Unlike my meditation practice, work was going well. My boss was a leading expert in satellite monitoring and I was rapidly learning the ins and outs of the profession. I enjoyed what I did but also dreamed of starting my own company. At the time, I was the sole breadwinner in my family and my sister was still in school. I felt terrified of leaving a job that I liked in exchange for the slim odds of making it as an entrepreneur. As the years rolled by, the tug-of-war between my mind and heart became fierce. Seated in my office processing satellite data, I felt that the ceiling would cave in and bury me along with my dreams.

Fortunately, I had an outlet. I was fond of exercise, which gave me a break from my stormy mind. I used to alternate between weightlifting and running six times a week. One day, I ran to absolute exhaustion, finishing my run with an all-out sprint. As I slowly recovered my breath, something curious happened. My mind came to an utter standstill. There were no thoughts nor the urge to think. My ordinary surroundings were suddenly transformed into a thing of beauty — clouds foaming in the sky, trees dancing in the wind, asphalt glistening in the sun, and houses standing solemnly all around me.

I simply stood there. Speechless. Awestruck. This was, at once, the quietest and grandest theatre I had ever witnessed. I couldn’t believe I had walked these streets a thousand times before. How had I missed all of this?! This magnificent scenery was accompanied by something even more mysterious. The deepest, kindest, most benevolent peace welled up from inside me and seemed to stretch near and far. I wished to stay here forever, but alas, it came and went.

This experience left an indelible impression on me. There was me before this event and me afterwards. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. What was the recipe for this transformation? I chalked it up to exercise, solitude, and nature, but couldn’t replicate it through those ingredients. I added many more outdoor activities to my routines. I would go hiking and kayaking alone in the hope of touching that inner peace again, but was mostly greeted by the nonstop conversations in my head.

Nevertheless, something had shifted. My worries about leaving my job continued, but they seemed less real. I already had a business partner in mind. He had started a company and was running it solo. He was looking for an equal partner in the business to lead technology development. The next time that we met, I heard myself say that I was going to quit my job and join him. This decision was announced to both of us at the same time! I had never planned on saying those words.

Within the next few months, I got all my affairs in order. I had already been saving money in anticipation of this move. I had a great relationship with my boss and didn’t want to leave him hanging. I talked to him and handed in my resignation. Then I worked twelve-hour days for two months straight to finish all my projects and document everything for my eventual replacement.

And then I left, at peace with my decision.

This was the first material contribution that inner peace made to my life. Without it, I’m not sure I would’ve had the courage to leave my job and enter the uncharted world of high-tech startups.

I was now the CTO of 3v Geomatics, affectionately known as 3vG. The three V’s stood for “Video Vidi Visum”, which we interpreted as “to see, observe, and understand”. My business partner had chosen this name to indicate our expertise in monitoring the Earth from space. But this name was also a good fit for my side project: the pursuit and understanding of inner peace.

I discovered inner peace through sprinting, not meditation. So I understood that it did not require passivity. Beyond that, I had no framework for what had happened to me. One day, my sister brought home a book by Eckhart Tolle. I read it, then read his other books as well. I also watched all his videos that were posted on YouTube. The man seemed to be steeped in peace. His teaching was simple: live in the present moment, think about past and future only for learning and planning, and don’t think about yourself too much.

I could see where he was coming from. I knew that I spent way too much time in my head. I decided to adopt his prescriptions in my daily life. The 3vG office was six kilometres from home. I started walking to work everyday. I found it impossible to “be present” during my walks. I was constantly thinking. I broke down the journey into tiny chunks, from one tree to the next. I would concentrate on my steps and notice the scenery while walking from tree to tree. Even one successful chunk gave me some satisfaction. Many days, I would reach the office with zero success. I would then circle around the block to give myself one final chance to be present. This sounds like madness even as I type it, but inviting inner peace into my life was as important to me as building 3vG.

The first six months of my startup life were full of uncertainty. We won zero business and didn’t have any cash to pay ourselves. I would start coding but didn’t know what to build. Yet I was happy! I was free to pursue both my interests. Then we started winning research projects for inventing new satellite applications. After the first year, we were able to pay ourselves. The following year, we hired our first two employees.

