How I Built My Wisephone

A little over ten years ago, I had what my charming meditation teacher calls a nervous breakthrough.

I enjoyed my job as a freelance journalist and book critic in 2012, but the smartphone had ruined everything. The newspaper that had been the backbone of my income folded. Glossy thick magazines, now skeletal, were paying half of what they paid only a few years ago. I was going deeper and deeper into debt, which as a single mother with sole custody and responsibility for an 11 year old, was pretty terrifying. I remember days when I was rigid with anxiety. I couldn’t sleep. I had no vision of the next stage of my life. I had no sense of self without the work I had built my life around.

One grim day in November, a compassionate friend pointed me to a video by the Tibetan meditation teacher, Mingyur Rinpoche. He talked movingly about the panic attacks he used to experience as a kid, and how he used meditation to free himself. At first he made the classic mistakes: trying to clear his mind of thoughts, trying to push the fear away, which only ever made things worse, trying to escape by blissing out. Finally he just accepted anxiety, as it is, and basically befriended it. In time, his terror relaxed and dissolved on its own. In using the techniques he taught, I can’t say my terror dissolved, but the icy grip began to loosen.

He described his radically simple techniques as “non-meditation.” There was no chanting, or visualizations, no new agey talk of manifestation. His advice was refreshingly simple: instead of “meditating on sound,” just listen to sound. Instead of fighting painful emotions, get to know these emotions, greet them with warmth and tap into an intuitive compassion. Instead of fixating rigidly on trying to bend the world to your version of reality, tap into the curiosity we are born with and re-learn how to explore the big, vast open space of life. The essence of this meditation that could be used anytime, anywhere was easily summed up:

Be present. Be kind. Be curious.

I read one of his books on meditation, and an idea settled into my brain, took up residence, and has never left.

He wrote about the learning trajectory of a good meditation path. Tapping into our sense of presence is like recharging a battery. Tapping into our drive to be happy and free is like cultivating the technology that uses the energy from that battery. And tapping into open curiosity optimizes that technology. What he helped me build over a series of courses became my wisephone.

I could still use my smartphone to connect to the external world. But when it all became too much, as it so often did, I now had my wisephone, a skillset I could use to re-connect to my innate wellbeing.

It wasn’t a matter of making one phone call to my innate wellbeing. I had to call regularly and every day. In time my life changed. I found work at an education startup that scaled beyond what I’d ever expected. Within a few years I was a Chief Learning Officer and was using this anytime anywhere meditation on the road. I meditated under the northern lights of Iqaluit, in the downtown streets of Nairobi, while walking through an underpass in L.A. Along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on my way to give a talk at MIT.

I also meditated in the excruciating meetings, and through the endless tangle of workplace politics and job insecurity of a scaling company. I meditated when I was feeling burnt out. When I needed to develop the kindness to convey a hard truth. When I needed the courage to hear a hard truth. I meditated before meetings, to stay curious instead of reactive. I meditated when I needed clarity, and when I needed to support others in establishing clarity.

By learning how to simply be, my life has become so much bigger and more interesting that what I could have “manifested” from a self-limiting set of goals and desires.

A month ago, something happened that I would never have imagined for myself back then. I had lunch with Mingyur Rinpoche at his monastery in Kathmandu. I’d been accepted into the first cohort of meditation teachers who, after a year of study, would soon be certified to offer his Anytime, Anywhere Meditation course.

I spent an hour sitting across from him, chatting about how much his life had transformed. A couple of years ago he had delivered a TED talk that had reached over a million people. Fame had its upside in terms of financing a growing set of local and global projects. And it had its downside. He mimicked how on some days his head was talking to one person, while his body was shaking hands with another. Less than a month ago someone in China had created a deep fake video of him now being used to scam donations from people.

Obviously he was concerned about people being scammed, but another side of him seemed to be curious, even delighted about the idea of creating a virtual version of himself.

Someone else at this lunch asked him if he thought that AI could ever become enlightened. “Maybe” he said. He explained that in Tibetan Buddhism there are many ways that consciousness is born, not all of them originate in humans. Think of bacteria from which we evolved. There’s no reason to exclude the possibility that our smartphones might one day actually become wise, even enlightened.

For now though, I find contentment in the unknown, staying prepared and open to whatever breakthrough is on the horizon.