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Anybody Who Travels Knows That You're Not Really Doing So In Order To Move Around - You're Traveling In Order To Be Moved. And Really What You're Seeing Is Not Just The Grand Canyon Or The Great Wall But Some Moods Or Intimations Or Places Inside Yourself That You Never Ordinarily See When You're Sleepwalking Through Your Daily Life.

-Pico Iyer

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Anybody Who Travels Knows

Pico Iyer

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Anybody Who Travels Knows That You're Not Really Doing So In Order To Move Around - You're Traveling In Order To Be Moved. And Really What You're Seeing Is Not Just The Grand Canyon Or The Great Wall But Some Moods Or Intimations Or Places Inside Yourself That You Never Ordinarily See When You're Sleepwalking Through Your Daily Life.

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I Think China's View Of Freedom Has To Do With Material Wealth And Modernity, And The Dalai's Lama View Of Freedom Is Liberation In The Buddhist Sense, Which Is Freedom From Ignorance And Freedom From Suffering.

The Dalai Lama, These Days, Encourages Westerners Not To Take Up Buddhism, Partly Because He Feels That Our Roots Are Deep In Other Traditions, And We Should Go Deeper Into Our Own Traditions Rather Than Just Acquiring The Surfaces Of Others.

The More We Run From A Problem, The More We're Actually Running Into It.

American Dreams Are Strongest In The Hearts Of Those Who Have Seen America Only In Their Dreams.

Destinations Are Less Important Than The Spirit You Bring To Them.

You Can Continue Your Practice, You Can Exercise Kindness, You Can Practice Meditation Whether You're In A Prison Or A Millionaire's House, Whether You're In India Or Tibet.

I Began Thinking About Why Am I Constructing Almost A Shadow Father Or Ghost Father In My Head Into Graham Greene In Response To The Father Who Created Me? What's Going On Here? I Think A Part Of My Sense Is It's Every Boy's Story. When We Are Kids, We Imagine That To Define Ourselves Or To Find Ourselves Means Charting Your Own Individuality, Making Your Own Destiny And Actually Running Away From Your Parents And Your Home And What You Grew Up With.

Going Nowhere Isn’t About Turning Your Back On The World; It’s About Stepping Away Now And Then So That You Can See The World More Clearly And Love It More Deeply.

Turning Your Back

Silence Is Something More Than Just A Pause; It Is That Enchanted Place Where Space Is Cleared And Time Is Stayed And The Horizon Itself Expands. In Silence, We Often Say, We Can Hear Ourselves Think; But What Is Truer To Say Is That In Silence We Can Hear Ourselves Not Think....in Silence, We Might Better Say, We Can Hear Someone Else Think.

Because I Don't Belong Entirely To Britain Or The U.s. Or India Or Japan, I Build My Foundations In Some Way Deeper Than Mere Passports, And More In The Light Of Where I'm Going Than Of "where I Come From."

I Think Of The Dalai Lama As A Doctor Of The Mind Offering Medicine And Specific Counsel And Cures In The Way A Great Doctor Would.

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We Have More And More Ways To Communicate, As Thoreau Noted, But Less And Less To Say.

If You'd Asked Me Some Years Ago, I Would Have Said [dalai Lama] Is An Extraordinarily Compassionate, Clear-sighted, Calm Human Being. But Now, I'm More Convinced Than Ever That His Political Positions As Well As His Spiritual Positions Arise Out Of Such Precise And Realistic Thinking That They're Extremely Sound.

Movement Is A Fantastic Privilege But It Ultimately Only Has Meaning If You Have A Home To Go Back To.

For Centuries, Cubas Greatest Resource Has Been Its People.

I've Also Learned From [dalai Lama] That We Make The World By How We Choose To Look At It. In Any Situation You Can Make It Constructive Or Dismaying, Depending On That Powerful Computer We Call The Mind.

You Rebel Against Your Parents Until You Become Them. One Day You Look In The Mirror And You See Your Father's Face.

I Think People Like Me Are In A Relatively Privileged Position Because We Have To Some Extent Chosen To Live In Foreign Places. I Would Always Make The Distinction Between Those Who Are Exiles In Terms Of Being Thrown Out Of The Place They Want To Be, And Others Who Are Exiles In Terms Of Going Toward A Place They Would Rather Be.

As Thoreau Famously Sead, It Doesn't Matter Where Or How Far You Go - The Farther Commonly The Worse - The Important Thing Is How Alive You Are. Writing Of Every Kind Is A Way To Wake Oneself Up And Keep As Alive As When One Has Just Fallen In Love.

I Think That Mass Communications As Well As Mass Travel Have Made The Whole World Available To Us In Ways That They Haven't Been. As With Any Kind Of Freedom, The More Of It That One Has The Greater The Need For Limit And Restraint. But I Think That It's A Nice Challenge To Be Saddled With.

Making A Living And Making A Life Sometimes Point In Opposite Directions.

Making A Living

For More And More Of Us, Home Has Really Less To Do With A Piece Of Soil Than, You Could Say, With A Piece Of Soul. If Somebody Suddenly Asks Me, "where's Your Home?" I Think About My Sweetheart Or My Closest Friends Or The Songs That Travel With Me Wherever I Happen To Be.

Often When We Think Of Exile We Think Of Destruction Or Loss. But The Dalai Lama Always Says Exile Is Reality, It's Something We Can Make Use Of, And He Has Used It To Get Rid Of Everything That He Thought Was Stifling And Old, And To Create A New, Improved And Much Healthier Tibet.

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Literally, When You Wake Up At 9 O'clock In The Morning In Havana You Don't Know Where You'll Be At Noon. But It's A Safe Guess That You'll Either Be Married, Arrested, Or In The Midst Of Some Incredible Transaction Where Somebody Is Stealing Your Passport Or Paying You In Dominican Pesos For It, Or Whatever. It's A Wild Place.

