Support Us

Pre-order “Build Your Peace” Nanobricks Blind Box Now →

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


Get connected here:

Telegram Instagram YouTube Facebook

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


Get connected here:

Telegram Instagram YouTube Facebook

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


Get connected here:

Telegram Instagram YouTube Facebook

What a Pooping Stranger Taught Me About Mindfulness & Impermanence

What a Pooping Stranger Taught Me About Mindfulness & Impermanence

by | May 21, 2025 | Read, Reflections on core teachings

TLDR: Brian Chang shares his experience about how maintaining mindfulness and awareness helped him avoid getting into “unlucky” situations. He also reflects on a particular “incident.”

On a sunny afternoon, as I was walking towards my local supermarket to stock up on groceries for the week, I noticed a sudden, strong, smelly odor as I was going down the escalator.

This was not usual.

I didn’t know where it came from. As soon as I reached the bottom of the escalator, I saw a fresh, huge “gold” at the end of the escalator, coming from an old man standing in front of me! 

I didn’t over-react like I normally do. Instead, I maintained my awareness and carefully walked past the mess and the stains left by his footprints on my way to the supermarket.

I heaved a sigh of relief and continued with my grocery shopping.

The day just gets ‘worse’

After buying what I needed, I went back to the dormitory. Upon arrival, I realised that my card to enter the dormitory wasn’t on me!

Usually, in similar circumstances, I would start to panic. Various negative scenarios would begin to play out in my mind. But it was different this time.

I directed my mind to think of solutions to get my card back. I recollected the places I had walked past and the actions I had taken while returning to the dormitory from the supermarket. I remembered that I had taken my phone out while buying chicken at the deli and that was probably when the card had accidentally fallen out of my pocket.

I quickly walked back to the supermarket, scanning the floor for my card as I went. Thank goodness when I arrived at the deli, my card was still untouched on the floor. I picked it up and joyfully walked back to the dormitory.

A tale of two mindsets

What a Pooping Stranger Taught Me About Mindfulness & Impermanence

When I got back, I compared the difference in my mental state and behaviour in this situation to my usual conduct. The following is a summary of the comparison:

UsualThis time
Would daydream while walkingWalked with mindfulness 
Living in my own world, unaware of what’s happening around meBeing aware of my surroundings

The experience was abnormal. I had been practising mindfulness meditation for months, but I never expected to witness the fruition of my efforts in such a profound and unexpected moment.

I saw that having added a little bit more mindfulness made my ability to handle incidents with more peace of mind. I was not adding value judgments to situations but rather seeing things with a more balanced approach.

This prevented ‘unfortunate’ moments from becoming ‘unfortunate’ hours, days, months or even years!

Reflecting on the day

As I reflected on the incident that happened that day, I realised that with sati (mindfulness), sampajañña (awareness), and some saddhā (faith) in myself, I can achieve my desired results without any stress—or at least maintain a positive relationship with it.

Recently, I took a short course at my university regarding effective methods and tips for preparing for exams. One of the topics was about dealing with stress. A TED video on stress was shared. 

From the video, I learnt that simply believing that stress is not harmful can reduce the risk of dying, as stress actually helps the body prepare for more challenging tasks. For more information about dealing with stress, you may watch Kelly McGonigal’s TED talk: How to make stress your friend.

So, I can use sampajañña to recognise when I am stressed and notice the negative thoughts associated with it. Then, I can apply sati and a positive perception of stress to change my relationship with it and stop the negative proliferation of thoughts, helping me overcome difficulties without feeling like I’m “dying.” The best of both worlds!

Here is a good guided meditation that you might find helpful for practising sati and sampajañña: Guided Mindfulness Meditation with Ajahn Kalyano

Lessons on impermanence

What a Pooping Stranger Taught Me About Mindfulness & Impermanence

The incident with the old man pooping uncontrollably in public also made me reflect on the nature of impermanence. I may be young now, but one day, I too will be like the old man. Unable to control my bowels or my body. 

This reminded me of King Koravya, a king during the Buddha’s time, who quizzed Buddha’s disciple, Rattapala, on why he was ordained when young. The famous dialogue showed that even the rich and powerful aren’t spared from ageing.

