Literally, Light Shining Mountain, Foguangshan (FGS) is one of the major Buddhist sects in Taiwan. They have a big monastery near Kaohsiung which is a big tourist attraction, and also a temple. The Buddha there is the largest in Asia (or something like it).

Going to this meditation was part of my “Eat, Pray, Love” journey since leaving my job last month. In California, it’s trendy to do meditation retreats. A lot of my friends have been participating in one called Jhourney, which costs several thousands of dollars and takes the Silicon Valley startup mindset and applies it to meditation retreat. In contrast, the FGS is thousands of years old, and provides their retreats free of cost.

“Have you told your family you’ll be away?” Yes, I nod. “Okay, now eat the orange you brought.” I nod again. They take my phone and seal it in a ziploc bag with my Chinese name; a matching nameplate is handed to me. On it, it says, “vow of silence, Bu Tianlan”.

As I don the blue-ish-gray robes, I scarcely realize that it would be my last time walking freely until after the retreat.

Day 1. As promised on the website, wake up time was 5am. They are extremely punctual at Foguangshan. They strike a wooden percussive instrument at 5am on the dot. We have about ten minutes to rouse, make our bed, and come out to the main hall.

The main hall has a statue of the Buddha in the middle. He has a light smile on his face, and his legs are folded in the lotus position.

When we sit, we are asked to be cross-legged, or do half or full lotus. All of the options are difficult for me. I realize that I’m not used to sitting for extended periods. In fact, when I was in 12th grade in high school I started a campaign, “sitting is the new smoking” to encourage more standing breaks in school. Apparently, sitting for 6 hours in a row has the effect on your life expectancy as smoking a cigarette.

The monks at Foguangshan didn’t seem to get the memo. There are many rules and restrictions at FGS. Sitting properly is one of them. You are not allowed to rest your back against the wall while sitting. When sitting, you must use a “knee blanket” to protect your knees from the air conditioning (I can’t tell you more than that). When you walk, you must step softly so as to avoid disturbing others. When you receive food, you move the rice from the top right of the tray to the bottom left, then the soup from the top left to the bottom right.

The experience of being at the retreat is something like being at Catholic school, the military, on an airplane, or in prison – or some healthy mix thereof.

By the end of Day 1, I begin to despise the slight smile on the Buddha’s face. He is in the full lotus, an advanced sitting position which I can’t even bend into. Cross-legged, my legs are aching like nobody’s business. When I stretch out one muscle, another one starts aching. Enduring pain is part of the Buddhist practice, the monk says. Be in the present moment.

No one else in the retreat – all Taiwanese locals – is fidgeting around like me. After the meditation settings, the men I’m dorming with stretch and flex their muscles, so maybe I’m not alone.

I remind myself that I’m here voluntarily. I can leave at any moment. I came for a reason. But at hour nine on Day 1, I find myself thinking, what was my reason again? “All the cool kids are doing it” feels like flimsy logic at this point. At the end of the day, I calculate how many more waking hours I have left. I’m about 20% of the way to the end of the retreat. It’s not very “be in the present moment” of me, but I can scarcely wait for the end.

I’ve been into Stoicism recently, an Ancient Greek philosophy that has some overlay with Buddhism. The Stoics believe it’s good for you to put yourself through difficult situations: having no money, not being able to talk, not having any freedoms. I didn’t realize that the “retreat” would be so challenging. Besides being physically uncomfortable, I mentally resist almost every instruction given to me. I resent the fact that I can’t walk around in the evening, that my only time outdoors is walking to and from the cafeteria, and even then, we’re in line accompanied by a monk like we’re in second-grade (I wasn’t a very well-behaved kid in second-grade).

Servitude. Devotion. Acceptance. I recall the story of Cyrus Habib – former Lieutenant Governor of Washington – who left politics to join the Jesuit order. With the Jesuits, you spend ten years in complete servitude – cleaning toilets, vow of silence, etc. Only then can you become a real monk.

Another thought that comes up is Davy Jones’s in Pirates of the Caribbean. Davy Jones is captain of the Flying Dutchman, a mythological ship that ferries souls from the world of the living to the world of the dead. When he takes over a ship, he offers each person about to be executed the chance to live forever aboard his ship. Those who join the Flying Dutchman become “part of the crew, part of the ship”. Their bodies become crustacean, blending in with the texture of the barnacles and seashells in the lower decks. Their personalities and memories slowly erode, until they are only in servitude to Flying Dutchman and its captain.

