, husband, or relatives, or even one who has simply been offered a flower garland (signifying betrothal), and yet one forcibly violates her — this is not free from sexual misconduct.]

SImilarly, in Saṃyukta Āgama (SĀ) 10442:

我既不喜人侵我妻。他亦不喜。我今云何侵人妻婦。是故受持不他婬戒。(Just as I would not be pleased if someone violated my wife, so too others would not be pleased. How then could I violate another man’s wife? Therefore, I uphold the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.)

Also, in Madhyama Āgama: The Upāsaka Sūtra (MA)3: 

復次，舍梨子！白衣聖弟子離邪婬、斷邪婬，彼或有父所護，或母所護，或父母所護，或兄弟所護，或姊妹所護，或婦父母所護，或親親所護，或同姓所護，或為他婦女，有鞭罰恐怖，及有名雇債至華鬘親，不犯如是女。彼於邪淫淨除其心，白衣聖弟子善護行，此第三法。(Furthermore, Śāriputra, a noble white-clad [lay] disciple abstains from sexual misconduct, refrains from it. That means: he does not violate a woman who is protected by her father, or mother, or both parents; or protected by her brother or sister; or by her husband’s family; or by relatives; or of the same clan; or one who is married to another man; or who is subject to punishment, fear of punishment; or one who is in debt; or even one who is bounded by a garland as a sign of engagement or kinship. He does not violate such women. In this way, the noble white-clad [lay] disciple completely purifies his mind with regard to sexual misconduct, skillful in protecting his actions. This is the third practice.)

From various passages in the Āgamas above (the Chinese parallels of the Nikāyas in the Pāli Canon), it becomes evident that laypeople are advised to abstain from sexual relations with “unsuitable partners”—typically defined as underage girls, women who are betrothed or married, and those who have undertaken religious celibacy. This guidance is clear and grounded in harmlessness. It suggests that, in early Buddhism, sexual misconduct is not about sexual orientation, but rather concerns actions that would disrupt families, violate commitments, or cause harm.

Such an understanding aligns closely with the broader Buddhist ethical principle: that which causes suffering to oneself or others is considered unwholesome—or more precisely, unskillful (akauśalya). Viewed in this light, there is no strong doctrinal reason to assume that same-sex relationships, if consensual and non-harmful, should be treated any differently than heterosexual ones.

So, one must ask: why obsess over a layperson’s sexuality or sexual orientation at all? If the Buddha himself is silent on the matter, what does that say about contemporary attempts to moralize sexual orientation among lay followers?

Embracing Who You Are Now Without Harming Yourself Or Others

The early discourses of the historical Buddha make it abundantly clear: what truly matters is not one’s sexual orientation, but one’s commitment to the path.

Accept yourself as you are, now, in this lifetime, be it heterosexual or homosexual, and walk the path sincerely with diligence. The essence of the Buddha’s teaching is simple yet profound, as mentioned in the Ekottara Āgama (EA)4:

Commit no evil, do good abundantly, purify your mind — this is the teaching of all Buddhas.

The real obstacle is not who we love, but whether we are caught in craving (tṛ́ṣṇā) and clinging onto the delusion that sensual pleasures bring lasting happiness. Without dispassion and renunciation, whether gay or straight, we remain in saṃsāra.

We are all capable of walking the path to liberation—regardless of gender, sexuality, or background.

So why can’t a gay person be a good Buddhist? As long as one lives according to the principle of non-harming—causing no harm to oneself, to others, or to both through body, speech, and mind—then one is undeniably walking the noble path, the path that leads to happiness, peace, and ultimately, liberation. As the Buddha advised his son, Rāhula, in the Ambalaṭṭhikarāhulovāda Sutta (MN 61):

“Does this act with the body that I want to do lead to hurting myself, hurting others, or hurting both? Is it unskillful, with suffering as its outcome and result?’ If, while reflecting in this way, you know: ‘This act with the body that I want to do leads to hurting myself, hurting others, or hurting both. It’s unskillful, with suffering as its outcome and result.’ 

To the best of your ability, Rāhula, you should not do such a deed. But if, while reflecting in this way, you know: ‘This act with the body that I want to do doesn’t lead to hurting myself, hurting others, or hurting both. It’s skillful, with happiness as its outcome and result.’ Then, Rāhula, you should do such a deed.”

Sexual orientation does not determine one’s rebirth or afterlife destination, contrary to assertions made by figures such as Venerable Hsuan Hua. A close examination of the Buddha’s words as preserved in the Āgamas and Nikāyas reveals that it is unwholesome actions—committed through body, speech, or mind—that lead to unfortunate rebirths, such as in the hell realms, the animal realm, or the realm of hungry ghosts. 

This is in the Apāyasaṁvattanika Sutta (AN 8.40), where the Buddha identifies eight unwholesome courses of action that lead to rebirth in the lower realms: (1) killing, (2) stealing, (3) sexual misconduct, (4) false speech, (5) divisive speech, (6) harsh speech, (7) idle chatter, and (8) the consumption of intoxicants. Notably, none of these factors pertains to sexual orientation. 

In contrast to certain moral frameworks that associate non-heteronormative identities with spiritual downfall, early Buddhist ethics does not regard sexual orientation—whether heterosexual, homosexual, or otherwise—as inherently unwholesome. 

What matters is the volitional quality (cetanā) and ethical nature of one’s actions. Thus, whether one identifies as gay, straight, bisexual, or otherwise, it is not one’s orientation that leads to rebirth in heaven or hell, but one’s intentional conduct and adherence to ethical principles. This reflects the emphasis on personal responsibility, ethical intentionality, and liberation through mindful and compassionate living in the Buddha’s teachings—regardless of one’s sexual identity.

Returning to the Heart of the Path

 How can a gay person be a good Buddhist?

If we live without harming ourselves or others—guided by mindfulness, kindness, and integrity—we are already walking the Noble Path. The Buddha cares less about who we love and more about how we live. We, too, can care in the same manner.

For years, I sought acceptance from religion and society yet no acceptance is found. But the early teachings of Buddha Gautama reminded me: it’s not the sexual identity that defines a practitioner, but intention and action.

May we all—regardless of orientation—walk this path with courage, clarity, and compassion. As mentioned in Ārya Asaṅga’s Abhidharmasamuccaya:

sattvāḥ sukhena samprayujyeran

May all sentient beings be endowed with happiness, for there is no one who rejects joy and happiness in their life. 

sattvā duḥkhena viyujyeran

May all sentient beings be separated from sufferings, for there is no one who takes delight in sufferings.

All sentient beings, be they straight or gay, are in constant search for love, joy and happiness. There is no one who rejoices in suffering.  Grounded in compassion, may we all inflict no more, unnecessary sufferings, on any being regardless of gender and sexuality.

Wise Steps:

  1. Return to Early Texts: Focus on the Buddha’s ancient teachings in the Pāli Canon or Āgamas.
  2. Live by Non-Harming: Let compassion and harmlessness guide your actions.
  3. Practice Self-Acceptance: Embrace who you are while walking the path with sincerity and mindfulness.

References:

  1. CBETA 2025.R1, T02, no. 99, p. 271b23-25.　
  2. CBETA 2025.R1, T02, no. 99, p. 273b20-22.
  3. CBETA 2025.R1, T01, no. 26, p. 616b23-29.
  4.  CBETA 2025.R1, T02, no. 125, p. 551a13-14.
Ep 59: Buddhism Saved My Life ft. Harry Ho

Ep 59: Buddhism Saved My Life ft. Harry Ho

by | Jun 18, 2025 | Podcast


Summary

In this moving episode, Hary shares his journey through profound loss, chronic illness, and emotional burnout. Through the practice of Buddhism and meditation, he finds a path to healing, resilience, and self-compassion. His story is a testament to how the Dhamma can illuminate even the darkest chapters of life.


About the Speaker

👤 Haryono (Harry) is currently Senior Director in P&G, he has 14 years of experience working across APAC markets and lived across Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines. He had near death experience, having coma during his teenage life and now living with type 1 diabetes. Buddhism has helped him understand that there is always peace in whatever suffering and unhappiness with regards to mind and body and it’s up to us on how to make sense of it.


