“I drove all the way and tried to be peaceful and meaningful. Keep the feeling going,” he explained. “I came back and was shocked.”
Jared Leto remembers the moment when he came out of a meditation refuge, only to learn that the coronavirus had been declared a pandemic.
During Monday’s episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the actor shared his reaction to what he discovered on his return to Los Angeles after a silent meditation retreat of twelve days in early March in the desert.
Jared Leto has just found out about the Coronavirus pandemic after a silent 12-day retreat
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“The idea is that you go away, get rid of your phone, get rid of distractions, get rid of everything and just think,” Leto began, describing the retreat.
“When I left, there were about 150 cases,” he recalled. “And just in that short time, when I came out, there was a shutdown, an emergency and the whole world changed.”
‘But when we were there, they did not tell us [about the pandemic], “Leto noted and added that the participants did not have access to their phones or television.
The Oscar winner said he did not turn on his phone before returning home to LA.
“I drove all the way and tried to be peaceful and meaningful. Keep the feeling going,” he explained. ‘I came back and was shocked. It was like Rip Van Winkle. ‘
“It’s like a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode, but in real life,” Fallon said, to which Leto replied, “It was shocking. I had this wonderful tool to deal with stress and things and life, but I think nothing can prepare each of us for what we all went through in the beginning. ‘
Leto continues: “It was like coming out to the zombie apocalypse.”
On March 16, Leto revealed to fans that he had realized about the worsening health crisis when he returned from his long journey. Just a few days earlier, on March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the coronavirus a pandemic.
“Wow. 12 days ago I started a silent meditation in the desert,” Leto tweeted at that point. “We were completely isolated. No phone, no communication. We had no idea what was happening outside the plant.”
“Walked out into a whole other world yesterday,” he said added in another post. “One who has been changed forever. Take care of the least.”
