As I sit in my morning meditation, two sounds reach me from my surroundings. With my right ear I can hear a bulldozer scraping the rock in the cemetery in the foothills, and with my left ear I can hear a jackhammer pounding its way into the rock up the street from my house. In spite of all my efforts, neither sound is exactly conducive to meditation. And all this noise in a hilltown that is nigh deserted.