Key Takeaways

Self-kindness is foundational

Responding to suffering with compassion instead of self-blame begins the healing process.

Meditation builds inner strength

Regular practice helps manage emotional and physical pain by observing thoughts non-judgmentally.

The Dhamma offers practical tools

Buddhist teachings, when embodied, provide resilience, clarity, and a pathway out of mental suffering.

Transcript

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Hary: I thought that going to university, new chapter of life but it turns out to be a four years of nightmares.

[00:00:08] Hary: Two months after I moved, my mom passed away. Even more difficult is I didn’t know that my mom passed away. My family doesn’t wanna tell me because they thought that it will ruin my study. So I ended up learning it from my friends.

[00:00:26] Cheryl: Welcome to the Handful of Leaves podcast, where we share practical Buddhist wisdom for happier life. My name is Cheryl, the host for today’s episode where we will be speaking with Hary.

[00:00:37] Hary: Hi Cheryl. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:39] Cheryl: And so today we will be speaking about how the Dhamma, the Buddha’s teachings, saved Hary’s life and how it helped him through his life crisis.

[00:00:53] Cheryl: So Hary, can you give us a quick introduction about yourself to get to know you?

[00:00:59] Hary: Hi everyone. I’m a survivor of Type one diabetes. So I’m 35 now, I’ve been living with diabetes for 16 years now. I was born a Buddhist, but I never really understanding Buddhism.

[00:01:11] Hary: I still remember childhood a lot of happy memories as well, but a lot, a lot, a lot of painful memories.

[00:01:18] Hary: When I was still young, my loved one, my grandparents, each one of them passed away. My mom was a gambling addict, and she will fight a lot with my dad. Sometimes they like scream at each other. All the neighbors will hear about it and there will be times when me and my brother just crying about it. But there’s also a lot of happy memories, right? The love of your grandparents, and when you’re sick, your mom is taking care of you.

[00:01:44] Hary: So it’s a mix of both, and that’s how life is. When I was young, there was always one thing where I found peace and I couldn’t understand it until now when I learn about Dhamma. somehow I just love rains. When it’s raining I will just pull a chair, outside of the house and just be with the rain. Enjoying the breeze of the rain, the sound of the rain, and the peace of not being anyone, not have to worry about the future, thinking of the past. Only now that I know that it’s a form of being mindful.

[00:02:15] Hary: So I moved to Singapore when I was 17. But then that was the four years in university was one of the toughest period of my life. And diabetes is one of them.

[00:02:27] Hary: But diabetes is not the only thing. My mom has been sick for a really, really long time. Two months after I moved to Singapore , my mom passed away. Even more difficult is I didn’t know that my mom passed away. My family doesn’t wanna tell me because they thought that it will ruin my study. So I ended up learning it from my friends.

[00:02:47] Cheryl: How did you take that in when you heard from your friends?

[00:02:50] Hary: I was just crying in a very devastating state of mind. It was very painful memory. Like even now, the painful memory still bring up the unpleasant feelings. Then I quickly book the tickets back at home so that I can attend the funeral and say my last goodbye before all the burial and stuff.

[00:03:09] Hary: And that was like death keep coming up, right? Always something that I was always dreadful about, sometimes to the point that I felt that it’s easier for us to die than seeing our loved one die.

[00:03:21] Hary: And then after that, my medical complication is just gone worse. Six months before I was in coma for diabetes, I was infected with tuberculosis, I will feel pain after just 15 minutes of walking. After 30 minutes of walking, it’ll be unbearable pain. I thought that going to university, you know, new chapter of life but it turns out to be a four years of nightmares where there’s a lot of suffering.

[00:03:47] Cheryl: While all of that hitting you at a very, very young age. How did the Dhamma, that was just a theory became meaningful to you?

[00:03:56] Hary: I didn’t really found out Dhamma until I was probably at my breaking point, right. I remember I have to sort of like injecting myself every time I go out lunch and dinner with friends.

[00:04:07] Hary: And the emotional swing from high blood sugars, low blood sugars, I couldn’t really understand how it affected my emotions. So I went into a state of depression. But I was able to move out of the depression by telling myself that life is so unfair. If life is so unfair, I have to work five times harder to be able to compete with other people.

[00:04:31] Hary: I was able to move a bit of from the depression, but by putting a lot of more self pressure. But think about it, that, that just make you self criticize, putting a lot more stress on yourself.

[00:04:44] Cheryl: But at the short term, it seems to be the best coping mechanism. Correct? Correct. But for the long term, it just burnt you out all the way.

[00:04:51] Hary: Exactly, and it really did happen, right?

[00:04:53] Hary: I was lucky enough to join P&G. It is a good company, treated me extremely well, but work can be very stressed, so that bottle up stress eventually exploded. I could not sleep well. When I go into meeting and when the meeting doesn’t go well, I would like overthink and self criticize.

[00:05:13] Hary: I should have said this, I should have said that. I should have prepared this, should have prepared that. And I keep thinking and lingering over and over to the point that I don’t sleep. I don’t have time to go out with my friends anymore and then that was the moment in time I felt like life is just — on top of all the suffering that you already have with the mental suffering, I was like “why is life worth living?”

[00:05:34] Hary: And why do I have to go through every day? Then one point in time I said that, guys, this is so unbearable, I need to find a cure. Then, probably this is coincidence in life that I went to a talk and the talk topic was how the mind works. It was talked by one of the Buddhist practitioners in Singapore.

[00:05:54] Hary: She actually talk about how the mind create all these suffering and how, if we are not being too personal with it, we don’t need to suffer this much. And somehow it just resonate with me that everything that I created is really self-created. It’s not because of external environment. And then I talked to her after the talk.

[00:06:15] Hary: So I said that, Hey, I’m so unhappy in life. What is your suggestion? And her advice is so simple. Say that “Hary, you just need to strengthen your mind so that you are not caught up into this mental suffering.” The only way to do that is that you need to strengthen your mind through meditations. And she gave an analogy about preparing for marathon. If you never run for a marathon and you try to run for a marathon, you’re never able to do that, right? It will be a massive suffering because your body is just not built to it, right? Same with the mental suffering. So she told me that, Hary, I just started a Friday meditation class in the evening.

[00:06:54] Hary: Why don’t you try to join? So I started to go to the Friday meditation class and I try to do it every day. And gosh, it’s so difficult to meditate.

[00:07:07] Hary: Especially when you just love thinking, love solving problem, love to create. So your mind just couldn’t stop thinking. And then I always felt that I practice very diligently. I do it every day. And I get nothing after putting so much effort. But there was one night I was telling myself that, after all the effort that I give, if it doesn’t work, it’s okay.

[00:07:29] Hary: And that night when I was meditating, my mind went into a very deep concentration zone where it was just all contentment.

[00:07:38] Hary: There’s no thinking and it’s just so nice. And when I came out of the meditations, that’s where everything is just in slow motions and she then talked more about there is a Buddhism learning that you have to experience and learn. And that’s how I learned more about Buddhism and how my journey to practice started.

[00:07:59] Cheryl: This is really, really incredible and your experience where you let go of all the expectations to get a calm mind just reminded me of Venerable Ananda striving for enlightenment. After the Buddha passed, he was rushing to get enlightened before the, you know, the First Buddhist Council. And. Whole night. Right? The whole night. He was just trying so hard to get enlightened. And then when he kind of, semi gave up, right? He just put his head down to the pillow and then the moment his head touched the pillow because of all that letting go, he just achieved enlightenment.

[00:08:32] Hary: Exactly. And, it’s like when we read it, it’s like stories, but when you learn more Buddhism, it’s really about letting go, letting go of craving, clinging, the self, the self-view, investigating internally then, operating externally as like there is a being with an external world.

[00:08:51] Hary: So, so yeah, that’s the power of Buddhism and the power of the Dhamma where it encourage investigations. When you experience it, you start to like, oh, so that’s what it means. And then it gives you a lot more courage and understanding that there is a path that can really end the suffering in this lifetime alone.