I hadn’t managed anyone before. I didn’t yet have the patience to let people develop at their own pace. I didn’t have the openness to let them show me something different than what I wanted. All of this showed up while walking to work. I would obsess over every detail of a project and how it was handled. I would replay meetings in my head. I was anything but present. I noticed that a lot of this internal chatter was about me and my expectations. How come I was always at the centre of it all? Was this my ego?

I started taking my thoughts with a grain of salt, observing them and filtering out what was useful. This approach felt natural because my job was also focused on extracting actionable signals from noisy data. I realized that I could only choose my actions, not my thoughts. I ignored opinions that were charged with the desire to be right. I mistrusted stories about myself and others. My mind was shameless! Sometimes, I would laugh out loud at what it was saying.

Through this honest observation, the best ideas I had floated to the top. My actions became better than the bulk of my thoughts. I sidestepped many traps laid by my mind but also fell into a few. I was becoming what I practiced, not what I thought.

I was now four years into 3vG and we had completed several research projects. Our small team of seven was already punching above its weight. The applications that we prototyped were above and beyond what much larger competitors were proposing. We were consistently ranked first in the bidding processes for government projects.

But commercial success eluded us. Many promising applications died when their research funding ended. It wasn’t clear which applications had operational utility for real stakeholders. Then, a miracle! A large mining company issued a tender to monitor all their mines from space. We hurriedly processed satellite data over some of their mines and prepared our presentation. At the meeting, it turned out that they wanted same-day product delivery. All our competitors said No to this requirement because data processing used to take weeks, not hours.

But my business partner said Yes! To this day, I remain grateful to him for this move. I knew way too much technical jargon to have agreed to this. I knew everything about what was possible to reach for the impossible. I had no idea how on Earth we'd make this happen but we had just won the single largest monitoring project ever awarded in our industry.

We needed to hire more staff but also come together as a team. By this time, it was clear to me that my ego was anti-teamwork. In the hundreds of candidates that we went on to interview, I was always looking for exceptional competence and exceptionally low ego. I specifically designed questions to reveal how candidates saw themselves, how they handled being wrong, and how they treated people. The people who we hired were excellent thinkers but also team players.

Established experts in our industry didn’t want to join us because we were considered small and risky. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. 3vG was shaped by brilliant but beginner minds, mostly new graduates who saw our technical problems with fresh eyes and came up with solutions that I had never seen before.

The “rapid reports” that we invented became a massive differentiator. We were processing data a hundred times faster than the competition. Our first customer was pleased and told all their peers. We were soon shipping products to mines all over the world. We visited each mine once a year to gather feedback and further improve our product, making it very difficult for the competition to catch up.

During this phase of our growth, I was working all the time. I would look forward to long weekends so that I could work uninterrupted for three days. In addition to my technical responsibilities, I also had meetings, reviews, hiring, and travel. My days were long and full.

Inner peace was still fleeting. It would come and go as it pleased. But I had nailed down a routine to touch it regularly. I would start the day with a short breath control practice followed by a few yoga poses. The breathing would silence my mind and I would hold this peaceful state through my poses. I never skipped these fifteen minutes of tranquility, no matter where I was in the world.

So far, I had only touched my beloved inner peace away from work. Then, something strange started happening. Surrounded by the hum of computers, discussing algorithms with my colleagues, I would start feeling intensely peaceful on the inside. Our little beehive of technology would suddenly become draped in an otherworldly beauty that dazzled my eyes. My colleagues appeared as gods and goddesses squashing bugs and solving problems. Surely, I was losing it!

I wasn’t sure how this was happening. Maybe I had cultivated enough peace that it could now show up uninvited. Maybe I was becoming more comfortable in my role and could really settle into my work. Many a time, in the midst of a technical breakage, working feverishly with my colleagues, with the deadline drawing ever closer, I would feel intensely peaceful. A situation that must have looked dire from the outside felt so peaceful from the inside.

Soon, we extended our commercial success beyond mining into pipeline monitoring. Between these two applications, we were telling clients around the world where to look for hazards so that they could mitigate them or get out of harm’s way. The application was naturally benevolent, which I found satisfying. My work gave me everything I had looked for: enjoyment, growth, money, and service to others.