The monks at the monastery live, eat, and sleep Buddhism. They wake up at 5am to baby-sit us, and are alert and focused until 10pm, lights off. I have to say, I really admire the devotion. I mean, either these people are idiots, or they really know what they want. It’s not so different from what I hear from my friends who work in consulting or finance. When you’re this committed to something, I feel it affects every corner of your mind. In a beautiful, totalizing, somewhat intimidating sense.

Day 2. The food at Foguangshan is impeccable. The volunteers serve us. It’s all vegan, there’s tofu served at every meal. For lunch, they even give grass jelly pudding and an orange.

After lunch, the monks pull me aside. I’m in the waiting room, my heart beating slightly faster. The head monk comes around, and says roughly: “Hey. We’ve noticed that you keep jostling about. Have you done this kind of meditation before?” I said I have done bits and pieces, but nothing nearly this long. “This is a five day retreat! By the time you get to the end, you’ll be aching as soon as you sit down. This is not to say that you’re not welcome, but given that you are constantly leaning against the wall and moving about, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

It was a relief. Two nights – that’s all it took. And about 16 hours of meditation. By some counts, it’s an extraordinary feat.

The monk says, “if you want to practice meditation, you should start in small doses. Do 10 minutes at home each day, keep track. Then do more and more. Just like running a marathon. Don’t do 5 days all at once! We have a one-day retreat, and a 3-day retreat.”

I nod, and smile. I am going to taste the sunshine, I’m going to have boba tea. I can wear clothes that have actual colors, I can sleep and read any book I want, and I can talk again!

I feel directionally good about the meditation retreat. By the end, I did feel more at peace. And I had some realizations. For instance, I started the retreat with a cough; I realize that by focusing on deep breathing, I could will the cough away. I also had a lot of thoughts bouncing around my mind, and by focusing on my breath, it felt like my brain waves lowered in frequency.

It’s funny, since I consider myself a somewhat mindful person. I also realize that meditation is not for the faint of heart. It’s the kind of thing where I’m glad I did it, and I’m glad it’s over. For now, I think I’m good on the multi-day retreats – at least I don’t feel the FOMO anymore.

I am generally supportive of cultivating discipline, presence, patience, these kinds of things. But in terms of mental health, I feel at my current stage in life, I prefer to more actively engage with my thoughts through journalling; and clear my head with a good run, bike ride, or swim, or laughing with a friend.

Kudos to the monks at Foguangshan! Maybe they know something I don’t.

• Riss. Who is in grad school right now studying to be a therapist. She’s also a somatic healer, a business owner, who writes her own newsletter! But she’s also my friend, though I thought when we met we had nothing in common because she wanted to talk about horoscopes and she felt like my star sign was off. I think now what we have in common is the energy and loyalty we show to others in our life.
• Shuge. Who is now a home-owner! And is a person who I feel is so generous and open with her time no matter what.
• Leon. Who has gotten into music school and will be starting in the fall! And who has worked so hard for the past years since deciding he wanted to do this – going through a year of toiling through injury, a year of fog, not knowing what he wanted to do with his life, and an era of utter devotion to his craft – the piano – since we came back from Taiwan.
• Alicia. Who left her comfortable job in economics research to also do therapy! I admire the courage, the belief that things will work out.
• Arman. Who has an incredible memory about people and things, who lives in two worlds (Seattle & Oakland).
• Penny. Who is a Kaohsiung local, then moved to the UK for a year to study illustration, and now is back in the motherland (Taiwan) and, I believe that out of the forest of directionlessness she will find her way as an artist.
• Abie. Who is a top-notch solo practice lawyer right after graduating from Berkeley Law. Abie is incredible at what he does and I feel I can go to him with any legal question and he loves discussing, theorizing, walking through all the alternatives, and he shows up.
• Taj. Who moved back to Arizona to be with his grandparents, and I miss him! And who got arrested in California for animal activism, but still passed the bar, and we all wrote in for his moral character hearing, which was awesome.
• Don & Lily. Who are the most joyous, and free-spirited couple I know, who live life with no bounds, who are worldly and adventurous and live life to the fullest.

This list is not exhaustive and just people who come to mind right now as I’m writing this!

