Beginner’s Mind is a special project collecting insightful essays written by US college students who have attended experiential-learning courses related to Buddhism. Some of the authors identify as Buddhists, for others it is their first encounter with the Buddhadharma. All are sharing reflections and impressions on what they’ve learned, how it has impacted their lives, and how they might continue to engage with the teaching.
Brandon Huynh is an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California majoring in Human Biology. Raised with Buddhist values, Brandon’s passion for Buddhism deepened during college as a path to healing and self-understanding amid the pressures of young adulthood. He wrote this reflection in a course on Buddhist Modernism, sharing his journey and how mindful presence offers soul-soothing, compassionate responses to burnout and mental health struggles. Brandonhopes to pursue dentistry while nurturing a life grounded in contemplative practice.
The Timeless Art of Being: A Contemplative Resistance in a Burnout Society
In a time when life is governed by the metrics of productivity and performance, the act of simply being—with no agenda, no optimization, no outcome—becomes radically countercultural. This unending desire to achieve is a phenomenon described by South Korea-born philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han as the condition of the “achievement-subject,” which encapsulates the concept of an individual who no longer needs external oppression. It underscores a psycho-political transformation, whereby the subject internalizes the mechanisms of control and self-exploits under the guise of autonomy and achievement. This final project was curated as a means to explore the multidimensional intersection of Buddhist values such as karuna (Skt: compassion) and the modern existential critique, using Guanyin as both a spiritual symbol and personal guidepost to delve into the epidemic of mental health challenges in contemporary late-capitalist society.
Moreover, I draw on other Buddhist principles such as naiskramya (Skt: non-attachment) and smrti (Skt: mindfulness), seeking to not only interpret these teachings but also to upcycle them as a response to the crises articulated within Byung-Chul Han’s philosophical framework, particularly in The Burnout Society and The Scent of Time.
Despite Han’s nuanced critique of the modern achievement-subject and the concept of temporal dissipation, his works offer little to no guidance on concrete methodologies for emancipating the self from his findings. My project strives to propose an individual-level solution—one that counters the cultural wounds of burnout, self-surveillance, and commodified identity by reclaiming slowness, restoring ritualized time, and reawakening the capacity for contemplative presence, as emphasized in The Scent of Time. This essay outlines the key teachings employed, how they were adapted, and why I believe they offer an effective response to the social crisis of mental health in the achievement-obsessed world we now inhabit. Through the heart’s compassion, the mind’s awareness, and the soul’s surrender of the ego, this project invites a contemplative resistance that reclaims our inner humanity in a world that so often demands its erosion.
The heart: a compassionate pulse
At the heart of this project lies the Buddhist concept of karuna, or compassion, embodied most profoundly in the figure of Guanyin, the bodhisattva whose vow envisions the liberation of all beings through the sacred act of bearing witness to their suffering with unwavering compassion. In late-stage capitalist society, where even compassion has been commodified into transactional performative acts, Guanyin’s symbolic integration into my drawing offers a radical departure from the hegemony of perpetual achievement. The act of drawing Guanyin was not merely artistic; it was devotional. The hours spent illustrating this art piece are reflective of my personal spiritual anchoring. Thus, my illustration of Guanyin embodies a form of self-compassion that instead honors stillness as a form of resistance to the achievement-ego.
As such, my project attempts to offer an outlet to ground the self in presenceand the willingness to simply witness suffering without judgment or the compulsion to fix it. This stillness embodies the open-hearted form of self-compassion that ultimately serves to demonstrate how we can quietly resist self-perpetuated violence through mindfulness and non-attachment—expressed through the intersecting modalities of intentional self-care and contemplative creation.
The mind: a guiding glame
The discerning mind, which served as guiding flame and inner compass for this project, is anchored in the principle of smrti, or mindfulness. It is through awareness that the mind learns to dwell rather than drift, to attend rather than accelerate, and to resist the fragmentation that so often results from living within a society governed by optimization and achievement.
Yet, in late-stage capitalist society, the mind is tethered to the ego-self. It becomes fragmented by endless demands and scattered by the exhaustion of constant achievement. Thereby, it becomes a site of self-surveillance, where even rest is measured, and presence is replaced by performance. In this context, my drawing process serves as a form of meditative resistance. As such, rather than producing it under the pressure of deadlines and achievement, I approached the curation of the piece through slow and deliberate attention, allowing mindfulness to shape each stroke as an alternative to optimization.
