When the Buddha (who I didn’t know personally) left his father’s palace for the first time, he saw three things: An old man, a sick man, and a dead body. This formed the basis for enlightenment, which, in typically torturous Buddhist fashion, didn’t occur until more than a decade …

The other night, as though I were a college sophomore who’d forgotten to do his homework, I stayed up until 2 AM reading Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, a book normally consumed by literature-starved backpackers who can’t find anything else on the free shelf at the local gringo coffeehouse….

Yoga-teacher training involved a lot more than just doing poses. My fellow students and I meditated in a Buddhist temple, manipulated formaldehyde-drenched cadaver organs, practiced traditional Vedic chanting, and read ancient Indian philosophical texts that were way more boring than…