By Ann Zinnette
I met Ann, our guest writer, at a recent meditation retreat, and she was also kind enough to write about her experience – when our hearts and minds start shifting radically towards true awareness and peace, we ought to share it with the world. Ann specializes in Research and Evaluation, Qualitative research, and Behavioral science. And above all (for this context), she is a Vipassana meditator who just like all of us, is facing the vicissitudes and unsatisfactoriness of this incarnation and trying to find her ground. May we find inspiration in her story.
Peace, Kamande.
Life is full of joy and full of sorrow. Both will come and both will go. The key is to remain open, curious, and willing to experience it all without holding too tightly.
A few years ago, my world felt as if it had been shattered beyond repair. It wasn’t dramatic or loud; just a quiet, hollow moment. I lost someone dear to me. A person I had shaped myself around, someone whose presence had anchored me in ways I hadn’t even realized until they were gone. The grief wasn’t just sorrow, it was a kind of disorientation, like I’d lost my bearing. It was thick and unrelenting, yet so quiet. I felt like I had lost a part of myself, as though a piece of my soul had been misplaced, stolen away by time and circumstance. It wasn’t just the absence of them. It was the absence of me; the “me” I knew in connection to them. It felt like standing in a house where every window and door had been left open, and all the warmth had escaped. And I was left cold and alone, just me, myself and I. I would stand in the shower and cry, not just with sadness but with frustration at how trapped I felt in this endless loop of sorrow.
In those days, I kept myself busy, filling my days with tasks and distractions. I told myself I was moving on, but grief is a sneaky bastard. It showed up in unexpected moments– while I was making tea, or listening to a song. A memory would rise like a wave, and I would be swept up in it, unable to breathe. I clung to books like lifelines, trying to understand the mess I was in. That’s when I stumbled upon Joyful Wisdom by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. The title caught me off guard. “Joyful? Wisdom?” It seemed impossible to even say those words in the same breath as the pain I was feeling. But there it was, a book that promised something about joy, something about wisdom, something about navigating the messy, confusing nature of being human.
I read the book, one page after the next, each one pulling me deeper into an understanding of suffering I hadn’t encountered before. Mingyur Rinpoche talked about suffering not as something to be avoided, but as something to ‘meet’. “Suffering is part of the human condition,” he said, “and trying to escape it only makes it worse.” That hit me hard. I realized I had been fighting my pain for so long. I never let it in, never understood it. Mingyur Rinpoche talked about how his childhood was filled with anxiety, how he would wake up each morning feeling dread as though something terrible was about to happen. And yet, through years of meditation, he learned to make friends with his anxiety, to greet it with curiosity and kindness. It sounds odd, but it really resonated with me at that moment.
One chapter changed everything for me, the one about impermanence. “Everything changes,” Mingyur Rinpoche wrote. “The trick is not to cling.” I sat with that thought for days. Could it really be that simple? Could I really just stop clinging to the pain, to the memories, to the ache that had become such a part of me? Impermanence became an idea I couldn’t shake. I started looking for it everywhere–in the flowers that bloomed and then fell, in the clouds that formed, shifted and dispersed, in my breath that moved in and out without my control. And that’s when I did something a little impulsive, as people often do when they think they’ve stumbled upon some grand wisdom–I got a tattoo, yes, ink on skin!
The tattoo was a simple one: the Tibetan character for “impermanence (སྐད་ཅིག་མ་),” engraved on my wrist as a reminder that nothing stays the same, not even this overwhelming grief. I thought I understood impermanence, thought it was a lesson I could wear on my skin and carry with me like a shield. But, as you’ll see, real wisdom can’t be captured in ink. It’s lived.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I found myself signing up for a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. I had heard about it from a friend—a silent retreat where you learn to observe your breath and body without reacting. It sounded intense, even a little terrifying, but something about it felt right. I was ready for more. I was ready to experience impermanence, not just think about it.
The retreat was…let’s just say it wasn’t what I expected.
Imagine this: you’re sitting for hours, in complete silence, surrounded by strangers who are also sitting, doing nothing but breathing. I’m not going to lie, those first few days, my mind was like a wild animal locked in a cage, “the monkey mind”. Every thought I’d ever had about anything came to mind. My back hurt, my knees ached, my mind wouldn’t stop racing. And to top it off, the silence wasn’t peaceful, it was deafening. I thought I was going to lose it.
But then, something strange started to happen. Slowly, I began to settle. Not because I forced my mind to be still, but because I started to see the thoughts, sensations, and emotions rise and fall, like waves in the ocean. I didn’t push them away. I didn’t chase after them. I just noticed. “This is impermanence”, I thought. Every moment was a lesson in change. Each breath came and went. Each pain in my knee flared up, burned, and then faded. Each emotion I had, whether boredom, frustration, or even flashes of joy, was temporary. I began to observe my grief in the same way I had been observing my breath. I noticed its texture, the way it would rise and fall in intensity, how it shifted from sadness to longing to anger and back again. It was always moving, never still. Just like the breath, my grief wasn’t a solid, immovable thing. It was more like air passing through me, moment by moment. Always changing.
And the more I noticed, the lighter I felt. The technique of Vipassana teaches you to observe without reacting, to remain equanimous, and in that process, you understand impermanence on a whole new level. It’s not just an idea, not just a tattoo on your skin. It’s the very fabric of reality. The truth of every passing moment.
Through continued meditation practice, I’ve come to realize that the more I can open my heart to my own suffering, the more compassion I have for others.
By day seven, something incredible happened. I remembered my loss, the one that had brought me to my knees all those years ago, but it was like watching an old movie. I knew it had hurt – oh, how it had hurt– but I couldn’t recall how it felt. The pain had softened, and what was left was just the memory. I realized I had healed, not because I had tried to fix myself, but because I had finally allowed myself to see that nothing stays the same, not even grief.
And isn’t that liberating? The very thing we hold onto, whether it’s pain or pleasure, is constantly slipping through our fingers. But instead of despairing at this truth, we can find freedom in it. We don’t have to cling. We don’t have to resist. We can just be, and in that being, we can find peace.
So here I am, after the retreat, looking at this tattoo of impermanence on my wrist. It’s funny, really. I thought I got the tattoo to remind myself of something, but the retreat taught me the real lesson. Impermanence doesn’t need to be reminded. It’s happening every second, in every breath. It’s there, in the changing sensations of your body, in the fleeting thoughts in your mind, in the shifting landscapes of your heart. All you have to do is pay attention.
I’m no longer that person weighed down by grief, but I don’t regret the pain I went through. It taught me something that no book or tattoo could ever fully capture. I learned that suffering isn’t something to run from. It’s something to embrace, to learn from, to transform. Through continued meditation practice, I’ve come to realize that the more I can open my heart to my own suffering, the more compassion I have for others. Mingyur Rinpoche says that suffering can be a doorway to love and compassion. And it’s true. My experience has made me softer, more tender, and more understanding of others’ pain.
Life is full of joy and full of sorrow. Both will come and both will go. The key is to remain open, curious, and willing to experience it all without holding too tightly. That’s what it means to live with wisdom. And maybe even a little bit of joy.