[00:09:09] Cheryl: So I want to understand, from the first time you attended the talk and your first experience of stillness what shifted in you and how did you then relate to your suffering differently after that? Because the diabetes still remains, you are still currently having, right?

[00:09:28] Hary: Yeah. And again, the stillness is just a momentary stillness. Then after that, when the stillness disappear, life, the suffering still back, right? But at least it gives me a confidence that there is that moment where I don’t feel much suffering, but I only feel contentment.

[00:09:46] Hary: So that was the first time where I said that, you know what? I’m gonna study Buddhism really, really intensively. I went for Buddhism 101. I spend my Saturday, Sunday learning Buddhism and go for more meditation classes, and put more intention and intentionality and use my weekends within that, right? Then when you’re able to meditate longer in time, you are able to see how just the mind works in more minute parts right? Now, how does it help with the diabetes management? It helps with a lot of self control, right? Because when you are someone who’s lived with diabetes, first of all, you need to maintain a very healthy lifestyle, so even though there is so many good food in the world, you have to put a lot of restraint.

[00:10:31] Hary: Even though when craving arises, you know, don’t go into that craving. How do you see how the mind works and then how do you put more discipline by just watching the mind more and then let go of your craving of all the nice food that is poisonous to you. More importantly, diabetes is not something that caused me a lot of suffering to be very honest, because I felt like the mental suffering from all the things that have happened is so much more for me than my bodily sort of like pain, discomfort.

[00:11:05] Hary: So Buddhism for me, really, really take me out of that cycle of mental suffering. I’m still suffering day on day, there is still things that cause unhappiness in life, but Buddhism helps me to not get cling to that mental state.

[00:11:22] Hary: So for example, you go to work, it didn’t go as per your plans, when that unhappiness started to come, the self criticism come again and then just see that, it just arises and then just watching it. And rather than keep giving a lot of story and energies to the thought, you just let it go and watch it, and then slowly disappear.

[00:11:41] Hary: And that’s where I can live daily, having a lot more contentment and that’s how Buddhism kind of like pulled me out from that cycle of suffering.

[00:11:53] Cheryl: I’m just curious at this stage of your practice what do you think is an aspect of Dhamma, which you still find difficult to apply in your daily life, especially when the mental suffering that arises is very strong?

[00:12:11] Hary: I realize that it will become stronger if I do not keep my practice. But remember, I used to give a lot of excuse why I could not practice.

[00:12:19] Hary: But the last retreat in December where I was with Luang Por Viradhammo retreat in Malaysia, somehow just give me a new determination that, you know what, I will stick with the practices from now on. There is no more excuses, no matter how hard it is, right? So since then, I try to always wake up in the morning, even though it’s tiring to, you know, meditations right?

[00:12:50] Hary: Making coffee in the morning. It’s also the time to practice, right? Because I kept being reminded by many senior monks, they say that, hey, you don’t really need a time to meditate. You can also meditate by doing your daily activity. Because the idea of meditation is really about watching the feeling of the mind, the emotion of the mind. And these days what I like to do is just keep watching on the heart.

[00:13:12] Cheryl: What do you mean watching the heart?

[00:13:14] Hary: Watching the heart is not the physical organ of the heart. In Pali, they call it Citta, some of the monks call it the mind, some of it call it the heart. I found it, it’s a lot more closest to the heart because when we are stressed, there is a lot of compressing energies in this area. So when I was watching the heart, just keep it opened, right? If there is pleasant and unpleasant feeling, rather than pushing it away, I just watch it and accept it in the heart.

[00:13:46] Hary: It helps a bit steady the emotions more throughout, there’s a lot more kindness because you just stay in the heart, right? And somehow I find heart… there’s a lot of kindness in the heart, you can be a lot more kinder to also other people.

[00:14:01] Hary: And you tend to accept both the unhappiness and the happiness without attaching to both the pleasant and unpleasant sensation.

[00:14:10] Cheryl: you know, I’ve heard Ajahn Jayasaro share that the equation of suffering “S” = “P” x “R” And “P” is pain, r resistance or the non-acceptance of it multiplies the pain equals suffering.

[00:14:25] Cheryl: And with that equation, there is actually a situation where you can have pain, but because you have zero resistance, you can actually have zero suffering.

[00:14:38] Hary: Absolutely, and I can attest to that. When we practice over time we keep learning new things.

[00:14:43] Hary: There was one time where, I think I was pretty good at meditation because I practice a lot and when you’re good in meditations you are like, oh, there is like unpleasant feeling, push it away. You try to kind of like bury it right with a lot of your mental strength, but I realized that it never really helps.

[00:15:02] Hary: It helps on that momentary in time, but it will always come back and it come back typically stronger. Same thing with bodily pain. When you’re meditating, you have like a leg pain. When you’re like, oh, leg pain, you go away. I will just stay in awareness because I don’t like you.

[00:15:18] Hary: And the, the pain tends to become multipliers because it will come back. But when you’re just accepting it, like I said, like open the heart and be kind to the pain because the pain always there, the pain just much, much lesser because you are accepting it. You are allowing it to be present.

[00:15:37] Hary: But you are not attaching yourself that I am in pain. There is just a pain. There is a bodily sensations. And one of the trick that I also do for people who are practicing quite well for the eight precept, right? Where you only eat once a day and then you don’t eat anymore. You’ll feel hungry, right? And that is unpleasant sensation. So if you accept the feeling of hunger because you know, hunger will arise because there is a condition to it, right?

[00:16:03] Hary: Then you perceive that as hunger, and then you’re just allowing that to come in, and then when the hunger feeling dissipated, it’s just a warm sensation on the stomach. That’s what I felt that just allowing it to come rather than pushing away.

[00:16:18] Hary: Because when you say that, oh, I’m hungry, or I’m so miserable with hunger, it will just multiply that again. You’re giving it a lot of thoughts, a lot of energies.

[00:16:27] Cheryl: All the suffering comes when we attach to the sensation and start to add the likes and dislikes, thoughts about it, opinions about it, and that’s where we suffer.

[00:16:37] Cheryl: But if we just simply boil it down to the essence, it’s really just a sensation that arises, exist for a while, and it ceases, nothing more to that.

[00:16:45] Hary: Right. Yeah, it’s an analogy of illusions. There are external things that happens to us, but we creating a lot more illusion or what I call as unnecessary illusions and storytelling that create that suffering. When you are in that zone, why don’t you just say that, hey, there’s just a storytelling that is happening to yourself, and it’s just a story, right? Don’t take so much of meaning about it. Just stop, you know, believing in that story.

[00:17:12] Cheryl: And I want to ask you now, with the inner resources that you have built to take care of your heart and yourself, what would you tell yourself in the darkest moments in your life?

[00:17:23] Hary: I don’t think I have that darkest moment anymore. And that’s why I believe that the Dhamma pulled me out of that darkest moment. Yeah there is a bit of suffering here and there, but it’s a momentary suffering because you can, with Dhamma understanding, you can just like understand suffering as just suffering.

[00:17:41] Hary: And suffering also arises and passes away. And when it passes away, then there is no more suffering. When you see the Dhamma, you understand the Dhamma, the power of the Dhamma. I will not trade anything in the world for it.

[00:17:56] Hary: So for example, I have a late night call. A lot of business problem to solve, and then my mind go into like, oh, like stress. Then I remember that, you know, the work day is already end. I cannot solve it now anyway, so just compartmentalize it, putting it away, and meditate.

[00:18:16] Hary: Just be with my present, watch the heart and then just go to sleep. And then the day arises, Monday’s gonna come, the problem’s gonna be there, will come again. Then you understand that it arises, let it arise in the heart, and then slowly it will die down from the heart, and then you go on and live life in more contentment.

[00:18:36] Cheryl: Where you’re at now, what would you tell the you who first found out about your mother’s passing away? What advice or what comfort would you offer?