“And what do you think, great king: Are you even now as strong in arm and strong in thigh, as fit, and as seasoned in warfare?”

“Not at all, Master Ratthapala. I’m now a feeble old man, aged, advanced in years, having come to the last stage of life, 80 years old. Sometimes, thinking, ‘I will place my foot here,’ I place it somewhere else.”

“It was in reference to this, great king, that the Blessed One who knows and sees, worthy and rightly self-awakened, said: ‘The world is swept away. It does not endure.’ Having known and seen and heard this, I went forth from the home life into homelessness.”

Impermanence in student life

I recently felt the impact of impermanence in my own life. 

During the semester, I was planning my to-do lists with my roommate so that we wouldn’t get bored during the winter break. Just as I was fantasising about our good times after the final exams, one day, he suddenly told me that he had decided to go back to Vietnam during the break. He couldn’t handle the gloomy days of winter anymore.

In my mind, I had expected that we would do meaningful things together. However, plans do not always keep up with changes. Some things are beyond our control.

A good learning experience on impermanence. The learning experience doesn’t always have to involve death—it can also be about the little things in our daily lives.

Wise Steps:

  • Try to maintain mindfulness and awareness in daily life.
  • Recognise your negative thoughts and learn how to develop a positive relationship with them through mindfulness.
  • Use the thought of impermanence as a trigger to practise awareness and mindfulness in daily life.
The simple pursuit of a meaningful life

The simple pursuit of a meaningful life

by | Jan 3, 2024 | Purpose & Happiness, Read

TLDR: The day that we lie dying, would we say that we have lived well? In the pursuit of a meaningful life, Buddhist Scholar Sylvia Bay shares insights on cultivating positive relationships, embracing Dhamma growth, and dedicated service to a greater cause.

Everything we value will end

When impermanence is such a central feature of reality, what is the meaning of life? We are born, go through life’s milestones, and at some indeterminate point, we die.

Everything that we “value”, our hopes and dreams, achievements and accolades will end with that. 

If we believe in rebirth, we expect the same grind to start all over again. Living seems like a fruitless and endless pursuit. Nonetheless, the fact is we are alive. We can whine about its meaninglessness or we can try and make this one count.

While we are very different in physical and psychological make-up, oddly, our perception about a meaningful life is fundamentally not very different.

Most of us would agree that a life filled with pain, anger, agitation, worries, unfulfilled yearnings and loneliness seems pointless. 

The only possible exception to that is if we perceive that our personal happiness is sacrificed at the altar of a higher calling such as for the country, people, god (generically) or ideals (such as democracy, liberty, freedom, justice and so on). 

So the measure of life’s meaningfulness has two components: psychological-emotional mental state (happy or sad, pleasure or pain) and mind-made construct of value. 

Hence, the regular person will find his life meaningful if he is serving a cause that he deeply believes in and derives powerful positive emotions from it. For me, meaning in life is found in the following three areas: having positive relationships, growing in the Dhamma and in service of Dhamma.

Relationships

It is hard to be happy if we are in conflict, especially with the people closest to us, such as parents, children, spouse, good friends and so on. Why do relationships go so wrong? 

A large part of the problem lies in our attitude. We often approach relationships from a singularly self-centred perspective: my expectations, desires, interests and feelings.

We expect unconditional love, consideration and respect from the people we care about. 

We expect that they will be understanding and do the necessary to placate our moods. Yet, we don’t always extend the same courtesy to them. Instead, how we treat them is often dictated by fickle and fleeting feelings. 

We are nice and helpful when we feel good and snappy and hurtful when we are upset.

The Buddha’s teaching on managing relationships starts from a very different perspective. In the Sigalovada sutta,[1] Buddha taught that we should have a wholesome attitude in our relationships. We take the initiative to give love, care, consideration, respect, and so on without expecting reciprocity. 

We do our duties conscientiously and look after the people around us, to give them peace and comfort. 

We are a dutiful and grateful child, a loving and supportive spouse, a wise and caring parent and a loyal and fair friend, because that matters to them. To the wider world, have metta and compassion, graciousness and generosity. And the list goes on.

