When I first got introduced to meditation, I was around 12 or 13 years old. My father was passionate about martial arts and encouraged my siblings and me to participate in martial arts classes from a young age. I had started karate slightly earlier than this age and had grown to enjoy it. As I’ve mentioned before, aside from genetic predispositions, the encouragement and approval of family, others, and the environment play a significant role in shaping our choices.
I began with karate, but as I grew older, I shifted toward Kyokushin, a slightly more serious form of karate for kids. Kyokushin has various styles, though I can’t remember their Japanese names. What I do remember is that it was a very brutal style. While strikes to the head and face weren’t allowed, you were free to attack your opponent in other ways during sparring. Kyokushin training was extremely tough. Our Sensei (teacher) would violently hit the stomachs of 10-12-year-old kids with a stick, and he would strike our thighs with his strong shins to toughen our bodies. We would crawl shirtless on the rough asphalt of the courtyard, getting our bodies ready for combat and enduring hardship. On rainy days, like commandos, we would roll in the mud, shivering from the cold, and this was all part of becoming a well-trained Kyokushin karate student. Now you might understand why military punishments during my service years didn’t bother me. In fact, they were often entertaining, while my peers would sometimes cry from the pain. They had no idea what I had endured during Kyokushin. I wasn’t traumatized by it at all; in fact, I adored my teacher. He was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Despite the brutal training, his kindness at the end of each session eased all the pain. Of course, this wasn’t the case for all students. On the first day, there were more than 50 kids in the class. By the second session, this number dropped to 20, and after a few more, only 10 remained—dubbed the “tough kids” of the school. The tough ones endured the beatings, limped away in pain, but never flinched. If there’s time, I’ll explain why they were tough and didn’t quit like the others.
One of the most interesting parts of Kyokushin was the focus exercises and breathing practices before every session. At that time, the term “meditation” wasn’t in common use—we only saw it in poetry and mystical texts. We didn’t know meditation as it’s understood today; for us, they were just breathing and focus exercises that helped improve our concentration during fights. At the end of every session, we’d practice focusing on different parts of our body and calming them down—something very similar to what is now known as Yoga Nidra.
A few years later, a friend of mine suggested I try Wushu, a form of Kung Fu. I immediately fell in love with its beauty, the elegant movements, and the synchronized routines. Kyokushin lost its appeal, and I started learning Wushu. It was very aesthetically pleasing, and we used weapons like sticks and swords, making it even more exciting for me.
Now we come to the interesting part. Meditation in Wushu and Kyokushin was quite different. In Kyokushin, we would sit cross-legged at the beginning and end of each session, practicing what is now known as body scans and mindfulness exercises. Wushu, however, had another practice that captivated me.
One day, while we were training in the courtyard, our teacher asked us to lie flat on our backs, feet slightly apart, and hands placed beside our bodies with palms facing upwards. He asked us to close our eyes and slowly direct our attention from the crown of our head down through our bodies, feeling each part. The heavy aerobic exercises and the final meditation sent me into a different mental space. After that session, I felt an intense euphoria and a sense of liberation. It felt as though I was separating from my body and experiencing something between waking and sleeping—a sensation that many people might encounter during yoga or hypnotic meditation sessions. Now imagine how exciting that experience was for a 15-year-old.
A few years later, I changed styles again and was drawn toward Aikido. By this time, I was in high school, and I had become much more muscular than before. But unlike Kyokushin, which had turned me into a hardened and ready fighter, Aikido was not violent at all. Kyokushin was more about physical endurance and attacking, while Aikido was more defensive, based on flexibility and techniques to disarm an opponent.
On my first day of Aikido, before the teacher arrived, a few students began demonstrating Aikido holds and locks to me. They wanted to show me that Aikido was very practical and that Kyokushin didn’t stand a chance against Aikido techniques. I was going through adolescence, and despite the teacher always emphasizing humility, I can’t ignore the influence of hormones and youthful pride. In just a few minutes, our discussion about Kyokushin vs. Aikido escalated into an unfair fight. My opponent and I locked eyes and braced ourselves, assuming combat stances. However, before my opponent could even try to lock my arms, he was already on the ground. When I snapped out of it, I realized everyone had gathered around, staring at me with disgust. The word “savage” was whispered a few times, and I felt a deep sense of shame wash over me. I immediately went to apologize, but he pushed me away a few times before I hugged him, sincerely telling him I meant no harm and assumed he would defend himself.
We resolved the issue before the teacher arrived, became good friends, and I learned a lesson I’ll never forget: the things we learn in these classes, as my teacher repeatedly emphasized, stay in the classroom. They’re never meant to be used anywhere else. A fight between two different styles is never fair.
After some time practicing Aikido, filled with fascinating techniques and defensive locks, I realized that combining Kyokushin with Aikido could be quite interesting. Kyokushin had made me tough and combative, while Aikido had improved my defensive skills and flexibility.
My Aikido instructor was an interesting man. He had lived in Japan for years, earning his black belt and several dans there. He would always tell us stories, and they were captivating. Unlike my Kyokushin teacher, who was a mix of violence and kindness, this teacher was always gentle, and we all admired his kindness. Of all his stories, one has stuck with me. One day, while in Japan, he was attacked by a group trying to steal his bag. Yes, they attacked a black belt Aikido master! You might be reminded of Bruce Lee movies, but with all due respect to your imagination, it wasn’t like that at all. He told me, “When those three guys were hitting me, I forgot everything I had learned in all those years of Aikido and just punched and kicked them, covering my head to survive.” I’ve never forgotten that. I realized then that everything I’d seen in Japanese and Hollywood movies was far from reality. I’ve never been in a street fight in my life, and I hope I never have to defend myself.