[00:18:47] Hary: I will tell myself that, I’m sure you have a lot of suffering right now. It’s okay to suffer. Because at that point in time when there is a lot of suffering, because of obviously losing someone that is very close to you, create a lot more suffering in the feeling of regret. Regret of, I could be kinder to my mom, I could be nicer to my mom. I could call her more often from Singapore. A regret of leaving her in pain.

[00:19:20] Hary: So I’ll tell myself that you are in a lot of suffering. It’s okay. Be kind to yourself. You cannot change the past. Don’t let the past eat you. I’m sure that you can do better, but you know it’s already done. So falling into the place of regret and keep thinking about where you should have, could have done better doesn’t really help.

[00:19:46] Hary: So just be kind to yourself.

[00:19:47] Cheryl: Thank you for sharing that, Hary. And now, what does a meaningful life mean to you and how do you make your life meaningful every single day?

[00:20:00] Hary: Meaningful life to me is being content at every single time, at every single moment to be very honest. I know a lot of people have a lot of bigger sort of like mission in life, want to elevate suffering of a lot of people. For me, maybe because I’ve also seen a lot of suffering in myself, my first mission is to remove that as much as I can while also helping other people as much as I can.

[00:20:28] Hary: But where meaningful life to me is be more and more content with life, be less and less personal with life. I always think about this life, that started after 19 years when I almost died, is my second life. In a weird way, I do not fear about death anymore because it’s my second life, right?

[00:20:51] Hary: So whatever additional day I have until that is an incremental life that I had in this world. But I do want to practice as much as I can to see the Dhamma and the deeper part of the Dhamma so that we can live life that has more contentment. When you see a lot of all the very senior monk who practices all the way through their entire lifetime, for me, I’ve never seen people who are as happy and as content as them. Even though they’re old, even though they are having a lot of suffering, right? With the aging and health problem. I want to be like them, so light and I don’t think there’s anything that bothers them. They still feel unpleasant feeling, they still feel pain, but they’re just not bothered by it. Right? So that’s my goal in life. I wanna be more like them so they become an aspiration.

[00:21:43] Hary: While we heard a lot of stories about the Buddha, I’ve never seen the Buddha. I know he exists, but I cannot see that. But that is how I project, like if a Buddha would have experienced life, it’s like the embodiment in them, and that’s how the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha cultures continue. And the Sangha members are the people who you truly respect. And it give you an aspiration that what is the fruit of practice will be right here and now in the present moment.

[00:22:11] Cheryl: Yeah. And I think here and now is something that is so particularly inspiring that the Buddha walk the Earth 2,500 years ago. But yet today in 2025, we still see people who practice the Dhamma well, embodying such beautiful qualities and that we can also be able to cultivate and train ourselves to that level.

[00:22:31] Hary: Absolutely, absolutely right. So when Ajahn Chah always mention about when you’re breathing, you can meditate anytime. You can be content every time, right? So yeah, we have a long way, journey to go to slowly let go of the things that bond us to suffering.

[00:22:48] Cheryl: What is something that you still find difficult in letting go at this moment?

[00:22:55] Hary: Bodily pain is still extremely hard because I have a bit of scoliosis, so sometimes when I sit too long the pain can be quite unbearable.

[00:23:05] Hary: The ego also can be very hard in terms of the work context. Because we all want to achieve something, and we don’t like to be blamed on something, right? So I think that ego it’s still there, you always want a nicer output.

[00:23:23] Cheryl: It’s like the eight worldly winds, but we only want four of it. All the good stuff.

[00:23:27] Hary: Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, where I started to make more of the daily practices, I remember that business was very tough at work. There’s just a lot of debates with the leadership teams, and everyone’s, when debating the egos is like very strong, right?

[00:23:45] Hary: So one of the things that I’m practicing right now is to be extremely kind. And don’t put my own ego in that conversations, right? So always there like, Hey, how can I help you? Why do you feel that way? And then I realized that people respond with kindness. Rather than when you try to debate because you try to prove your point is better.

[00:24:07] Hary: So these days I try to let go as much as I can. Try to be kind to that person and they responded. And I found that, that in a difficult environment, they’ll respond the kindness, it become like, oh, I can understand your point of view.

[00:24:23] Hary: Here’s my point of view. How do we work? And then sometime my colleagues say that, how come the boss doesn’t flip on you? But it flipped on us even though I was bringing the same point.

[00:24:34] Hary: But I always told them that, perhaps I just speak it slow. There’s not much of intention of debating.

[00:24:40] Cheryl: you are saying the exact same thing that your colleagues are saying. Just your whole intention is much more wholesome. So the way it’s received is also a lot more open, a lot more collaborative.

[00:24:51] Hary: Correct. When you speak with kindness, the first thing that will happen more is that you smile more also when you make your point, right? And when you are a bit more mindful also with the kindness, you tend to speak slower so that you can see other peoples’ body reaction better. Then when they want to speak, you can already start pausing rather than keep going on the train journey of like sharing your idea. So then you allow people to comes in naturally and then there is real discussions instead of it become a debate.

[00:25:22] Hary: So that was what I found was sort of like a new interesting Dhamma practical application in a stressful work environment.

[00:25:31] Cheryl: I just recall one very tense conversation I had with a manager and she was getting very emotional. She was raising her voice and starting to use a lot of accusation. I was just being very mindful, speaking deliberately, very slowly and in a calm tone and opening the conversation into how can we solve this problem? And after a while, she was able to calm herself down and then she realized, oh, she’s really reacting too over emotionally, and that then her focus came back to the right thing, to the problem at hand.

[00:26:06] Cheryl: It really does work and, and people really react to the way that we try to show up.

[00:26:12] Hary: Correct. And that’s another example of the Dhamma practical applications that has fruits in it. Right. That we can see here and now.

[00:26:20] Cheryl: And is there a final, a key message that you want to share with our listeners today?

[00:26:27] Hary: I only have one advice — Always be kind to yourself, no matter how bad hardship and suffering that you face. You have two options. Either blame yourself or you can be more kind to yourself. You know, I preferred the second one over the first one because I tried the first one.

[00:26:47] Hary: And it didn’t really help. And I went to even more suffering because of that. So whoever you are there who are facing some challenges start always, always by being kind to yourself.

[00:27:01] Hary: And then hopefully some of you who are practicing the Dhamma can use the Dhamma to kind of like alleviate a little bit of the suffering day by day with your practice.

[00:27:12] Cheryl: One way I have been practicing being kind to myself, is actually just starting the day by acknowledging the good qualities, acknowledging the effort that I try in times that are difficult or in areas that I’m struggling or not yet good at. And just taking a moment to realize, ooh, it’s not easy at all.

[00:27:33] Cheryl: And that the fact that I’m still showing up, I’m still putting effort. It’s deserving of a pat on the back.

[00:27:39] Hary: Absolutely. And then also you can also think about things that are, you’ve done good, right? Those of you who practice generosity to other people, you can also reflect that, right?

[00:27:50] Hary: Hey, you’ve done good in life. Give yourself pat in the back. Or sometimes, by the way, I also like to do this when I’m extremely stressed: I say that it’s okay, then I go back to my breathing.

[00:28:01] Hary: If I cannot go, if I cannot go to my heart, automatically, I’ll just do this. It’s okay. Life will be okay. You know, all this suffering will be okay. You’re not alone. Right? And I tell myself that, you know, I’m here with you whatever that suffering is.

[00:28:15] Cheryl: You know, just putting my hand here, I already just feel so so, so comfortable and so soothed. so yeah, thank you for sharing that as well. And thank you for sharing about your journey and it’s extremely inspiring how you have gone through basically a 360 degree change in your mindset in how you view suffering as well. So to all our listeners, thank you for staying to the end as well. So stay tuned and join us in our next episode. Stay happy and wise.


