Wenn, Contact Music: Actor David Duchovny recently spent a weekend shovelling horse manure as part of a Buddhist meditation retreat.
The Californication star escaped to upstate New York for a few days to join a monastery programme aimed at helping guests find inner peace through meditation.
But Duchovny admits the stay wasn’t as relaxing as he thought it would be – because he was put to work as soon as he arrived.
He says, “I just went on a retreat to a zen monastery in upstate New York. It’s a type of Buddhism and meditation is a big part of it…
“I’m a beginner, I’ve only been meditating for a little while. You pay a fee to go for this weekend and what I didn’t know is that even though you pay a fee they put you to work immediately. You go there and first you bus some tables after you eat and they had me working in the garden everyday for an hour-and-a-half. It was fun, I was shovelling horse s**t out there. You pay money and then you shovel horse s**t!”
The actor found himself struggling to obey the strict meditation rules which forbid him from fidgeting while in-session, and he soon discovered a way…

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