Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God, is heading off to a meditation retreat tomorrow. He describes his feelings about the upcoming retreat and a silent retreat he attended five years ago)in The New York Times:

So with the retreat approaching, I should be as eager as a kid on Christmas Eve, right? Well, no. Meditation retreats — at this place, at least — are no picnic. You don’t follow your bliss. You learn not to follow your bliss, to let your bliss follow you. And you learn this arduously. If at the end you feel like you’re leaving Shangri-La, that’s because the beginning felt like Guantanamo.

You can find the rest here. And you can also read Tricycle‘s interview with Wright, from our Spring 2003 issue.

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