Every Time We Say Goodbye: Savoring the Delicacy of First and Final Encounters

My hosts were right: Bergmannstrasse is a fine choice for solo dining this warm spring evening. I have been in Berlin a few days, inaugurating another month-long trip to Europe. I’m staying with friends of a friend in the relaxed, hip Kreuzberg district, not far from Checkpoint Charlie—the former, grim demarcation between the Western and Soviet segments of this revitalized, thriving city.

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A Three-Month Buddhist Retreat (or, The Silence of the Lamas)

A 3-month Buddhist meditation retreat is no less mind-altering than ingesting hallucinogens or traveling to a remote land where nobody speaks your language or knows your culture. But the agent (or angel) of revelation in intensive meditation is neither an exotic plant nor an expensive plane ticket. It is essentially this: silence.

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