We now had over twenty-five high-performing staff members. So why was I working harder than ever? Why was I feeling burned out? My business partner said to me, “Parwant, we need to let go.” His Dad said, “Parwant, other people need to earn their keep.” But I missed the message and kept going. I couldn’t help it.

I noticed I was feeling more and more anxious at work, especially while speaking at meetings. One day, I had a panic attack while talking at an all-hands meeting. I felt embarrassed and confused. I didn’t even know what a panic attack was. Then I felt anxious that it might happen again. Public speaking was a big part of my job and I couldn’t afford to get out of breath every time I talked.

I started seeing a therapist. She said that I was trying to take responsibility for everyone and everything. I immediately burst into tears. Responsibility was baked into my brain from a young age. My Mom had fallen into major depression when I was six, eventually regressing into psychosis in my late teens. My sister and I hardly received any mothering. In fact, it was us who would support Mom emotionally, often comforting her as she cried.

Responsibility was further cemented into my psyche when I immigrated to Canada at age fourteen. We were poor and Mom became even more depressed. I started working right away and took it upon myself to turn things around. Dad retired when I was twenty and I took over financial responsibility for the family. “If it is to be, it is up to me” was my mantra, and I continued practicing it long after it had outlived its usefulness. It made sense why I was burned out. I had never asked anyone for help!

Of course, taking responsibility is a good thing. I did, in fact, turn things around for my family. I did succeed in building a startup. But the feeling was totally out of whack. I still worried about how my colleagues would pay their bills if we were to go out of business! Work had become a stage for me to look deeper and surface patterns that had been running my life. That Christmas, I sat alone in the office working on a last-minute proposal. There and then, I decided to make changes.

I cut down my hours after the holidays. After what I was used to, normal working hours felt like a breeze. My anxiety improved. That summer, I would leave work early to ride my motorcycle from Vancouver to Squamish, savouring the mountain roads twisting around breathtaking views. Then I would rockclimb with colleagues until sundown. Inner peace would descend upon me like a blanket as soon as I entered the forest and play hide and seek as I climbed. This remains one of my fondest summers. Surely I was headed towards everlasting nirvana!

I had now been single for many years. I had paid no attention to my personal life. My ex-boss, who joined 3vG for two years, said to me, “Parwant, this is very good for the company, but very bad for you. You will never find a woman if you keep going like this!”

Well, I heeded his advice in the worst possible way. I found myself becoming attracted to a woman who already had a boyfriend. She was exciting and also interested in inner peace. She was also obviously interested in me. I tried my best to be just friends but failed.

I became weirdly hooked on this girl who was often unavailable. I saw her on and off subject to her schedule. But I would think about her, check my phone to see if she had texted, and daydream about a farfetched future. She had been clear that she didn’t want a relationship, but I found myself hoping against hope. True to her word, she left within four months.

I couldn’t believe how hard this hit me. My chest kept filling up with emotion day after day until it became unbearable. I was scared to look at this cesspool of feelings. It seemed like a dark dangerous abyss that would swallow me whole. I put a lid on it and kept going like a champ. The pressure built and built.

One day, while sitting on a park bench, the emotion surged and blew past my barricades. I burst into the loudest cry of my life. My chest heaved uncontrollably as I gasped for oxygen. I didn’t know it was possible to cry this hard! I felt some relief and walked back home. But this was only the beginning.

Day after day, the tears refused to stop. I wished I knew what to do. Was I headed in the same direction as my Mom? None of the books I had read offered specific guidance on how to handle this. Eckhart Tolle’s words rang out in my ears, “Be friendly towards the present moment. Welcome it as if you had chosen it.” So I gave up trying to explain what was happening to me. I let go completely. I decided to kiss the toad full on the lips.

I started cooperating with the tears, even encouraging them. They could come at any time in the day, at home or at work. I identified three parks around the office where I could cry in solitude. I learned to recognize the signals leading up to a crying spell. A ball of pain would start in the middle of my chest. It would grow heavier and heavier until I couldn’t hold it anymore. I would retire to a park, cry it out, wash my face at a water fountain, and show up at my next meeting feeling much lighter. On rainy days, I would go for a walk and hide under my umbrella. I was dumping as much water as the clouds above me!

