Meditation teacher on leaving the corporate world to find a true calling after retirement

A Dublin mediation teacher has announced he is quitting his high-flying corporate job to practice the art of Buddhist meditation.

Kadam Adam originally planned to take just a year off from the corporate world, which quickly turned into 17 years.

The 52-year-old now leads meditation classes at Dalkey Castle and told Dublin Live that if it has helped him, it can help anyone.

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He said: “I’m originally from Balydoyle. I left Dublin in 1989 and went to London. I basically went into the corporate world. I was working as a manager for a media company in the field of business development.

“I spent about 18 years in London. Most of it I spent traveling around the world, working in different places.

“I came across Buddhist meditation, which is the tradition I train and teach in in the late 90s. It became an integral part of my daily routine. going to work, then sometimes in the evening. It just became more and more a part of my life.

“Around 2005 I took a little break from my corporate world and decided to do a meditation retreat. I went to a Buddhist meditation retreat center in the English countryside for a while. While I was there I started teaching, I was teaching in London for 17 years.

“I always intended for it to be just this short one-year break in my career and 17 years later I’m still on a break.

“I loved my job but it was quite a stressful job and I was traveling all the time. I worked in the M&A field which is full of pitfalls and challenges. You bring companies, organizations together.

“It’s quite difficult. I found it quite difficult.

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“I was only in my late 20s to lead these big projects and I felt really overwhelmed.”

Introducing meditation into his daily routine has really helped the Baldoyle native during extremely stressful times.

Adam Starr said: “When I started meditation it just gave me a base. I felt a lot more centered and able to handle things. I was more resilient. I could see things with a lot more clarity and a little more wisdom Being able to deal with difficult situations and people with a little more acceptance and compassion.

“I found it super useful. It became such a part of my everyday life. It completely transformed the way I experienced work at the time. That’s what motivated me to teach a bit. I thought if I could learn it, everyone could. If it can help me, it can help anyone.

“Things were going really well in my career and financially I was fine, so I was just going to take a year off to breathe a bit.

“It was during the retreat that I had the opportunity to deepen my practice. I spent some time there after the retreat studying and deepening my meditation for a year. It ended up being about five years in this center.

“I gained a little more experience that I could share in the different contexts in which I subsequently taught.

He believes Dubliners are much more open to meditation and mindfulness than they were in the past, with many people looking for something to ground them during difficult times.

Starr said: “I returned to Ireland after about 30 years away. It was a very different Dublin and a very different Ireland when I left.

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“I came back to a much richer Ireland. It was more of a European Dublin, much more integrated into Europe.

“I’ve found a lot of openness in people to explore meditation. We’ve just been through two years of lockdown and people sometimes struggle with their minds, so it often opens that door for people to help them do that. face.

“There is naturally an enthusiasm. Buddhist meditation is a style of mediation. It is a tradition of meditation that is for everyone. Everyone can find something in it, whether it is simple breathing meditation or deeper meditation techniques to heal anxiety and stress.

“People are a lot more open than when I left. I never even heard of meditation until I got to London.

“We started classes at Dalkey Castle about a year before the pandemic. It was going well, but basically we then went live. We also built a new meditation center in the village of Templeogue. is a very modern and contemporary meditation center where people can just walk off the road.

“We restarted at Dalkey and it gradually rebuilt well.

The Malahide resident shared a simple breath that can help people incorporate meditation into their daily routine:

  1. Find a quiet place to sit (a chair is fine) and free of distractions. Partially close your eyes. Back straight but relaxed. Hands on your knees. Breathe gently and naturally through the nostrils. Let go of outward concentration and gather your awareness inward.
  2. Start by generating the wish to use meditation to enhance your inner peace, happiness, and good qualities, so that it will benefit both you and others.
  3. Then, be aware – without judgment – of where your mind is, right now. Is it calm, clear and peaceful? Or, busy and distracted? To get rid of restlessness and distraction and refocus on a calm, clear, and peaceful state of mind, focus — without distraction — on the sensation of the breath flowing in and out through your nostrils.
  4. When you notice yourself following thoughts and distractions, simply acknowledge and accept their presence, and let go of the urge to follow them. Then relax and return to the breath, allowing your attention to come closer and closer to the breath each time.
  5. Eventually your attention will come to rest on the breath and you will notice the distractions dissolving naturally, like waves returning to an ocean. You will experience a deeper sense of inner calm, clarity and peace of mind.
  6. Simply relax into this inner peace and identify with it as your potential for change, to find deeper and more lasting peace of mind and happiness. To think, if I can become a little more peaceful, a little happier through a little meditation, it follows that I can become a lot more peaceful, a lot happier, through regular meditation.
  7. Conclude the meditation with a determination to maintain this inner calm and peace throughout your day, so that it naturally and positively influences everything you think, say and do.

Kadam Adam’s meditation classes take place on Wednesdays and are €10. More details are available here.

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About Shirley A. Tamayo

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