Passing Life's Exams

My final examinations at Cambridge University in 1972 were in theoretical physics. It was a tough time. All my university career came down to these last series of exams. All that went before counted for nothing. This was it, pass or fail. My exams consisted of a three-hour written paper in the morning and another three-hour paper in the afternoon, one day after another without any break. I was told that every year at Cambridge at least one student committed suicide during the final exams. Such was the stress. However, I had a competitive edge over my fellow students that enabled me to do well; I had learn how to meditate.

After the morning exam, I never went for my lunch. Instead, I went to my room, sat down on a cushion, and began meditating. The first thing that I became aware of, as you would expect, was the morning examination just completed. I started to worry whether I had answered a question correctly or whether I should have added more explanation. I soon became obsessed with the past, which for me meant the morning exam. It is easy to say that the past is gone, that my morning's exam can't be changed now, and that it makes no sense to worry about it. However, for some it is not that easy to think so sensibly. Most of us worry about the past nevertheless. Fortunately, due to my training in meditation, I found that I could let go of the past. I stopped worrying about the morning exam. Guess what came into my mind next?

Taking over the whole of my thoughts came the afternoon exam due in less than an hour. Should I open my eyes, pick up a book, and do more revision? Often in the past I had done last-minute cramming before an important exam. I don't know if it is the same for others, but whatever I revised at the last minute never came up in the exam. Revising now was a waste of energy. This was rest time, not exam time. Again, my meditation training came to my rescue, and I let go of the future. Meditating between exams in my college room, I entered the rest state of present-moment awareness.

Once in the present, I was shocked. I noticed for the first time that my body was trembling. I had never considered myself to be a nervous person, but there I was, shaking with fear. My nervous trembling was quite understandable given that I was in the middle of my final exams. What shocked me most was that I hadn't noticed it. I had been so preoccupied with my exams that I had paid no attention at all to what my body was doing. In present-moment awareness I began total listening, and I heard my body plead for some rest. By paying gentle attention to my body, it soon calmed down. The trembling stopped. My body was still. Then I could hear my mind pleading.

I noticed I was tired. I became aware how mentally drained I was. I had been too busy to notice this before. Now it became clear to me that, as I put it, I had run out of brain juice. Totally listening to my mind, I heard it ask me to rest and not do anything. So I just sat there. Gradually my mental energy came back. Ajahn Chah later confirmed that mental energy grows out of stillness. By the end of my thirty-minute-long meditation, I was relaxed, bright, and full of energy. My friends later told me that I was the only student to enter the exam hall with a smile on his face. They thought I was cheating and had found out the answers beforehand. I had found the answers, but not to the questions in the exam paper. I had found the answers to stress, and I did very well in those exams.

Life - at school, college, or thereafter - is full of exams. There are many tense days when one tested sharply and probed very deeply. The experience I've just related is an example of how this meditation helps one pass life's exams, at the university or at the job interview, in one's relationships or in illness, wherever one is put to the test. The smartest examination technique for life is to learn how to let go and fully relax. In other words to learn meditation.

MINDFULNESS, BLISS AND BEYOND
A Meditator's Handbook by Ajahn Brahm