Jimmy Nguyen

Nguyen recommended acknowledging what one appreciates about a person before raising a grievance, so both egos become less defensive.

“there's a practice of watering flowers before you, you know, compost, right?”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 2:06:39

Nguyen relayed the Dalai Lama's teaching that wise selfishness means caring for oneself while knowing one is connected to everything.

“There's two types of selfishness in the world. There's wise and unwise selfishness. Our goal is to be wise selfishness”

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Nguyen said people often hurt those they love because they love them according to their own pain rather than the other person's.

“But we're loving them based off our own pain and our own suffering, not their pain and their suffering”

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Nguyen said he quit his corporate banking job after the retreat because it did not align with what made him happy.

“I actually turned that three day weekend to quitting my corporate job at a bank”

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Nguyen said he deliberately sat behind the Zen master each morning so that his own ego would force him to be present.

“I used my ego against itself by being around other people, especially sitting right behind the Zen teacher”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 1:01:07

Nguyen offered his maxim that happiness must be deliberately engineered rather than left to chance.

“You know, there's a saying, I think I've shared this with you, just like great engineering, happiness doesn't happen by accident”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 36:46

Nguyen described caring for elderly parents who were the source of much of his suffering as a central present-day practice.

“I take care of elderly parents. That was a struggle coming back and taking care of my elderly parents because they're the root of a lot of my suffering, to be honest with you”

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Nguyen said he became a college counselor in order to help people find work environments that support their mindfulness.

“why I decided to be a college counselor is to be able to help people find a career, how to find a job, how to find an environment that watered the conditions that helped them be more mindful”

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Nguyen argued that intention determines attention, so work aligned with one's values makes mindfulness easier.

“Intention equals attention in life. If it connects to your intentions and your values, you'd be more attentive”

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Nguyen said he replaced the words 'bad' and 'wrong' with 'positive' and 'less positive' to weaken the ego's judging habit.

“I use the word positive or less positive. So that way it loosens my grip of my ego judging”

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Nguyen argued that much stress and anxiety comes from doing work that does not align with one's own values rather than one's parents' or society's.

“I realized a lot of stress and anxiety comes from doing something that does not align to your values”

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Nguyen recounted a nun advising him that clinging too tightly to Buddhist rules about eating meat could itself cause suffering.

“but you holding on to Buddhist principles too tightly, that can cause suffering with you and your loved ones too”

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Nguyen recounted converting a three-day retreat into an open-ended stay, asking to remain as long as it took.

“I decided from a three-day retreat, I asked to stay there, and they asked how long. I said, as long as it takes”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 59:55

Nguyen said a nun told him that many monastics had not suffered enough to have the wisdom to help others.

“I have a lot of monks and nuns that come here, and they haven't suffered enough where they can be helpful to people. They don't have the wisdom to help people”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 58:39

Nguyen described breath awareness as an anchor to the present because one cannot breathe in the past or future.

“and you can't breathe in the future. And so when you just simply are aware of your breath, it's like an, it's like an anchor that pulls you to the present moment outside your brain”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 55:54

Nguyen argued that stillness alone concentrates suffering while community dilutes it, using his teacher's salt-in-a-cup analogy.

“But when we can cultivate an open heart, compassion in our minds, especially within community, then what happens is it dilutes the salt where it's digestible, that you can work with it”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 49:45

Nguyen said running the monastery's composting operation became a visual metaphor for processing the garbage he had hidden in himself.

“I was trying to compost all this garbage I've been hiding and,”

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Nguyen described being tied to a staircase by his father and beaten with all 27 wooden dowels after he skipped school to teach himself to read.

“And my dad tied my hands at the top of the stairs and he broke all 27 dowels on my back”

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Nguyen recounted that a partner threw Thich Nhat Hanh's book about anger at him during a fight, and that he read it instead of throwing it back.

“She picked up this book and she threw it at me and broke my glasses and it hit me so hard it broke my glasses right here”

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Nguyen described a near-death collapse from pancreatitis in which he drove himself to a clinic and was told he was lucky to be alive.

“my regular internist was there. And I was hooked up to IV and he said, you're lucky to be alive”

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Nguyen said drugs were never his goal in the party scene but served to enhance the music and the sense of community.

“I think that's why I've never found escape, escapism in, in taking a drug itself”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 21:47

Nguyen argued that escaping discomfort through subcultures turned into acceptance once he found others who felt equally out of place.

“But when you find a bunch of wrong people that are just like yourself, that's where escapism turns into community and acceptance in certain ways”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 8:46

Nguyen recounted that his family left Vietnam on one of the last military planes out of Saigon in 1975.

“I actually immigrated from Vietnam. Um, at the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, we were on one of the last military planes out of Saigon”

Ctrl-Alt-Reset: Episode 3: From Chaos to Clarity: Jimmy’s Journey of Awakening (Apr 10, 2025) · Listen from 2:51