Now, back to the topic of mindfulness. After I entered university, I stopped practicing martial arts altogether. Snowboarding took over my interest, and as I began working, meditation and mindfulness practices also fell to the wayside. That is, until the pressures of work, ongoing challenges, and extreme stress led me back to meditation and therapy. My therapist emphasized daily mindfulness practice, from cooking to showering, to help me manage things better.
Several years passed, and meditation became a part of my daily life, albeit inconsistently. Then, when the COVID pandemic hit, like many others, I was confined to my home. At the start of the pandemic, much of my day was spent on social media and reading the terrifying news about the virus spreading and people dying in large numbers. During that period, fortunately or unfortunately, I was completely alone. In some ways, this was good because many of my friends faced difficulties with their partners or families during the lockdown. But on the other hand, the isolation and constant exposure to social media put me under immense pressure.
This didn’t last long, though, because in a bold move, I deleted all my social media apps from my phone. Not only Instagram but also WhatsApp and Telegram were removed. I asked my close friends and family to only call me—FaceTime, Google Meet (back then, it was called Google Duo), and regular phone calls were the only ways to reach me.
Without factoring in work hours and meetings, deleting social media freed up about 14 hours a day that I now had to fill somehow. I increased my reading time and began writing my book, The Superhuman. Meditation, which had been a mere 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night, now expanded to at least one hour in the morning and one hour at night, along with studying various meditation techniques. My background in neuroscience, familiarity with hypnotherapy, and encouragement from a friend pushed me to start the Dharma Podcast, which gained significant traction during the pandemic.
Since I’ve always thrived in teamwork, I quickly formed a team, and Dharma became a specialized meditation podcast. Unlike other meditation podcasts, which were either non-scientific or pseudo-scientific, Dharma had a purely scientific approach from the very beginning, thanks to my interest in science and my studies in neuroscience. Although I had no experience recording and publishing podcasts and the quality was terrible at first, listener feedback and suggestions motivated me to study recording and editing techniques, which significantly improved the podcast’s quality. Shortly afterward, I also signed up for the 20-day silent retreat I’ve told you about.
I had two main reasons for sharing these stories. First, to once again reflect on the chain of events in life and to deeply think about the role of will and choice, personality, and the decisions we make, as well as the role of mental backgrounds like genetics, the environment, and life experiences. The second reason was to introduce the concept of mindfulness.
Like many others who become interested in meditation, I was drawn to Buddhist philosophy and its practices, spending years studying and analyzing it through the lens of neuroscience.
What I’m about to share now is a result of all the life experiences and studies I’ve shared with you so far, and it may change or evolve in the future. As I mentioned in the preface, this book will be updated to keep readers informed of any changes. Understanding what I’m about to explain will require extra attention, and I’ll try my best to explain it as simply as possible, although truly understanding it will require familiarity with the earlier sections of this book and staying with me through to the end.
During meditation, we experience our thoughts, emotions, sensory inputs, and pain emerging within our consciousness. We place the spotlight of attention on these for a few moments, and then, as we get absorbed in our thoughts, the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) redirects this spotlight to random contents. The moment we call “becoming aware of our thoughts” is, in fact, the moment when the brain’s top-down processing casts this spotlight on a vague memory of content that appeared moments ago. This process often leads us to the illusion that we are fully aware of our thoughts and emotions. In reality, this process is also a top-down operation, in which conscious attention, or the spotlight, is directed through this top-down mechanism onto a recent memory of appearing content.
For a better understanding of the neuroscientific details, refer to the resources at the end of the book.
Now, imagine instead of taking just a 20-day silence retreat, I adopt an entirely different lifestyle, leaving city life behind and moving into that same cottage, limiting my communication to occasional contact with close family and friends. There’s nothing wrong with this lifestyle, but we would once again return to our core values and priorities in life, which I’ll explain further.
Let’s say I spend years meditating this way, getting used to the solitude and silence of nature, and can now sit still for hours, fully focused. However, every few minutes, thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations like pain and itching still appear within my awareness, and my brain’s top-down processing suppresses them. This is similar to how someone on a hunger strike suppresses the feeling of hunger. I quickly turn my spotlight of attention on the memory of these thoughts, emotions, and pain, and feel proud of being aware. But in truth, I have merely turned myself into a laser pointer!
Over time, as meditation becomes routine, the mystical experiences I had before would no longer repeat themselves. Like any habit, I would need to increase the “dose” by meditating more, fasting, or using other intense methods to sustain those experiences.
Furthermore, this focus does not inherently make me a better or wiser person! Although I may have strengthened one of the hundreds of skills that might aid me on the path to wisdom, I would lose many other capabilities along the way. For instance, I may no longer be able to switch tasks like an ordinary person or, due to increased activity in areas like the DLPFC or VMPFC of the prefrontal cortex, experience changes in social behavior. This over-focus could lead to harmful effects on my social life, possibly hindering my ability to connect with people as I did before.
Though by limiting social interactions I would have minimized many life challenges, eliminating numerous day-to-day concerns, it’s as though I’ve merely erased the problem rather than addressing it. It would be like choosing to fast forever instead of maintaining a balanced diet, which could ultimately lead to malnutrition or even death.
We humans are social beings with varied needs that require balanced attention. I want to emphasize throughout this book that everything finds its meaning within a spectrum, and finding the equilibrium point in all things can be the key. Wisdom, which I refer to as the ultimate value, rests on balance and moderation. Just as neither overeating nor undernourishment can lead to health, extremes in meditation and concentration practices do not necessarily lead us toward wisdom.
