For years, meditation taught me something I did not initially understand as a research skill, which was being able to sit with uncertainty without trying to resolve it. The practice was simple enough, listen to the inner voice, feel the reaction, and allow the reflection. Bhante Wimala, the Theravada Buddhist monk who has been my teacher for the past nineteen years, explains that this process is not passive. It just allows the mind to find clarity.
We are remarkably efficient at taking fragments of information and arranging them into a story. Stilling the mind through meditation supports contemplation, while mindfulness creates distance from the body's immediate reaction. Emotions can be powerful without being instructive, and a thought can be present without being true. An experience can provide depth without immediate understanding of its meaning.
Eventually, that same discipline entered my historical work.
A name surfaced, and I encouraged myself to delay deciding who the person was. When a coincidence appeared, I could wait to decide whether it was meaningful or meaningless. A building suggested an earlier history than the paperwork supported, and I could allow both realities to remain present while I kept looking.
Not knowing became a safe space for research. Patience controlled the tempo, and meditation gave me tolerance for the mental discomfort of uncertainty. Sometimes that meant months of carrying a name or a suspected connection before any validation appeared. It was not unusual for my prediction to lack accuracy, or for the connection never to arrive at all.
Observation. Attachment. Projection. Equanimity.
These words were not answers. They were reminders to notice what I was doing with the information in front of me. Those distinctions became increasingly important as my research began crossing between documentation, intuition, local memory, physical evidence, and experiences I could not easily explain. The easiest response would have been to choose a side: Do I believe, or do I dismiss? Instead, I learned to remain somewhere in between.
I could take an experience seriously without demanding that another person accept my interpretation. Allowing me to investigate an intuition without turning it into historical fact and even recognize a correspondence without deciding why it happened. That space between experience and conclusion became one of the most useful disciplines I carried into the work.
There is humility in saying, I do not know yet.