Editor’s note: All quotes from the lama were originally spoken in Tibetan and translated into English during the interview by translator Iris Ton.
As I write this, I am sitting at my desk at home in Washington, D.C., watching the afternoon light wash the carpet in gold. My suitcase from Nepal sits half-unpacked in the corner, prayer flags folded between sweatshirts, the mint-green kurta my homestay mother gifted me splayed across the top. In less than a year, I will be a Princeton student.
I spent three months this past fall in Nepal, traveling between cities, living with families, and immersing myself in the Nepali language. For one week, we stayed at the Namo Buddha Monastery, eating alongside the young monks in the dining room, attending pujas — Hindu acts of worship — in the shrine halls, and participating in class with a lama. There, days unfolded slowly. We woke early, ate simply, and sat in silence for hours. Time was not something to optimize; it simply passed.
During our stay, I interviewed our teacher, Lama Karma Migmar, an ordained monk who taught our daily classes and led dharma talks for monastery visitors. When I told him I would be starting at Princeton University in the fall, I expected the usual congratulations or questions about what I planned to study or what career I hoped to pursue. Instead, he raised a different question: “Why do Americans so often confuse being busy with being valuable?”
Lama Migmar proposed an alternative way of life, grounded in Buddhist teaching: practicing virtuous actions and abstaining from harmful ones. This, he said, allows us to live simply, “adhering to the teaching of being satisfied.” Happiness, we learned, does not require a complex accumulation of possessions, titles, or achievements. Instead, it can arise from ordinary things: waking up healthy, enjoying a peaceful night’s sleep, noticing a clear sky.
Still, Lama Migmar was careful to acknowledge reality. Life outside the monastery — especially in the West — is fast-paced, competitive, and expensive. People must work, pay rent, and invest time and money in education. “Of course we need to do that,” he said. The goal is not to reject responsibility but to practice this gratitude within daily life.
I asked Lama Migmar how he would advise Ivy League students who are strained by the pursuit of strong grades or prestigious careers. He paused for a moment.
“This type of competitive mindset is important when improving oneself,” Lama Migmar acknowledged first. “However, when this competitiveness comes up, immediately there is also jealousy –– quite a strong jealousy.”
The antidote, he explained, is a meditation on rejoicing, practiced by “feeling happy for someone else’s happiness, feeling happy for their success.” That morning during puja, I tried the practice myself, wishing a friend fulfillment during their own gap year. Focusing on their happiness quickly pulled me out of my own anxious headspace.
Lama Migmar offered another principle for Princeton students: students should “work on the motivation of bodhichitta,” or the practice of acting from love and compassion. Rooting one’s endeavors in this pure motivation helps counter the poisons — emotions that cause suffering — and reconnect us to our fundamental nature, which is kind and generous.
I wondered whether pursuing success could still align with Buddhist teachings of detachment. According to Lama Migmar, it can. The obstacle to fulfillment isn’t ambition but believing that achieving our goals confers happiness. Happiness must come from within, not from external accomplishments.
As he spoke, my thoughts kept drifting to the campus I hadn’t yet arrived at. Princeton looms large in my imagination — a place of deep friendships, late-night conversations that spill out of common rooms, and afternoons spent wandering the stacks in Firestone. And then the inevitable aspects of that picture: pressure, ambition sharpened by proximity to other ambitious people, the undercurrents of comparison. I’ve heard enough to know that it is easy there to feel perpetually behind, to believe rest must be earned, and to treat exhaustion as proof of commitment.
The monastery offered a different rhythm entirely. But the challenge, Lama Migmar reminded us, is not living this way in a place designed for slowing down and reflecting. It is carrying that intentionality into environments that value, often above all else, productivity and speed.
Many students, Lama Migmar observed, fail to study their own minds. During meditation, he encouraged us to analyze our anxieties — examining our thoughts and tracing their origins. When I tried this, the weight lifted; a heavy thought became just another passing one. “We spend so much time cleaning our houses and bedrooms,” Lama Migmar explained. “But we rarely think to clean our minds.”
I asked Lama Migmar about the tension between science and religion and what Western education might overlook. He explained that Western subjects — what he calls “outer sciences,” like math or English — are taught alongside Buddhist education, or “mind sciences.”
“It is not beneficial to have one without the other,” he said. “They should be taught together.”
For American students, many of whom load their schedules with outer sciences, Lama Migmar suggests joining a dharma center. When I returned home, I looked up centers near Princeton and found several, including the New Jersey Buddhist Vihara and Meditation Center and the Princeton Insight Meditation Dharma Study Group. Both offer regular classes and community practice.
However, Lama Migmar cautioned that meaningful change requires patience. “It takes time,” he said, smiling as if anticipating my next question.
Lama Migmar emphasized, too, the importance of cultivating personal relationships in these classes. At many Buddhist teaching centers, he explained, there are lamas and spiritual teachers where individuals can build sustained connections — people to ask questions, to turn to when difficulties arise. “For example, you met me,” he said. “When you go home, you can contact me, and I can support you if things come up.” I smiled and told him I might take him up on that offer.
From my bedroom desk, the afternoon light is still pooling across the carpet. Out of the corner of my eye, my open suitcase waits. For a moment, I sit quietly, recalling Lama Migmar’s words about studying the mind. Before long, Princeton will bring time tables, deadlines, and the familiar urge to measure my worth by how full my schedule becomes. But the monks I met rejoiced in others’ success, took time to learn even the smallest things well, and treated kindness as an act to practice daily. They would probably say there is no rush, that time is much more abundant than I’ve allowed myself to believe.
I stretch the prayer flags across my bulletin board, admiring the vibrant panels inscribed with mantras. There will be plenty to do in the months ahead. But if Lama Migmar is right, the real work will be remembering — amid the stress — to slow down, look inward, and choose how I show up.
Tara Prakash is a gap-year student and incoming member of the class of 2030. The Prospect can be reached prospect[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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