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.
My favorite childhood book was a 1950s, pre-Harry Potter fantasy called “Knight’s Castle.” A group of four children set up an imaginary battlefield with toy soldiers from the time of Ivanhoe. They don’t know that one of the tin soldiers has magic power, and in the middle of the night the children are transported through time to a dreamlike kingdom. Their playfield has come alive.
Welcome to Rishikesh, India! Laxman Jhula, to be precise.
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steven schwartzberg 