Special thanks to our sponsors:

Buddhist Youth Network, Lim Soon Kiat, Alvin Chan, Tan Key Seng, Soh Hwee Hoon, Geraldine Tay, Venerable You Guang, Wilson Ng, Diga, Joyce, Tan Jia Yee, Joanne, Suñña, Shuo Mei, Arif, Bernice, Wee Teck, Andrew Yam, Kan Rong Hui, Wei Li Quek, Shirley Shen, Ezra, Joanne Chan, Hsien Li Siaw, Gillian Ang, Wang Shiow Mei, Ong Chye Chye, Melvin, Yoke Kuen, Nai Kai Lee, Amelia Toh, Hannah Law, Shin Hui Chong


Editor and transcriber of this episode:

Hong Jiayi, Tan Si Jing, Bernice Bay, Cheryl Cheah


Visual and Sound Effects

Anton Thorne, Tan Pei Shan, Ang You Shan


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Ep 58: What Vesak Means to Us ft. Jiayi and Soon

Ep 58: What Vesak Means to Us ft. Jiayi and Soon

by | May 30, 2025 | Podcast


Summary

In this heartfelt and humorous episode of the Handful of Leaves podcast, Cheryl, Jiayi, and Soon explore what Vesak means to them and how their understanding of Buddhism has evolved over time. From their childhood experiences of Vesak filled with rituals and free food to a more mature appreciation of the Dhamma, the hosts share personal stories of transformation, gratitude, and deepening practice. They reflect on how the historical Buddha’s life and teachings remain relevant today, emphasizing that Vesak is not just a holiday but a time to embody generosity, renunciation, and inner growth.


About the Speakers

👤 Hong Jiayi works in communications. She began her Dhamma journey last year, a path that has since become a grounding presence in her life. She volunteers with DAYWA, a community for young Buddhist working adults in Singapore, and serves as an editor on the podcast team at Handful of Leaves. Outside of work and Dhamma, she trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a sport that keeps her humble, grounded, and occasionally squished.

👤 Teo Heng Soon (known as Soon in short) graduated from the University of Melbourne and is now a human capital consultant. Passionate about people, he has been a leader with multiple volunteer organisations like the Dyslexic Association of Singapore. Buddhist Fellowship Youth has been his Dhamma home for 12 years. Honing his leadership skills, he has learnt to give Dhamma talks and conduct workshops and sutta discussions. On a personal level, Soon is passionate about the arts – from Karate to Photography.


Key Takeaways

From Ritual to Meaningful Practice

All three hosts began their Buddhist journeys with ritualistic and often superficial connections to Vesak. Over time, their understanding matured into a deeper appreciation of the Buddha’s teachings and the symbolic meaning behind rituals like bathing the Buddha and offering flowers.

Vesak as a Celebration of Giving, Not Taking

Vesak marks a shift from self-centered wishes and offerings (e.g., praying for good grades or Wi-Fi) to embodying the Buddha’s spirit of selfless giving and renunciation. The day becomes a powerful reminder to let go of attachments and to serve the community with compassion.

The Best Offering Is Practice

While physical offerings are symbolic, the Buddha emphasized offering one’s practice—living ethically, meditating, and cultivating wisdom—as the highest form of devotion. Celebrating Vesak, therefore, becomes a chance to reflect on and renew one’s commitment to the Dhamma in daily life.

Transcript

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Cheryl: A love for the Buddha and the sacrifice that he’s given,

[00:00:03] Jiayi: and a gratitude to his teachings. And also for the fact that his teachings from 2,500 years ago can still flourish in today’s world. That itself is also a celebration of its own.

[00:00:15] Cheryl: The Dhamma has transformed my life.

[00:00:18] Soon: The meaning of Vesak drastically changed. From taking to becoming a giver.

[00:00:23] Cheryl: Happiness is always defined as having more and more choice, but actually in the dynamic sense of way, happiness is really having the freedom from choice.

[00:00:37] Cheryl: Welcome to the Handful of Leaves podcasts where we bring you practical Buddhist wisdom for a happy life. My name is Cheryl.

[00:00:45] Jiayi: I’m Jiayi,

[00:00:46] Soon: and I am Soon,

[00:00:47] Cheryl: and today we’ll be talking about Vesak and what it means to us. So Soon, you have been in the Buddhist scene for a long time. Can you tell us exactly what your background is?

[00:00:58] Soon: Yeah, I’m like a 老鸟 (old-timer) but inside, still youthful. So I spent my entire life as a Buddhist or what we call a joss stick Buddhist, right. Going to the temple, burning some stuff, praying for good grades. I remember one of the years the GameBoy came out and I was praying for a GameBoy that when you press this button, a game would come out and change.

[00:01:21] Cheryl: Wow.

[00:01:21] Soon: So there was like Buddhism for most of my life. Then one day my brothers introduced the rest of my family, my parents as well to this place called Buddhist Fellowship, and that was when I started to learn more beyond the ritual. Right to the actual teachings, to the actual way of living. So I would say that I’m not really a 老鸟 (old-timer) in Buddhism. I’ve only been practicing Buddhist for about eight years now.

[00:01:46] Cheryl: So you are an evolved wishing tree Buddhist.

[00:01:49] Soon: Mm, yes.

[00:01:52] Cheryl: And what about yourself?

[00:01:55] Jiayi: I also a bit similar, like Soon I grew up being a joss stick Buddhist, always praying to the Buddha before my exams to help me pass it. And like competitions, please help me get a good medal. But only like last year where I started to learn a bit more about the teachings, and got a better understanding of Buddhism. Yeah.

[00:02:18] Cheryl: So you are the 临时抱佛脚?

[00:02:21] Jiayi: Yeah, totally me.

[00:02:23] Cheryl: So for those who don’t understand, yeah. That one is the last-minute-hug-Buddha’s-feet.

[00:02:33] Cheryl: And for myself, I have been a Buddhist for wow, maybe 10 plus years.

[00:02:39] Jiayi: Wow.

[00:02:39] Cheryl: And it was when I was very stressed during my exam periods and I just randomly went to a temple because they had free wifi and free aircon.

[00:02:51] Jiayi: No way. You did not.

[00:02:52] Cheryl: So I’m the cheapo (cheapskate) Buddhist.

[00:02:56] Cheryl: Okay. So tell me more. What was your first experiences of Vesak, if you remember?

[00:03:04] Soon: Mm. Well that we go back many, many years. I can’t really remember a specific Vesak, because I’ve been going for these events for a long time. But what I recall very vividly was coming to Vesak because there were a lot of pretty girls. Don’t tell my fiance that.

[00:03:25] Cheryl: Keep that, keep that in the edit.

[00:03:27] Soon: So, but I think what Vesak means to me, it’s your community or your friends, your family coming together for common good, which is living a good life, just as the Buddha had done. And when I was a kid, I remember training for a dance performance so that we could, you know, propagate Buddhism we would play songs, we will have activities like there’s this activity where you throw a ball and then if it hits the thing, you’ll go down. So we had all these fun activities.

[00:04:03] Cheryl: Oh, the dunking into the water one.

[00:04:05] Soon: Yes. Yes. So that was my childhood, like really just coming together with friends and just celebrating a good day right. In the eyes of what Buddha did and celebrating what he did, what he propagated, and how he lived.

[00:04:19] Cheryl: Mm. And do you find anything similar on your side?

[00:04:23] Jiayi: I didn’t really have that friends part ’cause I don’t celebrate Buddhism with friends. Right. But it has always been a family thing where every year during Vesak we would go to like Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery and then we would do like three steps, one bow, and then maybe like bathing the Buddha.

[00:04:47] Jiayi: Yeah. And I think those, those activities like kind of bring the family together and make us like a bit happy on that day. Yeah. Just to celebrate the holiday. Yeah.

[00:04:58] Cheryl: Actually, my experience was a lot closer to Jiayi’s one where we also went to get all the very fragrant flower water from the 玉佛 (jade Buddha).

[00:05:09] Cheryl: And I would collect it and I would just shower the next day. ’cause it smells so good, right? Yeah. And of course the free food. But my experience was a lot more with my family, not so much with friends. And, yeah, I just remembering just not understanding anything, but just getting bags of fragrance smelling stuff.

[00:05:30] Jiayi: Mm. Steal the flower?