• The joy of Stoicism. I’ve been reading this book about Stoicism. There are a lot of useful concepts. Here are a few:
  • Negative visualization. Most people use their imagination to think about things you don’t have, eg. a house with a yard, a boat, a million dollars. The Stoics believe that you can instead spend this imagination on thinking about how bad life would be if you lost something you do have. For example, imagine if you broke your leg tomorrow, or if your partner died in a car crash, or if you went blind. Wow, that would be awful, right? Then, when you realize that your partner hasn’t died and you can see out of both eyes, you feel extra grateful!
  • Choosing goals in your zone of agency. Most people set goals like, “get a job within 3 months” or “win the tennis tournament”. While you achieving that might be somewhat in your control, there’s some significant chance that it’s entirely out of your control. So really, your goals should be about your attitude towards a certain objective – are you giving it your all?
• Internal Family Systems. Another book I’ve been reading is by Richard Schwartz, who developed the “internal family systems” model of psychotherapy. In it, you imagine that you brain is made up of “parts” that each grew at a certain point in your life. When you’re undecided about something, for example whether to have ice cream, one part of you might be craving the sweet rush of sugar that will make you temporarily happy, and another part might feel guilty because you’re trying to eat more healthy lately. Schwartz encourages us to get to know our parts, to love them and appreciate them for who they are, like you might with a member of your family. After all, our parts formed for a reason – normally at a moment in your life when they were a helpful adaption to your present circumstances. By recognizing our parts like they’re full human beings, and taking a reconciliatory approach, Schwartz says we can “unburden” ourselves from past experiences and live more joyously.
• Moments of fog, and moments of clarity. This one I picked up from a podcast I listened to just this morning. At some points in life, we experience moments of fog. That is, you don’t know what you’ll do after you graduate; you just retired and now have too much time on your hands. Jim Collins talks about “cliff moments”, when your life dramatically changes (often, the loss of something that was integral to your identity) and you have to rediscover what you’d like to do. I also think there can be moments of fog even when you’re very busy. Then, there’s moments of clarity – when you are driven to do something no matter what.
• I was walking with a friend – he said that he has a “high constitution” when it comes to working with people. I thought about that, cause I like the metaphor. Constitution in role-playing games (like Pokemon, or Dungeons and Dragons) is like health points. In a work context, I suppose it means putting up with bullshit. Here’s a few other RPG terms applied to life:
  • Agility. The ability to think fast, adapt quickly, respond to a particular situation.
  • Wisdom. The ability to judge whether you should or shouldn’t be doing something; to take a step back and look at the broader picture.
  • Intellect. The ability to solve a problem, think creatively, approach something from a variety of angles.
  • Charisma. The ability to build rapport with people, understand how they think,
  • Strength. Two interpretations:
    • The ability to grind through something, even when it’s difficult.
    • The courage to do something, stand up for a cause or belief that you know is right.
  • So there you are. I’d rank my stats as: Charisma / Strength > Wisdom > Agility / Intellect > Constitution. I’d most like to improve my Constitution and Strength.

Recently, I was also reading this article in the New York Times Modern love section. It was about a woman whose child was still-born. She found out later in the pregnancy, so gave birth to the child, who they called B. The author, Mara, was so devastated she wrote a letter to her husband in response saying they should divorce, and that their marriage was a failure. They stayed together and now have two kids. But Mara still has flashbacks to the child, to the grief and horrific shock of losing someone so special to them. She said that on a recent road trip, she saw a pickup truck go by, and thought about how it might crash into their family car and she imagined her family all dead. And she mentioned this to her husband, who also lost B, and she said, “what did you do with the letter I wrote you?” and he said he kept it in a shoebox, along with a toy penguin they won at a fair, and a book he had bought for the baby.

A few months ago, I went through a very difficult breakup. It was the kind of relationship that took your hopes sky-high and dashed them moments later; a break-up so tumultuous I couldn’t bear to be around the person afterwards, even though we were the closest of friends for the time we dated. I told Leon that it was so difficult losing this person that I felt grief as if she passed away. vinny is right that these things do pass, but sometimes a wave feels more like a tsunami, and its shocks reverberate through the passage of time.

A city of multitudes. I’m at a party with my friend from school, Herbert, who I met when I was 12 as his orientation penpal. Herbert wears his dress shirt in the morning before heading off to his job as a consultant. “What happened to us, Herbert?” Later, at a party, a girl tells me she works in derivatives. “Like dy/dx?” I play. She’s ticked off by that one.

I can see my breath in the air, I hear a violin echoing on the subway, the flow of people, like busy ants bustling between skyscrapers, on the way very fast towards somewhere.

Leon and I watch Frances Ha (2012). A warm, quirky reminder that being in your 20s life doesn’t always go your way, and that’s okay.

Gothenburg, Sweden (July 2025). I’m talking with my cousin’s husband, Pranav. They live in this quiet university town with excellent public transport, free healthcare and higher education. We are talking about the promise of American life and the American dream. Pranav doesn’t see the point – he says he has everything already right now where he is. What would be the point of doing a risky startup in the Silicon Valley when he has a good, steady industry job? Before I moved out to California this year, a different family friend warned me: “beware of the Bay Area. The culture sucks you up and you may feel like you never have enough”. Now, listening to Pranav, I get what he’s saying, and can’t help but feel that I’ve inhaled some of the Bay’s toxic fumes of ambition.