It may seem daunting, but actually, it is rather straightforward. Just treat others as we wish to be treated. We want to be treated with respect, courtesy, fairness and kindness. 

So, do that for another. We don’t want to be at the receiving end of cruel words and actions, slanderous gossip and criticisms, so don’t do that to another. 

If we dislike being taken for granted, others will also resent that. If we are mindful of the empathy principle, we should be able to nurture healthy, rewarding and fulfilling relationships, and be a source of joy and comfort for the world.

Growing in the Dhamma

Many of us in lay life are fixated about earning a living and creating financial security. While that is pragmatic because we and our loved ones “must eat”, it should not be our exclusive focus. 

Because ultimately, material wealth and worldly success are impermanent. Surely, we don’t want to put all our proverbial eggs in the worldly basket and then have to leave them all behind when death strikes? 

We most definitely cannot assume that we will always make it back to a human birth and have another shot at Dhamma cultivation. Therefore, we should not waste this particular existence, especially since the right conditions for practice are already there.

A mistake we often make is to assume that spirituality and the worldly life must necessarily be mutually exclusive. It need not be so. 

I would like to highlight two suttas where Buddha had explained that a complete and meaningful life is one that strikes the right balance between worldly success and spiritual fulfillment. They are the Vyagghapajja sutta (also known as Dighajanu) and the Mangala sutta.

In the Vyagghapajja sutta, Buddha taught a lay person, Dighajanu, what he must do to have a satisfying lay life where he could continue to enjoy sensual pleasures, while assuring himself of happy future births. For worldly success and happiness, Buddha advised Dighajanu to strive and excel in his work, to be vigilant in protecting his assets, to live comfortably within his means and to keep good and wholesome friends.[2] 

For more sustainable happiness that extends to future lives, Dighajanu must cultivate spiritual faith, uphold morality, be generous and develop wisdom.

For a Buddhist, spiritual faith means being confident that Buddha was indeed enlightened, the Dhamma is effective in restoring mental health and reducing pain and suffering, and the Sangha are the physical embodiment of a practice that delivers unconditioned bliss. 

Faith motivates us to lead a virtuous life that is harmless and beneficial to others. We learn to tame greed and anger and gradually overcome ignorance and delusion. Generosity means being able to set aside our desires and preferences for the welfare and benefit of others.

Wisdom means seeing and understanding impermanence of reality for what it is and learning to moderate our cravings so as to be able to experience some joy and peace in daily living.

In the Mangala sutta,[3] Buddha showed how a life is fortunate, complete and worthwhile when it successfully balances the worldly demands with spiritual insights. The successful lay man knows how to keep wise company, and to exploit whatever advantages he had in pursuit of his goals, including tapping on favourable environmental conditions, past merits, worldly knowledge and professional skills. 

He must fulfill his responsibilities and obligations to his loved ones and be a decent, upright man who is respected by society for his generosity and virtues. But even as he juggles worldly demands, he must make time for the Dhamma. 

Be conscientious in listening to the teachings. Approach sangha practitioners to clarify his understanding. Incorporate the teaching and practice into his daily life. With correct understanding, he learns to be content with little, to keep his mind pure, and to tame the thinking habit. 

When the mental conditions are right and in place, he will gradually gain an intuitive insight into the noble truths, sees the Dhamma and eventually understands the mind’s true nature.

If his understanding of Dhamma is penetrative enough, he will enter the Dhamma stream.[4] His faith in the Triple Gems is now unshakeable and he will not suffer from the identity illusion crisis. 

He will live the rest of this life happier, more at peace and more content. While he can still be caught up in the occasional emotional ups and downs, his is a more sedate version from that which plagues the rest of the world. 

If he does not realise nibbana in this life, he would be reborn at most seven more times and never lower than a human birth. At whatever distant point when the mental conditions are aligned, he will realise nibbana.

Most of us assume that stream entry is impossible for us, at least not in this lifetime. We offer all kinds of reasons: we are not morally good enough, not smart or wise enough, too ignorant, too busy, too old, too young and so on. 