[00:05:33] Cheryl: No, no, no. They gave it to us, maybe. Yeah. Disclaimers. Disclaimers. Yeah. But so how do you tell your friends, you know, like over the public holiday when you go back to school, what do you tell your friends that, you know, what do you do over the weekend as a Buddhist?

[00:05:52] Jiayi: I say, I go 拜拜. Ah, yeah. Then maybe I’ll share that just to go for three steps one bow. But I don’t really know what it means. I don’t know why I’m doing it, but I just feel happy that I do it. Mm-hmm. So there’s no reasoning behind it. It is just like, oh, I’m doing just because.

[00:06:12] Soon: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Actually I quite agree with Jiayi as well. Your question kind of took me a step back. I was like, actually, yeah, we don’t really do a good job of sharing what Vesak is, what Buddhism is to our friends. So, because that never crossed my mind. We just take it as a public holiday, right? Just like, okay, yeah, I have some fun, go to carnival, raise some money, donate some food, and okay, next day back, back to normal.

[00:06:39] Cheryl: Yeah.

[00:06:40] Soon: Yeah. So I think that’s a really good question, Cheryl. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:06:44] Cheryl: So it seems that in our Buddhist practice, we all have evolved. We have learned a lot more about the Dhamma. So at this point, how would you explain to your friends, or even your loved ones meaningfully, what does Vesak mean?

[00:06:59] Soon: I would say Vesak, it is really about coming together, to do a common good. So there’s so many things that you can do on Vesak Day. And when we start to discuss, talk and, and learn more, we realize there’s lessons behind the rituals. Mm. Right. The bathing of the Buddha. What does it mean? Offering of flowers, offering of incenses, you know, coming together to give food to the temple, to the monastic, or to do some charity work as well.

[00:07:30] Soon: All this meaning is to help us let go, is to renunciate, is to think less of ourselves because we give a lot of examples right. I came for girls. You came for free wifi, Jiayi was a bit more wholesome. Okay. I mean studies, right? So it’s this constant… Vesak… I think sometimes because of a lack of education or a lack of discussion, right?

[00:07:54] Soon: It becomes a day where sometimes we start taking. Like, oh, I wanna go to the temple because I want this. And I think as my practice has developed it’s less of what can the temple do for me, but more about what can I do for my community or friends, right? Bring people together, doing a common good. So I think that’s how the meaning of Vesak has has drastically changed: It’s from taking to becoming a giver, right?

[00:08:23] Soon: Spending time with your family, bring your family together, right? Doing something that’s wholesome and yeah, rituals will always be rituals, but. I think when we have the education, it just becomes a little more meaningful.

[00:08:38] Cheryl: Wow. Full score. A hundred mark. I give you.

[00:08:41] Jiayi: How do I continue from there? You said, you said everything perfectly.

[00:08:45] Cheryl: Exactly.

[00:08:47] Jiayi: Maybe to add on, I really agree with what you say. It’s not about taking but about giving. Right. And in that sense, we are also celebrating the qualities of the Buddha because his generosity, the historical Buddha, his generosity has been really, really great. He, after he attained enlightenment, he could have just retired, right?

[00:09:07] Jiayi: He has reached the pinnacle of life. He didn’t have to do anything and just bliss out. Until he passes away. But he chose to be a teacher for 45 years to go and walk the so many kilometers in ancient India, just to teach people. And when we recollect about that during Vesak, I think that can bring a lot of joy.

[00:09:31] Jiayi: Yeah. And a gratitude to his teachings and also for the fact that his teachings from 2,500 years ago can still flourish in today’s world. That itself is also a celebration of its own. So perhaps for Vesak now, it would be to remember the compassion, the resilience, the wisdom of the Buddha, and also celebrate all of those things with our friends and family.

[00:10:02] Cheryl: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And let’s not forget that Vesak also is a commemoration of the Buddha’s life. His birth, specifically death and the passing away into Parinibanna. And I think as I grew in my Dhamma journey as well, what came from taking all the free stuff, evolved into really just a respect and, yeah, a love for the Buddha and the sacrifice that he’s given. And a reflection of how the Dhamma has transformed my life. Yeah, yeah. So on, on these days also, I make it a point to honor it the way the Buddha wanted, which is not — of course, you know, flowers, fragrances are all beautiful ways of offering our love — but the Buddha always wanted us to offer our practice. Yeah. So I always use these days as a day to intensify my determination to practice the eight precepts, and to practice, yeah, meditation, listening to talks and giving. It’s for sure ritualistic to a certain extent, but it’s also very beautiful in the purification of the mind.

[00:11:15] Jiayi: Yeah, sure. I did have a question. Maybe like eight precept can be seen as like, oh, you’re just adding extra hardship to your life. Life is already hard already. Why do you wanna take away entertainment from our life? But then why do you wanna do this? And why do you do this on Vesak Day? Why did the Buddha even give us restrictions in life. Why? Why are we celebrating the fact that he’s giving us restrictions? Oh shit. Sorry. Just playing devil’s advocate here.

[00:11:47] Cheryl: I think that’s a really good question, Jiayi. I think we have to go back to understanding the five precepts and the eight precepts. So the five precepts are non-negotiable by the Buddha, right?

[00:11:58] Cheryl: So die die, you have to hold onto it because those are the things that will protect you from going down to, I guess, lower states of mind, and lower states of even like realms, right, in the next rebirth. But when it comes to the extending three more precepts, which is no sexual conduct, no beautification, no entertainment, and no lying on high, luxurious, sleeping places.

[00:12:25] Cheryl: So for that, it’s really — sorry, one more. Right no eating. Oh, no eating after noon. And all of this is nothing to do with morality. Like it’s not immoral to eat at night, but it is more about the sense restraint. And the point of that is because the Buddha wants us to practice going against our likes and dislikes because in this world, there’s nothing that we can — we cannot get everything that we want. So the less we are attached to the things that we want, the less suffering we’ll have. So going against our craving by this method is really, you know, important for us time and time again. I’m actually not sure. Soon, do you know if the Buddha actually asked us to practice 8 precepts on Vesak?

[00:13:13] Soon: I don’t think so. Right. So the idea of practicing 8 precepts came about when people came to the Buddha. Mm-hmm. Because there were so many other religions during the half moon and the full moon day, they’re like, “wow, Buddha, look at them. They’re like, doing something extra. How about us?”

[00:13:32] Soon: So there was actually no meaning to those days. And then Buddha was like, okay, yeah, let’s give meaning. Right. Giving meaning is important as well. So he is like, okay, yeah, this is a time where you can intensify your practice. Instead of five precepts, you can do eight precepts. For some people that follow the Chinese Buddhist way of doing things, they eat vegetarian on those days.

[00:13:55] Soon: So once again, it’s a day of wholesomeness. And Jiayi, to answer your question, why do we have more restrictions in our life? I think that goes back to the idea of how the material world works, where whatever is comfortable is good for us. Whatever’s uncomfortable is bad for us. But is it really the case?

[00:14:17] Soon: You know, I was reading a study done by IMH in Singapore and almost one third of 15 to 35 year olds in Singapore are feeling more empty. They’re feeling more tense. There’s all these negative feelings, and one of the reasons is social media.

[00:14:35] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:36] Soon: And what social media does for us is at any time I can get a dopamine hit. Right. And that’s comfortable. Like, I just wanna break, I just wanna relax. Okay. Swipe, swipe, swipe. But is it really good for us in the long run? Mm-hmm. So there is benefit to restraining our sensors, there is benefit to restraining what we do. And all these things have actually long-term benefits.

[00:15:02] Soon: Mm-hmm. So for example, right, when we, a lot of people think, wow, buddhism is like sitting on a hill side, you know, where it’s peaceful and like, “Om”. But when we practice it in our day to day lives, if we are mindful day to day, moment to moment, we become better people. We are more aware of what goes through our mind and when we are more aware of what goes through our mind, we are more aware of what comes out. Right. Body, speech. So restraint is beneficial. Especially once again, once you understand the reason behind the ritual.

[00:15:43] Cheryl: And a lot of times in our modern society, I think happiness is always defined as having more and more choices. You get to, you know, get what you choose, but actually in the dynamic sense of way, happiness is really having the freedom from choice.