I faced each cry head on. I leaned into every heave as it rocked my chest. I felt every ounce of that excruciating emotional pain and watched it being chiselled away by one heave after another. But there was something else at the absolute bottom of this miserable experience. Inner Peace! That’s right, my beloved had come to my rescue. It stood there calmly, holding my hand and infusing the turmoil with its signature serenity.

I paid no attention whatsoever to what my mind was saying about this breakdown. Thoughts would come and go, trying to weave their webs of explanations and outcomes. I simply held on to inner peace for dear life as each tidal wave of emotion swept upon me. The cathartic crying, while exhausting, also dissolved the pain for a while. But peace would remain with me long after each cry. This was the first time that inner peace became lasting rather than fleeting. Peace and pain became my constant companions. What an odd pairing!

I started to see this as a process I had to go through. I didn’t know how long it would last. I was in no rush to see it gone. I said to myself, “I can live like this forever.”

But I had to adapt. There was much work to be done and I had little energy for it. There were over twenty people reporting to me, which is ridiculous even for a fully functioning human being. Structure and organization are not my forte, but I finally appointed managers and directors for each department that I controlled. I slowly excused myself from more and more meetings until I was left with the bare minimum. The company had to run and technology had to be built without my involvement.

Ever so slowly, the frequency of crying went from many-times-a-day to once or twice. Then I went a full day without crying, then two days. The trend didn’t move in a straight line, but I was definitely feeling less depressed and more energetic. After six months of upheaval, crying reduced to about twice a month. At this point, I felt almost normal — except for one stark difference.

Inner peace had become permanent. What I had been seeking for fifteen years was now my baseline. I was always steeped in the peace that I had chased with all my might. It was the strangest sweetest thing. I never planned on getting here. I didn’t even know it was possible. But here I was, situated in peace, and still dealing with all the things of the world.

Covid started three months after my “depression” ended. We had just celebrated 3vG becoming a fifty-person company. We went from a bustling office to working from home. Rock climbing gyms shut down, leaving my evenings and weekends wide open.

I started writing to try to make sense of what had happened to me. Yes, I had pursued inner peace for fifteen years, but it was almost like it pursued me back! I had this feeling of being acted upon by inner peace, as if it had agency. As if all the circumstances and experiences of my life had conspired to get me here. Even my bad decisions had played a supportive role. Peace had somehow stripped me of everything that needed stripping to make room for more peace. Here’s one of the first things that I wrote:

There is something I longed for that I could never put into words.
I would have begged for it had I known what to say or who to ask, but all I could do was mumble in confusion. Yet I searched in earnest, somehow pursuing what I could not define.

It found me instead, unexpectedly showing its familiar forgotten face, then toying with me in an elaborate game of hide-and-seek. It chiselled away bits and pieces of my crusty old self, then gamefully backed me into a corner.

It tore me down, leaving me awash in a sea of tears, broken and ecstatic all at once. Then it stayed by my side, gently helped me to my feet, and made me into what it pleased.

I kept writing every day. Within a year, I had written fifty thousand words, enough to publish a book. What I wrote wasn’t very good, even in my own opinion, but it showed me that I had something to say. Inner peace and I had co-discovered each other within the challenge of building and scaling a high-tech startup. This was the opposite of a retreat. I had firsthand proof that stable inner peace could be fostered within the world.

As for the emotional turmoil that I underwent, I clearly had trauma from my childhood. I recalled horror stories told by my late grandma. Mom’s mental illness had predated the onset of full-blown depression. She neglected her kids even when we were infants. It appears that I had been carrying feelings of abandonment all my life, only to be surfaced by life itself. This was a positive development because I could finally process what my body had stored away for decades. I brought all my inner peace practices to bear on these unbearable feelings, and they ultimately dissolved into the deepest peace I had ever known.