The canonical text is peppered with numerous stories of stream-enterers who were just common people: successful businessmen, frazzled housewives, bored and restless youths, jaded elderly men, and less common ones including a courtesan, some hunters, a king, a general and some ministers. 

Some may say that those ancient stream-enterers succeeded because of Buddha’s personal guidance and may even add that without Buddha’s help, entering stream is impossible. This is a dreadfully misguided view. At his deathbed, Buddha told Subhadda, the last ascetic he personally ordained, that as long as there is the eightfold path, there would be people who could realise Dhamma.[5] So who do we believe? Conventional hearsay or Buddha? I choose the latter. Entering the Dhamma stream may not be easy, but not impossible. Buddha may be gone but Dhamma and Sangha are still here and thriving.

Servicing Dhamma

Despite our regular innate self-serving instincts, there is a part in us that is drawn towards altruistic service. The idea of volunteering wholly for the benefit of the wider community, without expectations, is oddly pleasing and satisfying. 

I am personally drawn towards Dhamma propagation. To me, Dhamma is invaluable because it helps restore mental health and well-being to anyone who understands and incorporates the teaching into their daily life. 

Dhamma is timeless: long after we are gone and our bodies grounded into ashes and dusts, Dhamma will continue to bring immeasurable and unconditioned bliss to the faithful practitioners. 

It has been over 2500 years since Buddha was gone: yet his work continues to alleviate the mental suffering of countless beings. What service can be more meaningful than that?

For those inspired to serve, consider playing to your strength. Offer your professional skills and technical knowledge in support of Dhamma propagation. While teaching or sharing Dhamma seems an obvious answer, there are actually much more that could be done. 

For instance, design webpages for uploading Dhamma knowledge. Contribute to Dhamma publications: write, edit or proofread articles. Manage Buddhist organisations or activities. Provide legal expertise. Handle the accounts. And so on and so forth. 

Be a part of the effort to make Dhamma available to other seekers. We are all beneficiaries of Dhamma practitioners and propagators who had come before us.

Because of their proselytising efforts, we know where to go and whom to seek out to learn Dhamma. It is our duty to continue their work of preserving this ancient knowledge and passing it on to future generations.

Dying with no regrets

We do not know if death will come knocking tomorrow. But when it does, what would your last words be and would there be regrets? Spare a moment to reflect on this. 

The day that we lie dying, would we say that we have lived well? That we have loved and are loved? That we have learnt much and matured into a wiser, kinder and happier person? And that we are leaving this world a better place than the one we found? 

If your answers are an unequivocal yes, the odds are you have found your meaning in life and are at heart, content and at peace.

Wise Steps:

  1. Strengthen relationships by adopting a wholesome attitude, giving love and care without expecting anything in return, and aligning with the Buddha’s teachings.
  2. Achieve a balanced life by integrating worldly success with spiritual growth, drawing inspiration from the Vyagghapajja sutta’s principles.
  3. Contribute to Dhamma propagation by leveraging professional skills, ensuring the preservation and passing on of ancient knowledge for future generations.

References

[1] See Walshe, Maurice. “Sigalaka Sutta: To Sigalaka, Advice to Lay People” D 31 in Thus Have I Hear: The Long Discourses of the Buddha, Translated from the Pali, London: Wisdom Publications, 1987, pp. 460-469.

[2] Bodhi, Bhikkhu. “Dighajanu” A 8:54(4) in The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, A Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya: Translated from the Pāli. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2012, pp. 1173-1175.

[3] Bodhi, Bhikkhu, “Blessing” SN 2:4 in The Suttanipāta: An Ancient Collection of the Buddha’s Discourses Together with its Commentaries, Translated from the Pali, Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2017, pp. 199-200. Traditionally, the Mangala Sutta is taught as “38” types of blessings which are essentially conditions for one’s growth, success and happiness. That is one way to look at it. Another way is to take each stanza as a self-contained advice and collectively, the 11 stanzas would seem to paint a full, complete and meaningful life.

[4] This means becoming a sotapanna or stream-enterer, which is the first of four stages of sainthood taught in the Pali Canon.[5] See Walshe, “Mahaparinibbana Sutta: The Buddha’s Last Days” D 16, op. cit., pp. 268.