[00:15:59] Soon: Wow, beautiful, beautiful.

[00:16:01] Cheryl: Where you are free from your likes and dislikes and you can still be content and happy, whatever it is. Yeah.

[00:16:08] Jiayi: Wow. That’s beautiful.

[00:16:14] Soon: No, I actually completely agree with that. You know how I talk about how when we didn’t have a good understanding of Buddhism, we came in as takers. Wifi, so on, so forth.

[00:16:25] Cheryl: You’re never gonna let it go ah?

[00:16:29] Soon: But then once we start understanding the true Buddhism, we start to let go. And one of the things I let go of over the years is strong opinions. I will get into fights. I would talk people down. I even made someone cry. Yeah.

[00:16:47] Jiayi: How could you?

[00:16:48] Soon: I know, right? So I was very sharp with my words. And I think what the Dhamma, what Buddhism has taught me was to let go of those views. And because I can let go of these views, I can have different conversations with people from different faiths, different perspectives, and I can still treat them as a human being that I care about.

[00:17:10] Soon: So I think that’s, to me, the idea about renunciation once again. It’s really about letting go of this, “I am important. My views all matter”, right? Because when you lead a life that is so focused on me, me, me, me, me and I, there’s a lot more suffering. Yeah.

[00:17:28] Cheryl: Nice. So I guess, you know, the question then is with these reflections that we have, you know, that Vesak sparks in us, yeah, how do we, or how do you bring that into your daily life? How does this spirit of Vesak, right, like to put it in a weird way, manifest in your everyday life throughout the year. And yeah. I’m also curious to hear from you, yeah, like for example, in renunciation, can you share an example of how do you continue to let go, in your daily life and in the 364 days, other than Vesak?

[00:18:05] Soon: So I think that’s a beautiful question, Cheryl. The reason why there’s always a lot of emphasis on that specific day, right? It’s like any anniversary, any Valentine’s also. Yeah. Any birthday. Yes, there is importance in those specific days, but I’d rather treat my partner, my parents, my siblings, consistently good.

[00:18:28] Soon: And I think that’s how the mindset they can bring to the practice as well. It’s not just a day of holiness. Mm-hmm. And after that, we go back to it being a normal person, doing the negative things again. And I think the essence of Vesak, at least to me, it’s coming together with a community to do good together.

[00:18:48] Soon: And I think how that can manifest in a day to day life where we talk about renunciation, letting go, it’s when you have so many views already and assumptions that you make about the world, it’s very hard to talk to you as a person. Right. If I am a clean slate, if I say, “okay, there’s no me, there’s no I, that’s not mine”, when you share a problem with me, Cheryl, I won’t have all these judgements in my head. “Oh, you should have done this”, or “You should have done that.” “Oh, you shouldn’t do that.” ‘Cause a lot of times when people come to us with problems, we always, “okay, I know what to do, it’s too easy. I can solve this.”

[00:19:25] Soon: But when you come with a mindset of “I’m not a taker, I’m a giver. I’m gonna give space, I’m gonna give my energy, I’m gonna give my presence to you.”, that’s us letting go of our self-importance. So we always think of these Buddhism stuff as like the big things like Nibanna, or like I need to go to a meditation retreat then I can be good. Those are helpful. But all these small things that we do in our day-to-day life create a bigger condition for us to go on to do bigger things.

[00:19:59] Soon: For our practice, for our community of friends. So I think that’s how I see Vesak in my day-to-day life. If I am practicing the Dhamma, well, if every day is a hundred percent, how many percent is spent with wholesome thoughts, with wholesome actions? And how many percent is with unwholesome acts and unwholesome actions, sorry, with unwholesome acts and unwholesome thoughts. It’s that simple. We don’t have to theorize it. We don’t have to make it so difficult.

[00:20:31] Cheryl: And that’s the most important check and balance that we need to take care of every single day.

[00:20:35] Soon: Yeah,

[00:20:35] Cheryl: yeah. Thank you so much for sharing.

[00:20:38] Soon: No worries.

[00:20:39] Jiayi: I think I don’t have such a… my answer might be more superficial. For at least before I started practicing, I’m still quite a new Buddhist, right? But before I started practicing, I just saw Vesak as a day… oh, Buddha came into the world. Oh, Buddha got enlightened, which I don’t know, I don’t actually know what it meant. Okay. Yeah. Shower Buddha. Yeah. Fun. Oh, 三步一拜, oh, okay. Budha very great. Right? So I just, yes. Respect. But after learning a bit more about Buddhism, the life of the historical Buddha, the things he taught, you develop gratitude.

[00:21:22] Jiayi: I developed gratitude to his teachings, because it has helped me through times of difficulty. It has helped me to shift the way I see the world in a more skillful way, which means that I actually feel more happy in general. And with that gratitude, right? I think it’s also a good recollection object that I can have in daily life where when I’m having a bad day, oh, this person la, that person la, why I’m upset with myself. Then I will always remind myself that actually the Buddha had faith in all of us that we could attain enlightenment. Yeah. And that’s why he went to teach. Or else he teach for what? Yeah, he teach for what? If you cannot do it. He teach for what? But he’s so smart, right? So that’s why he go and teach. He know that we all got potential to be happy in life.

[00:22:14] Soon: Yeah.

[00:22:14] Jiayi: And that’s why he went to teach. And when I’m feeling upset, I’m feeling down, I think of that. Then be like, yes. ’cause Buddha said, so I’ll keep trying. I will not give up in the practice.

[00:22:25] Jiayi: Yeah. So I think that’s why

[00:22:26] Cheryl: you’ve got this,

[00:22:27] Jiayi: you’ve got this, right. You’re good enough. You’ve got this girl, you’ve got this. Yeah. So, I guess those gratitude, that faith the Buddha had in us and my faith in the Buddha helps me to continue to practice in daily life.

[00:22:42] Soon: Yeah, I don’t think your answer is any more superficial at all.

[00:22:48] Jiayi: Thank you. Cut that out then.

[00:22:52] Soon: Yeah. I don’t think your answer is superficial at all. I think faith is such an important thing and I think as people start being more logical, more scientific, we kind of lose that faith, right? That confidence in the Buddha’s teachings. Sometimes too much doubt as well leads us to analysis paralysis.

[00:23:09] Soon: Oh, what if this happened? What if Buddha didn’t exist? What if Buddha didn’t actually do this? It prevents us from acting and just trying. Right. Taking a leap of confidence and to test, oh yeah, Buddha said this. Let me investigate a bit more. And I think what you said, right, I think the beautiful thing to me about Buddhism is that Buddha believed in the human potential. We can do it. Yeah, we can do it. Right. Like it’s about not entirely relying on anything external. We are enough.

[00:23:44] Jiayi: So beautiful.

[00:23:44] Soon: You’re enough.

[00:23:46] Jiayi: You’re so beautiful. You’re good enough.

[00:23:50] Cheryl: And then the Buddha showed us the beauty of realizing the highest potential a human can ever realize to be free from greed, hatred and delusion. And what’s left is just pure unadulterated Metta (loving-kindness) and compassion.

[00:24:03] Soon: Beautiful.

[00:24:04] Jiayi: Aw. That warms the cockles of my heart.

[00:24:10] Cheryl: Aw. So I’m also just, again, very curious, right. Knowing what you know now, what do you wish you had known when you first encountered Vesak?

[00:24:21] Jiayi: I think, I wish I knew more context of the historical Buddha. And, I guess it’s also like, I wish I practiced earlier because, I only started practicing properly, right? Like last year. So I’m 26. I’m turning 26 this year. For the first 20 plus years of my life, just heeheehaha.

[00:24:47] Cheryl: Yeah.

[00:24:47] Jiayi: I just dunno what I’m doing. Like I’m Buddhist, but I dunno what I’m doing. And with that, like you start to cultivate all the different habits that come from your ignorance, right?