Meanwhile, 3vG was going strong. Our digital products were unaffected by Covid lockdowns. We started receiving unsolicited offers to acquire us. We ended up selling the company and I said goodbye about a year later. I had a new dream — to scale inner peace globally. I had tasted the product, now I just needed to figure out how to build it.

The rest of Covid was like a forced meditation retreat. I was mostly locked down in my basement office. I read one book per week and wrote every day. I was immersed in peace, but this wasn’t the setup within which I had found it. I had found it through a busy life, but I didn’t understand how. I wanted to experiment across a broad range of tasks and activities to see how inner peace revealed itself. Ultimately, my goal was for people to find peace precisely in the middle of their active lives, not through retreat.

As the pandemic ended, I started running. First a little, then twenty kilometres per week. I ran alone as well as in groups, in casual as well as timed events. I discovered that I could easily feel peaceful while jogging alone, but there was far too much stimulation for peace to show up while running among crowds kicking up dust. Interesting!

I did a full summer of rock climbing with my ex-colleague, who is a virtuoso climber. He led all the routes and I followed, often struggling to scale up pitches that he made look easy. Inner peace was abundant standing on ledges looking at majestic views, or even while rappelling down a rock face. It was dimmer but still palpable during easy routes where the rock was inviting me higher, but absent entirely on difficult sections where I tried and failed repeatedly. Interesting!

I developed a tennis elbow due to climbing so much. What now? I decided to revive an old hobby: Bollywood dancing. I would ride my bicycle to the dance studio. I didn’t necessarily feel inner peace with the wind in my hair, gliding up and down the rolling hills of Vancouver. But I felt it every time I stopped, waiting for the light to turn. Biking mimicked my first encounter with inner peace through sprinting more than a decade ago. Riding would fully collect my attention into the moment and stopping abruptly would leave me swimming in a sea of my own attention. Very interesting!

Dance itself was a wonderful teacher. The instructor began each class with a silent prayer during which peace was plentiful. Then the music and choreography would kick in, filling up my attention entirely. My mind was busy trying to hit the beat and learn the moves. As I internalized the choreography, my mind emptied out and a quiet joy bubbled up. I was right there in the pocket of the moment, trusting that the next step would happen on its own. Then the whole experience would dissolve into silence at the end of class, revealing intense peace.

I was starting to understand why I had discovered inner peace through sprinting. Since childhood, my attention was trained to always be full. Even if there was nothing to do, my thoughts would soak up whatever attention was available. On that magical day, sprinting gathered all my attention and it somehow remained free afterwards. This free attention didn’t latch on to what was appearing in it, rather it stayed with who was observing: Me! Or more precisely, my attention. That’s right, free attention became attentive of itself. Attention noticed itself for the first time and discovered its inherent peaceful nature.

Attention of attention! I thought I had figured out the best thing since sliced bread. Oh, how my ego would have loved that! But when I went looking in the literature, I found “awareness of awareness” or “being aware of being aware” practices dating back thousands of years. What a treasure! And how painfully buried in modern life.

As it turns out, I had reinvented the wheel not within a monastery but the laboratory of my busy life. Had I found inner peace through sitting meditation or retreat, I might have concluded that it lay within the confines of passivity. But it lies neither here nor there, for it is buried within You, the observer. All that is necessary is to train attention to rest within itself from time to time.

Yes, inner peace is a skill that can be learned.

One year after leaving 3vG, I decided to do a full renovation of my home. I was inexperienced and didn’t do much planning. Utter chaos ensued. The engineering standards that I was used to didn’t really apply in the construction world. There were constant delays, missed deadlines, poor communication, and a large gap between words and actions. Quality control was often left to me and I had to learn on the fly in order to hold each trade accountable.

I lost inner peace hundreds of times. Work seldom met my exacting standards and workers seldom did as they said. My frustration would boil over, capture all of my attention, and leave me decidedly unpeaceful for hours, sometimes days. How to restore peace? I had to learn to take control and relinquish it at the same time. If I didn’t do all the actions that were required to move the project forward, it would never get done. Yet, I had to let go after doing my part so that my attention could be free to rest within itself. Renovating was much more stressful than climbing or dancing, but it slowly taught me to walk the tightrope between action and acceptance.

