THE MIRACLETHAT COMES FROM
Closing His Eyes
Nattapongsiri Suwandee
Assistant Managing Director of Delivery Management
KASIKORN Business-Technology Group (KBTG)
In an era where many seek peace amid chaos and turn tomeditation, they often get stuck on questions like “What’sthe point?” or “Is daily practice really necessary?
Today, we speak with Nattapongsiri Suwandee, Assistant Managing Director of Delivery Management at KASIKORN Business-Technology Group (KBTG), who has practiced Vipassana meditation for 12 years. He recently volunteeredas assistant instructor for Journey to the Mind, a one-day meditation course by the School of Life Foundation.
Mr. Nattapongsiri isn’t a monk or professional meditation teacher – just an ordinary IT professional whose life underwent a complete transformation. From someone who spent weekends hanging out with friends and partying, he became someone who seeks to make every breath count and meaningful.
t all began with a simple question: “Is this really all there is to life? Birth, school, work, marriage, aging, death?” – a doubt that led him to seek and prove the answer himself.
In this conversation, he shares his direct experience without complex Pali words or Buddhist jargon. Instead,it’s the story of an ordinary person who discovered that the journey back to oneself might be the most worthwhile journey in life.
It’s been about 12 years since you first started this journey. Recently, you had the opportunity to teachmeditation training in the “Journey to the Mind”,the one-day meditation course at the School of Life Foundation. How was it?
Although I’ve been practicing meditation for a long timeand have made reasonable progress, it’s something entirelynew in my life. It requires a lot of preparation time becauseeverything was brand new. Everything has to be timed andscheduled precisely because each activity in each session hasits own purpose. For example, this session is for meditationpractice, this one is for mindfulness training, this one isfor concentration practice. We train mindfulness throughreading, through walking meditation to practice mindfulnessin movement, and so on. The course uses various elementsas connectors. It’s suitable for people who are still hesitant,still unsure about what this Dhamma path really is, but deepdown, they want peace because they feel their life is chaotic.
Over the past 4-5 years, meditation has become much more popular than before. As a long-time practitioner, can you share your experience on this journey?
In the early days when I started practicing, I was climbing the career ladder. Work was insanely busy—losing sleep kind of busy. I had to solve system problems for clients, but I still forced myself to practice in the evenings too. I tried to practice it in the morning and evening every day. Once it became a routine, progress began to emerge. Speaking from personal experience, I didn’t need to watch movies or listen to music anymore without feeling tortured. I was happy and peaceful being with myself without needing all those external stimuli.
Keeping the Five Precepts also felt natural, almost effortless. Now my work responsibilities have increased and I have to take care of my family because my parents are getting older, so I sit once a day. Unless I really can’t – too tired or too sleepy.
In daily life, one thing I notice is that my thinking and decision-making have become sharper, making life much smoother. When I don’t sit for a while, managing life isn’t as sharp—maybe because I don’t plan well or think things through carefully. When I say “smooth,” it’s not just ordinary smooth. It’s like everything clicks into place when planning to do something. Or if problems come up, something comes along to help get through them smoothly.
Did you question life or anything like that before?
It’s a deep feeling that gradually became clearer after I started seriously practicing Dhamma about 12 years ago. I wondered if life really just loops like this: born, study, work, get married, have kids, have grandkids, grow old and die, or get sick and die. Before that, I read a lot of self-help books. They’re probably good. Otherwise, those people wouldn’t have succeeded. They wrote from their own experience. But it’s not proof that if you follow it, you’ll succeed, because there might be other factors, like luck. And ultimately, one person’s success formula doesn’t always work for others.
But practicing Dhamma is working with our own mind. And fundamentally, I’m someone who believes in the power of self-effort, self-discovery. At first when I started practicing, it wasn’t clear. I wasn’t really sure. How would you know if what you read or hear is true? So doing it yourself is the best proof. What I wanted to know, I got to know. I got to prove it myself.
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