At the Lavaur train station in southern France a monastery student picked me up in a compact car we Americans might consider appropriate for go-kart racing. In minutes we were beyond the small city, sailing along roads just large enough to carry one and a half such cars. Or as I later discovered, a horse-drawn carriage and a mid-life crisis. A few miles east, nestled among expansive farming fields, I first saw Nalanda Monastery. It centers around three large buildings - two residential buildings housing the monks and a main building with bedrooms, kitchen, library, zen garden and Gompa. Workshops and smaller lodgings pepper the large property. From the driveway you can see Lavaur Cathedral, assembled in the late Middle Ages by those who suppressed the Cathar heresy with fire and sword. A river and a dozen cats can be found out back. Modern strife, pulsing outward from the city, ebbs across the expansive fields, fading to a dull lapping at the entrance. Although equipped with modern communications the screaming urgency of twenty-first century life doesn’t breach the walls. Here it seems almost laughable. What a month ago I could not have been without no longer crosses my mind. I’ve written off this month’s Netflix subscription as an accidental corporate donation. Adjacent to the dining area, my room holds two single beds, no roommate, a desk and a chair of Dickensian punishment. After a quiet day adjusting to this curious environment, I began commuting two hundred feet to the kitchen for cooking duty. Only a month prior, alone in the hills outside Narbonne I considered popcorn a viable dinner. But here I support two lively, skilled French cooks and can now slice a mean vegetable. And a few days a week I make bread as the morning sun warms the kitchen. The Gompa dominates the second floor. Before its doors rests a field of Birkenstocks (monks love Birkenstocks). Inside, artwork depicting past teachers and deities flank the massive Buddha centerpiece. Behind him 1,000 smaller Buddha statues, all made here by hand, form a golden wall. This is their classroom. In this world study is king. Monks and lay students commit to five and seven-year programs taught by a Tibetan Geshe in his native language, his voice a wondrous mixture of gravity and joy. He occasionally pauses, giving the two teaching assistants time to translate his words into French and English. In my free time I now too study Tibetan Buddhism in search of a cure. Though I quickly discovered that my earlier readings constituted only a sliver of an incredibly rich, complex and profound philosophy. Still, I descend into the ocean despite warnings from monks and books that Buddhism can’t cure depression. That one must have faith in Western Therapy. But these depths permit a new perspective on a mind so entangled in the conflict and competition of our western values. Even as I update my resume in this punishing little chair, worrying about the impending job search, my next office and its flickering fluorescent lights. I write my Geste of Deeds in capitalist prose, pretending that I also long to hit my KPI targets. Like unto Odysseus’ ship, here that siren’s call falls on deaf ears. Ears tuned to life’s finer subtleties. These aren’t snake oil salesmen spinning promises with a wink and shake of the collection pan. The men and women here genuinely seek happiness for all. You can feel it in the air during pujas, after-lunch prayers and healing meditations each night as Tibetan mantras roll basso, reverberating against art proclaiming wonders. On walks through the fields I ponder rebirth. Maybe it takes time and maybe it enjoys irony. Maybe these Buddhists, visible from the cathedral across the winter fields, are those heretics come again. Smiling and studying in peace. I accept that Buddhism alone can’t cure depression. Yet I believe the lovingkindness and compassion it expounds precludes the vile environments from which such illnesses crawl. A month from now, cast back into the modern machine, I’ll test the efficacy of western therapy alongside (to borrow the Dalai Lama’s phrase) a religion of kindness. Until then I’ll make bread in my new Birkenstocks with lovingkindness.