While I was busy with renovations, I met a woman. We were in the same dance classes and slowly gravitated towards each other. This blossomed into my first relationship in a very long time. She was a rare find — kind, intelligent, and helpful in every aspect of my life. She was also willing to hear my nonstop ramblings about inner peace. One day, while hiking through the forest, she stopped dead in her tracks and exclaimed, “Stillness! Is this how you feel all the time?” Over the months that followed, inner peace became more and more accessible to her, although she still prefers to call it stillness. This was my first evidence that the teaching can transfer to another person.

So what has inner peace contributed to our relationship? Not much when things are going well. Who needs peace when life is full of pleasant experiences? But disagreements and disappointments arrive. They always do. In previous relationships, they would hijack all my attention. Now some of it stays free and observes the upset from a distance, tries to understand her side, and asks whether I am the one who needs to change. The feeling doesn’t get to run the show. I notice it, let it be, and watch it evaporate.

In my experience, inner peace won’t make a relationship work on its own. The ingredients still have to make sense: attraction, compatibility, values, and a common vision of the future. What inner peace adds is a foundation upon which the ups and downs of life unfold. Two people anchored in peace have an underlying connection beyond their personality and preferences.

I chose to renovate my house. I welcomed the relationship. But sometimes you get what you never wanted — a father with dementia. I didn’t even notice anything was amiss until we moved out during the renovation. In the rental home, Dad was like a fish out of water, unable to serve himself food, take a shower, or even go for a walk without getting lost. Things didn’t get much better when we moved back home.

He would repeat the same questions, misinterpret things constantly, and need help with every little thing. All I wanted to do was write this book, instead I had suddenly acquired a new dependent who stole all my time. So the man who wanted to teach inner peace to the world found himself annoyed almost daily.

In the beginning, the annoyance would pounce upon me and grab a hold of my behaviour. Dad often mirrored my reactions, turning the situation from bad to worse. I started using annoyance as an alarm. The minute it chimed, I would take a deep breath, slow down inside, and accept whatever I had to do. In some cases, the task at hand was quite unpleasant, like cleaning the mess he had made in the toilet.

Over a period of three months, the annoyance dissolved into inner peace. I also made a strong effort to adapt to the situation and meet all his needs efficiently. I was able to start writing a little bit everyday. Eventually, I hired caregiving help to free up more time.

I thought I would just learn to tolerate the situation. But lately, I find my eyes resting on this old man who once taught me to play cricket and ride a bike, and appreciating him for who he is today. I have fallen in love with my Dad. I do not wish to be rid of this situation. I will miss him dearly.

It has now been over twenty years since I started my quest. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, only that I was missing something. Through the meandering twists and turns of life, I discovered what I’m now calling inner peace. The uncertain path that I set out upon led back to me. But not the same old me.

The young man that I was could taste only the things that fill up attention: a good meal, an interesting problem, or a first date. When there was nothing to consume my attention, I manufactured thoughts, feelings, and busyness to fill it up. I could not taste what the absence of things feels like. What free attention itself is like.

Today, attention has become more calibrated to the task at hand. It is used up entirely during pickleball, partially while listening to music, and not at all while walking to get coffee. Free attention adjusts to the demands of the moment. And this free attention has a distinct peaceful quality that infuses my day-to-day experience.

I pursued two things simultaneously: building technology and cultivating inner peace. Both were a play of attention. Inner peace requires saving attention and competence requires spending it well. Attention is the raw resource that is shaped into achievement. The same resource, when protected from nonstop consumption, discovers its peaceful nature.

Today, I treat attention like the precious resource that it is. I invest it heavily into action but also try to save it from wasteful spending. I continue to audit my attention. I still catch myself spinning personal stories, reacting to difficulties, and generating negative emotions. I too feel the pull of the almighty smartphone and the enticing content that it offers. Often, the presence or absence of inner peace tells me whether my attention is allocated properly.

What would I tell my younger self? The guy who wanted to be great at something but also happy inside. He read day and night but couldn’t find guidance that stitched his two passions together. So he pursued them separately, building technology in public and exploring peace privately. I would have told him that it’s all a play of attention. Attention is one, not two. He needed only to master his own attention.