“For me, meditation is engagement,” said Buddhist teacher, author and practitioner Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel during the 2017 Festival of Faiths. In explaining what it really means to meditate, she said: “When you go into retreat and you sit with your mind, everything you’ve been trying to avoid by keeping yourself so busy is just right there. But then, when you have a way of working with it, it becomes a great joy… and it helps you navigate the world with a lot of sanity and well-being.”