In Heathrow Terminal 5 (July 2025), I missed my flight because of delays. In the intervening hours, I see planes heading to Hong Kong, Sydney and Seattle. Airports are like portals between dimensions; a plane ticket like a portkey. In the midst of it all, the intersection of worlds, I imagine that I could go anywhere – because technology can bring us virtually anywhere on the planet – and yet now I choose to go to the place I call home.

The Conservatism of Ezra Klein. I’ve been a fan of the Ezra Klein Show since 2019. There was a time when I listened to every single episode (they come out twice a week and are sometimes over two hours!). When I started listening, his show was his own thing – a beautiful blend of culture, politics, and societal commentary (and let’s not forget, an outspoken vegan!) – what has become of Ezra now? Now the assertive, bearded pundit, the mouth of the liberal bastion. These days I feel noise (from the Latin nausea) from Ezra, like he’s telling me news just for the drama, just to stress me out – because that’s where he is.

Speaking of beards, I have one now (December 2025). I started shaving when I was 15 and have basically been clean-shaven since. At the beginning of this month, I thought I’d grow a goatee. One major reason is that it’s a lot of effort to shave specifically the chin and upper-lip because of the concavities and crevices. I grew out facial hair a little about two years ago in Taiwan. The beard felt unbecoming, like it portrayed me as an adult or grown up and I’m not sure if I’m that. Maybe I am. It’s a different look, certainly – after a weekend of growing it out, I walk into work and people comment on the look, which, after a haircut, is now well-defined. I find the comments confusing to respond to at times. It’s like when people comment on how deep my voice is – it’s just something I was born with. As much as I painstake over my appearance, and think and rethink about how my beard feels on my skin, in my moments of higher wisdom, I recognize that the way I look doesn’t matter as much as the way I act and orient towards those around me.

My goals for a website: I wanted a place to blog, share musical creations, have a work portfolio, and share other projects as they come up. Designing and creating a website makes me feel artsy! I also think it’s a good way for friends to learn about what I’m up to and thinking about.

I was mainly trying to build a site that was very customizable and very cheap to run. The result is that I bought my domain on Namecheap, use GitHub as the hosting service, and code on my machine with lots of help from AI. The product is what you see!

Below are some steps I followed.

1. Create a basic GitHub Pages website, then clone it to your computer.
2. Download VS Code and get the Codex extension.
3. Go wild with vibe coding.
4. (optional) Get your own domain name on Namecheap.
5. (optional) Set up a comment section with Cusdis.

You can ask any LLM¹ to elaborate on the above steps for more details. My website content is entirely open-source and can be found here. Or email me to chat about the process!

If you’re someone who wants to build your own website, I’d offer the following thoughts:

• Think about what you want, first. For others, it’s possible that starting a Substack newsletter is good enough for you; or maybe Blogger is where it’s at; or perhaps Google Sites.
• Have a bounded scope. With web development, there’s always more you can do – so I recommend having a clear vision of what “success” looks like for a minimal viable product for your website. After that’s launched, you can think about version two.
• Ideate and develop with AI! The barriers to creating a website or doing anything with code are lower. I know, that sounds like some kind of startup tagline. But really, it’s pretty sick.
  • Since I “learned” how to vibe code, I’ve been able to focus purely on the vision, design and “product management” of my website (where I’m “managing” the LLM agent that’s doing the coding). Initially, I copied and pasted from the internet, until I caved and started paying $20 for the OpenAI Codex extension that goes straight in my IDE². It’s proved extremely powerful and capable of debugging the deepest bugs that I’ve previously been stuck on for months.
  • LLMs can also point you in the right direction early on. The more you tell it, the more helpful it is. These days, you can upload images and the LLM will figure out the rest.
  • Directing LLMs is a bit of a skill, but one that can be easily learned. I recommend having a clear ask; work feature by feature; and if it’s not working, be more specific, or give a picture of what you’re looking for. Most of the time, you can just give specific instructions and let it cook for a few minutes. Then, bam, you have a website!

“James,” I reply without hesitation.

I know they won’t butcher it. They won’t make me repeat it twice, and I won’t have to spell it out. James: Anglican, monosyllabic, easy.

My name, Rohan, turns out to be a little complicated — and I vary the pronunciation depending on who I’m talking to. For most Americans, I insist on “ROhan” (rhymes with yawn), like it’s pronounced in Lord of the Rings (which, by the way, came after my name’s conception). To those with English accents, I tell them to say “Rohan” (hard A, rhymes with man), because, well — I don’t know — it just sounds nicer. And then to Indians, I say it like my family does, “Rohun” — the second vowel is uncommon enough in America that it’s best to stay clear of.

