Is there a way to get similar introduction to meditation without spending 10 days on it in a wild and listening to all that chanting? Some kind of good old western rational approach to it.
Find a local Buddhist meditation group. They'll have at least weekly "sittings", often more frequently. Just recently this searchable list of north american sanghas went up:
http://buddhistinsightnetwork.org/sanghas
If you are in the SF Bay Area, the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City is the home for Gil Fronsdahl, cited above.
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/