"I find that starting the day with a little bit of quiet time changes the whole complexion of the rest of the day. It’s almost like warming up before you go into an athletic event. But the key is that you can do it anywhere," says Congressman Tim Ryan, author of A Mindful Nation.

We ask attendees at the opening night of the BuddhaFest film festival to talk about their attraction to Buddhism. Watch an audio slideshow of the interviews and listen to a Buddhist chant performed during the opening ceremony.

"I am a human being, I'm a Buddhist monk, I am a Westerner," says Nicholas Vreeland, who is also a successful and sophisticated photographer. Recently, the Dalai Lama asked him to lead one of Tibetan Buddhism's most important monasteries.

In a video inspired by the Buddhafest Short Films Showcase, watch everyday people saying what they believe it means to be “awake.”

"There seems to be a theme in the album, not intentional, and it’s funny because for somebody who is not a religious person, God comes up a lot in my songs," says legendary singer/songwriter Paul Simon.

Generations of African slaves found a powerful way of singing through suffering in spirituals that were rooted in biblical stories and images.

“Deeply listening to what it is they’re saying." That, says young hospice chaplain Kerry Egan, is the most important gift she offers to the dying patients she ministers to in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

“We don’t treat soldiers that are atheists as atheists. We treat them as soldiers,” says Colonel Stephen Sicinski, base commander at Fort Bragg. But Captain Jason Torpy says army chaplains are "either ignorant of or hostile to nontheistic beliefs."

Read an excerpt from "In the Company of Christ: A Pilgrimage through Holy Week" by Benedicta Ward. She is a historian of Christian spirituality at the University of Oxford.

"We live by the work of our hands and also have some left for helping out those who are maybe less fortunate," says the abbess of St. Mary's, Ireland's only Cistercian monastery for women.