Why “James” when asked by the Starbucks cashier? Perhaps it’s my socialist sensibilities — a small act of protest against the corporatist oligarchs that rule our society, and the way that they even dare to ask our first names. Names are power, and once you have a name for something, you can manipulate it with greater fidelity.

I have other names, too. When I lived in Taiwan, I went by Tianlan.¹ Tianlan spoke Mandarin, barely at first, and bumbled around like a buffoon around the streets of Kaohsiung City. Most of the time, Tianlan spent his time ordering mango smoothies or going to Buddhist vegetarian joints. He was illiterate at first, and bumbled into coffee shops as an excuse to practice speaking. On occasion, he would say something mildly intellectual about American vs Taiwanese culture, or bust out a Chinese proverb like, “one must not board the bus without first buying a ticket” (which refers to the act of getting pregnant before you are married).

Over time living in Taiwan, I grew to respect Tianlan more and more. One of my prouder moments — my friend inquired at my Chinese language school, and said, “I know Rohan, do you know him?” My Chinese teachers were baffled — who is Rohan? They knew me as Tianlan, and Tianlan alone.

So put more charitably, “James” is my Starbucks persona. It’s like a nickname; an inside joke that’s only between me and the rotating cast of characters that I see at coffee shops. “James”, he who orders hot chocolate with oat milk, has a life of his own.

“how many sugar cubes?”
my mom calls

plopped in the white mug
with the Tamil alphabet
‘neath the pink sky atop the double decker
chugging down Willesden Lane

easy on the eyes with a dash of milk
my palm presses against it for warmth
and i rest on the cushy red couch
scalding hot on my lips

too hot to drink!
and i blow a soft exhale
o’er the cup
of tetley british blend.

I’ve been writing this blog since 2019. I’m pretty proud of that—few personal blogs make it this far. In some significant sense, I’ve written more blog posts than the vast majority of humans in the observable universe.

As I reflect on this fact, I have to say that writing has been a remarkably consistent part of my life. I started writing regularly in 2015, when I started keeping a “life log” that was a one-to-three sentence description of every day. That gradually turned into a journal, which I write about twice a week. Some fraction of what lands in my journal goes onto this blog.

I’ve written before about abiding interests. I’d say writing could be counted as one of them. Writing, I feel, is actually my way of transmitting thought out to the world. I do this for many reasons. It is therapeutic; when thoughts are on the page, they’re no longer in my head, and I have more space to think. I also like sharing my thoughts with others, and sometimes this is handy when someone asks me a question I’ve thought about before (e.g., my job-searching piece). The other great reason is to have a record of my thoughts, so that years from now I can look back and see how I was thinking. (Another reason, more sci-fi, is so that the AI can learn how I think and replicate my thought process—create some form of immortality. I used to care more about this legacy aspect, not so much anymore)

There are so many reasons to write, and so many experiences to write about, that sometimes I stress myself out by not writing enough. Writing, as it turns out, takes time and energy. If you’re looking to write 100+ blog posts, I’d say I’ve found the following things important:

• Have a place and time where you feel comfortable writing.
• Have a low bar for publishing posts, at least until you hit a steady clip.
• Write what you feel and don’t worry what other people think, because the main beneficiary of your writing is you.

I generally don’t think too much about writing artistically or beautifully, unless the mood strikes me, but even just writing things in a readable form takes some energy. On the other hand, you could say that writing all the time distracts from being in the present moment. My friend said he was in a writing class once, and someone named Georgina was absent, and the professor said, “I guess Georgina is busy living her life rather than spending time writing about it.”

One great book about writing is 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost. I read it a long time ago because I was captured by the following sentence, which is self-recommending:

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

Another great book about writing is What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. It’s more of a memoir about Murakami’s relationship to writing and running (which are rather similar, the more you think about it). My ex, Aliyah, gave it to me when we were dating in college—aptly, since I like to both write and run. I consider myself a pretty social person but I do really enjoy both of these activities as solitary pastimes. In some ways, writing is a way of communing with others but in a slower-paced, more thought-out sense.

Murakami got his start writing when he ran a bar in his twenties. He would close shop at 1 a.m., and use the wee hours of the morning to hone his craft until he wrote a book. I do find that the late nights are perfect for sitting back, burning the midnight oil, and cracking open the proverbial journal (I tend to write on a laptop with the Dvorak keyboard). I find my thoughts come fluidly at this time, like I’m talking to an old friend.