My project sought to return the principle of mindfulness to its contemplative roots: the practice of moment-to-moment awareness. This quiet attentiveness becomes a form of resistance to the mental disintegration described by Han in The Scent of Time, in which he conceptualizes the erosion of temporal depth and meaningful duration. In this context, mindfulness becomes a countermeasure to the acceleration and disorientation of time. These are the subtle conditions which I believe are emblematic of the psychopolitical landscape Han outlines, wherein individuals internalize neoliberal demands under the guise of freedom and self-mastery; conditions which, I argue, cultivate the achievement-subject and give rise to the very burnout my process quietly defied.
The soul: a surrendered ego
The soul that guides the ethos of this project is rooted in the principle of naiskramya, or non-attachment. It is the nature of this principle that underscores resisting the clinging that often defines modern identity within the framework of the ego. In Buddhism, the concept of non-attachment does not signify indifference, but rather a deep inner liberation—the release of the self from the entanglements with the illusions of expectations and perfectionism. These tethers are the spiritual architecture of the achievement-subject, whose worth is measured by productivity and perfection. Thus, the concept of non-attachment shaped both the message and the methodology of my project.
While my art piece remains unfinished, it serves as an intentional gesture toward non-perfectionism. As such, I refrained from forcing its completion under unrealistic timeframes, as doing so would have contradicted the very principles of mindfulness and non-attachment which I hoped to embody. In that restraint, the drawing became more than a visual expression; it became a soul-rooted practice. Within its unfinished state, I allowed the soul of my work to breathe; unrushed, uncontrolled, and untethered from the pressures of performance. Ultimately, the unfinished image became a symbol of emancipation, not from responsibility but from the illusion that one must always complete, perfect, or prove.
A sacred breath: resistance through ritual and reflection
Like a sacred breath drawn slowly amid the noise, my project invites a return to rhythm, ritual, and rest—a gentle reclamation of time not as a resource to spend but as a space to inhabit. To upcycle these Buddhist principles meant more than applying them in a more transformative and symbolic manner; it required conveying them into subtle forms of resistance against the dominant hegemonic frameworks rooted in the ideological confines of late-stage capitalism.
Central to this transformation was my engagement in hobbies, activities which I believe are rooted in my humanity. To defy the limitations of the achievement-subject, there is profound significance in tending to one’s mental health through the contemplative nature of self-care and intentional presence. In a world governed by performance, output, and optimization, contemplative activities such as drawing, journaling, and simply being present become quiet acts of rebellion.
Although often dismissed as unproductive in a culture obsessed with achievement, these practices are in fact essential to reclaiming interiority and resisting the commodification of time and self. In doing so, they create space for emotional clarity, self-regulation, and the restoration of psychological and spiritual balance. Moreover, they offer vital outlets for avoiding the symptomatic burnout and mental fatigue that is perpetuated by the relentless cycle of self-optimization. Han’s The Burnout Society and The Scent of Time reveal how achievement-subjects internalize the pressures of productivity while simultaneously losing the capacity for slowness, ritual, and reflection.
Thus, by engaging in hobbies as a form of self-care and contemplative stillness, these practices aim to counteract the self-perpetuating cycle of overexertion embedded within the burnout society we inhabit. My engagement with this art piece—not as a task, but as a meditative ritual—served to upcycle compassion, mindfulness, and non-attachment as an integrated response and individual-level solution to Han’s philosophical frameworks, as a powerful yet gentle invocation to reawaken contemplative presence and to reclaim being over achieving.
A return to the roots of self
Ultimately, this project blossomed into more than an aesthetic exploration; in essence, it became a meditative practice of reclaiming the self, grounded in the quiet work of healing the mind. Through the heart’s compassion, the mind’s awareness, and the soul’s surrender, I upcycled Buddhist teachings not as static doctrines, but as living, breathing tools for resistance. The drawing of Guanyin, though unfinished, stands as a visual symbol for this process—one that privileges the act of being over becoming . . . presence over perfection. In a society where rest is declared unproductive and the self is often lost in performance, the quiet act of creating without urgency became my path to healing. Through this process, I found that true liberation is not always loud; sometimes, it emerges in stillness, in softness, in the sacred choice to surrender.
This project was as much about healing myself as it was about critiquing the violence perpetrated by an achievement-obsessed society. Through the illustrative processes of this project, I found a space where I could return to my roots, not as an achievement-subject, but as a human being. In this space, Buddhist wisdom became not a set of ideas but rather a lived form of resistance—one I hope to carry with me long after the drawing is complete, and into all of my future endeavors as I strive to earnestly embody karuna, smrti, and naiskramya. May the heart remain open, the mind anchored in presence, and the soul ever willing to surrender, so that in all that follows, I continue to create, to live, and to heal in the quiet hymn of being.
References
Han, B.-C. 2015. TheBurnoutSociety(E. Butler, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 2010)
Han, B.-C. 2017. TheScentofTime:APhilosophicalEssayontheArtofLingering(D. Steuer, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press. (Original work published 2009)
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