SANTA ANA, Calif. — After JT Daniels had won a national title and the Gatorade National Player of the Year award, after the attention had poured in following his announcement that he’d graduate high school a year early and join USC football this summer, after his jersey was retired at Mater Dei High and he had accomplished more than he had set out to do in his high school football career, Daniels came to a simple, but unexpected, conclusion.



“It just hit me like a brick,” he said. “I was like, ‘Be honest with yourself, you’re really not happy. You’re not finding the right things.’ So, it wasn’t like a hard, internal suffering for me. It was pretty obvious.”



Shortly before his 18th birthday, with the realization that football success had not equated to happiness, he began to seek an answer that would lead him there.



Daniels said he came upon the Buddhist philosophy of detachment (or...