What happened to us American men? There we were, joyfully plundering the world like openhanded pirates, and now that we have it all we sit in half-lotus on the edge of paradise, the most beautiful county in the most beautiful state in the luckiest country under the sun, to meditate on loss and resentment.
We're breathing in, we're breathing out. We're keeping our minds loose, simply observing thoughts as they come up. The men in the room with me - ten in all - have degrees from good schools, do interesting work, earn their way in the world. Yet each one of them is trailed by the cymbal crash of bafflement. It shows in their bright, uncompromising eyes, and in their striving. They struggle to breathe at the right pace with the right ujjayi breath - a wheezing effect you get by constricting your windpipe. The man next to me, an intellectual property lawyer, sounds like Darth Vader in a steam room.