[00:25:00] Jiayi: And we go to Vesak, but you don’t know, don’t really know what it means. But now, actually this year will be my first Vesak as a like more practitioner, practitioner person. Practitioner. Yes. It’s my first year as a practitioner celebrating Vesak. I think the difference this year would be when I see like the Buddha statue, I cultivate more gratitude. When I offer flowers, I actually know what I’m doing. I know what it means. I’m not actually offering the flower to a godly Buddha who will receive the flowers from the heavenly realm. That’s not what’s happening. It’s actually to reflect on his teachings. And, if I knew all of this earlier, perhaps there’ll be greater appreciation of what this day actually means.

[00:25:53] Cheryl: The flower you offer for what?

[00:25:56] Jiayi: Because flower nice ma, you Valentine’s, you buy flower to a girlfriend. You’re not offering the flower to a girlfriend to recollect impermanence right. And yeah, so like flowers is like a nice gift and maybe it’s like a nice gift to the Buddha as well.

[00:26:10] Jiayi: But now we also know the best offering is our own practice, which is kind of like invincible, right? But yeah, so offering flowers also, it is great you do that, but the best one is still to offer your meditation, your generosity, your cultivation of wisdom, et cetera. Yeah.

[00:26:33] Cheryl: Yeah.

[00:26:33] Jiayi: What about you, Soon?

[00:26:35] Soon: I completely agree with the idea about context. I think whenever we talk about faith, that’s this story that has stuck in my mind is about Buddha with his supreme eye. He saw that there was this one person in a distant village, many kilometers away. He said, this person is ready to hear the Dhamma, and he trekked all the way hundreds of kilometers.

[00:26:59] Cheryl: Ah. He didn’t fly there.

[00:27:01] Jiayi: He got no supreme wings.

[00:27:04] Soon: He trekked all the way to go to that village just to speak to that one person because they were ready and willing to listen.

[00:27:10] Jiayi: During that time, there was no bus, no MRT. They don’t wear shoes also. Yeah. No shoes, right? I dunno. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Take that out.

[00:27:18] Cheryl: That’s fine. It’s fine.

[00:27:19] Jiayi: But no airplane. No, no bus, no eZ-link card.

[00:27:22] Cheryl: And it’s India, so the road is like next level one.

[00:27:26] Soon: Yeah. They just went on pilgrimage so they would know better. Yeah. So, wow. Like who would do that? Right? To put your physical and possibly mental, as a normal person right, stakes at risk just to help that one person.

[00:27:43] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:44] Soon: And I think when I heard about that story, the sacrifices that Buddha has gone through, I’m just, wow. Yeah. Like just saying now also makes me feel emotional, because of the compassion he had, because he wanted to help those with little dust in their eyes, those who are ready and willing to listen.

[00:28:02] Soon: And I think this also speaks about what Buddhism is, right? We, we are not here to make everyone Buddhist. We are here to speak to those who are ready to listen. Who are willing to have a chat to find out more. And I think that’s the spirit of, at least for me, being a Buddhist, is that investigative spirit, that spirit of questioning and trying to find what truth is.

[00:28:28] Soon: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think having a little more context when I was younger, I would’ve appreciated more. I think, a similar example is sometimes, our parents say, “Hey. Be nicer to your grandparents.” You know, you’re just like, “Huh but why? They’re old people.” Right? Like, I used to fight so many times with my grandma, but if only I heard a little more about how she lived her life, how she sacrificed her youth, you know, to raise my mom, i would appreciate them more. So I think it’s going back to, you know, what stories are we telling our friends about what Vesak is?

[00:29:09] Cheryl: Mm.

[00:29:09] Soon: About who Buddha is. Is he a guy that just flies around or is he someone that really cares about those who are ready to listen, ready to practice? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:29:22] Jiayi: How about you, Cheryl?

[00:29:24] Jiayi: Arrow.

[00:29:25] Cheryl: Yeah. But, but thanks so much for humanizing the Buddha and reminding us, yeah. Reminding us that, you know, there is so much behind the rituals that we do and really remembering the significance of that as well. I wish I knew the Buddha more than just a statue. Yeah. So, so I wish I understood him more as a human being.

[00:29:51] Cheryl: Yeah, because my understanding of the Buddha for a long, long, long time until recently, was that he’s just this really, really, really, really zai person. It’s like way beyond my human abilities kind of vibes, you know? But if I was to understand him that he had his struggles. Yeah. He even got married, had a kid, he had to suffer with backache.

[00:30:11] Cheryl: You know, like if I could relate to him in that way, I think, yeah, the Buddha would’ve come way more alive, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this, that’s my take. Yeah.

[00:30:23] Jiayi: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Wow. Imagine like your cousin. Yeah. Or like your, I don’t know, your uncle who got married. Then just left the house and then came back as the enlightened one.

[00:30:37] Jiayi: Wow. And then it’s like, you could imagine him as like your best friend. ’cause he’s the nicest person on the earth. On the world. In the world. But he’s also like a super wise person. So when you’re like, oh, struggling with work, you hate this person. Yeah. Talk to him. You’re like, oh my God, I feel so much better talking to you. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:55] Soon: He just puts his hand on you and

[00:30:57] Jiayi: Oh, you’re like, oh.

[00:30:57] Soon: I’m at peace I let go now. That’s not me. There’s no I. That’s not mine.

[00:31:04] Cheryl: And occasionally he’ll say, you’re foolish person. Stop with your bull. I never say that.

[00:31:15] Cheryl: Okay. So I think, maybe to end this episode, what is your aspiration for Vesak this year? Awkward silence group.

[00:31:36] Soon: I think that’s the toughest question yet. Yeah. Still thinking.

[00:31:39] Cheryl: Okay. Mine will be very simple, so I’ll share first. I’m starting to look at all the days as the same. You know, every day is just the same in that sense that I wish that I will continue to put in the efforts and conditions to make my wholesome qualities increase and my unwholesome qualities reduce, and to keep doing that in every life until, yeah, one day I’m purified in my mind, body and speech too.

[00:32:06] Jiayi: Yeah. Nice. Okay. Actually then that reminds me, I remember last year, 31st December to first January, everyone will be celebrating. Oh, happy end of 2024. Let’s welcome a new 2025. And it’s like a big thing, right? Every year, new year is a big thing, but actually it’s also just a human construct.

[00:32:25] Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:26] Jiayi: It’s just like how we perceive the day, but the day is actually no other different than any other day. Vesak itself could also be seen that way. It’s a human construct, but why is this human construct important? It reminds us of the qualities of why we’re practicing Buddhism, of why Buddhism is important in this world, and, to link, okay, to link back to the aspiration of Vesak this year, I guess it’s to keep going in a practice.

[00:32:59] Jiayi: We are going against our instincts, right? We are so used to holding onto our views, our likes. I love like fried chicken or whatever, but then learning to see that, oh, I really hate this person. But learning to see, okay, this is not… holding onto these things are not beneficial for me in the long run. The Buddha taught the way to really make me feel happy and contented in daily life. And with Vesak, I get reminded of that more strongly and it helps me to not give up on a practice even when times are difficult. And, to remind the purpose of what I’m doing, why I am doing things.

[00:33:46] Soon: So to me. It’s a little blend of both of yours. Vesak, it’s a new start, right? And I think it’s a new start for me to go deeper, just show up better as a human being for myself. How can I be compassionate to myself? How can I show up better for my partner? How can I show up better for my family, for my community?

[00:34:14] Soon: How can I let go more and more of my views? What should be or should not be. And also aim towards creating conditions for more wholesome encounters in my life. And when I face unwholesome encounters how can I let those go as well? So I think that that’s my aspiration for this Vesak, is kind of to keep the good fight going. Mm.

[00:34:40] Cheryl: And thank you so much. I’ve learned a lot from both of you. And it’s given my Vesak a new meaning as well. Please feel free to comment below what does Vesak mean to you? And yeah, stay tuned and see you in the next episode. Thank you, and bye bye. Bye-bye bye.


Resources

The Snake Simile where the Buddha calls someone foolish —https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.nypo.html#:~:text=6.%20%22Of%20whom,time.%22%5B3%5D


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