Movement Is Only As Good As The Sense Of Stillness That You Can Bring To It To Put It Into Perspective.

Gandhi Or Bishop Tutu Or The Dalai Lama. I Think They're Really Embodiments Of What We Aspire To And, By Keeping Them In Our Heads, We're Reminding Ourselves Of Who We Could Be. That's What We're Hoping To Climb Up Towards.

Quitting, For Me, Means Not Giving Up, But Moving On; Changing Direction Not Because Something Doesn’t Agree With You, But Because You Don’t Agree With Something. It’s Not A Complaint, In Other Words, But A Positive Choice, And Not A Stop In One’s Journey, But A Step In A Better Direction. Quitting-whether A Job Or A Habit-means Taking A Turn So As To Be Sure You’re Still Moving In The Direction Of Your Dreams.

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Changing Your Life

When I Was Two Years Old, I Heard About His [dalai Lama] Flight From Tibet. Being Very Little, I Said, "oh, Good Tibetans, Bad Chinese." Those Were The Black-and-white Ways That I Thought.

Black And White

Anybody Who Travels Knows That You're Not Really Doing So In Order To Move Around - You're Traveling In Order To Be Moved. And Really What You're Seeing Is Not Just The Grand Canyon Or The Great Wall But Some Moods Or Intimations Or Places Inside Yourself That You Never Ordinarily See When You're Sleepwalking Through Your Daily Life.

Dalai Lama Is Transforming Those Criteria - And The Whole Way Of Conducting Politics. He's Conducting Politics In A Much Deeper Way Than Most Politicians Are Able To. He's The Only Politician I Know Of Who's A Monk. The Pope, Of Course, Is In A Similar Position, But The Pope Isn't In The Same Way Leading A Country Of Many Million People.

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I Think That America Is An Ideal Place For The Privileged Homeless, Who Are Used To Different Cultures. It's Easiest And Most Accommodating Because It Is A Country Of Exiles And Immigrants And Newcomers. There Are No Walls, In That Sense. There Is Always The Sense That Traditions Are Being Made As We Speak. So You Can Slot Yourself In. If You Are Living At A Distance In Society, This Is One Of The Most Congenial Societies To Live In.

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And It’s Only By Going Nowhere - By Sitting Still Or Letting My Mind Relax - That I Find That The Thoughts That Come To Me Unbidden Are Far Fresher And More Imaginative Than The Ones I Consciously Seek Out.

The Open Road Is The School Of Doubt In Which Man Learns Faith In Man.

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Visiting A New Town Is Like Having A Conversation. Places Ask Questions Of You Just As Searchingly As You Question Them. And, As In Any Conversation, It Helps To Listen With An Open Mind, So You Can Be Led Somewhere Unexpected. The More You Leave Assumptions At Home, I've Found, The Better You Can Hear Whatever It Is That A Destination Is Trying To Say To You.

So Travel For Me Is An Act Of Discovery And Of Responsibility As Well A Grand Adventure And A Constant Liberation.

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I Am Simply A Fairly Typical Product Of A Movable Sensibility, Living And Working In A World That Is Itself Increasingly Small And Increasingly Mongrel. I Am A Multinational Soul On A Multinational Globe On Which More And More Countries Are As Polyglot And Restless As Airports. Taking Planes Seems As Natural To Me As Picking Up The Phone Or Going To School. I Fold Up My Self And Carry It Around As If It Were An Overnight Bag.

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For More And More Of Us, Home Has Less To Do With A Piece Of Soil Than A Piece Of Soul.

You Can See Exile As Loss, And Then It Will Be A Loss For You. You Can Treat It As Opportunity And Then All Kinds Of Benefits Accrue.

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I Think America The Symbol And America The Notion Are Still Very Different From America The Nation. What's Touching And Almost Regenerative Is That Whatever Is Happening In The Reality Of America, Where There Is A Murder Rate Worse Than Lebanon's And Where There Is So Much Homelessness And Poverty, Still America Will Be A Shorthand Throughout The World For Everything That Is Young And Modern And Free.

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I Would Say That By Virtue Of Transforming Politics, [dalai Lama] Is In Fact Easily Underestimated.

In Our Appetite For Gossip, We Tend To Gobble Down Everything Before Us, Only To Find, Too Late, That It Is Our Ideals We Have Consumed, And We Have Not Been Enlarged By The Feasts But Only Diminished.

Hello Kitty Will Never Speak.

When One Questions [dalai Lama's] Political Actions, It Is Worth Remembering That He's The Single Most Experienced Politician On The Planet At This Moment.

Dalai Lama Is Very Interested In Learning From And Sharing Tips With People In Other Traditions, But He Always Stresses That We Shouldn't Underestimate The Important Differences Between Them.

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Travel Is Not Really About Leaving Our Homes, But Leaving Our Habits.

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Lonely Places, Then Are The Places That Are Not On International Wavelengths, Do Not Know How To Carry Themselves, Are Lost When It Comes To Visitors. They Are Shy, Defensive, Curious Places; Places That Do Not Know How They Are Supposed To Behave.

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Travel Spins Us Round In Two Ways At Once: It Shows Us The Sights And Values And Issues That We Might Ordinarily Ignore; But It Also, And More Deeply, Shows Us All The Parts Of Ourselves That Might Otherwise Grow Rusty.

Not Many Years Ago, It Was Access To Information And Movement That Seemed Our Greatest Luxury; Nowadays Its Often Freedom From Information, The Chance To Sit Still, That Feels Like The Ultimate Prize. Stillness Is Not Just An Indulgence For Those With Enough Resources Its A Necessity For Anyone Who Wishes To Gather Less Visible Resources.

The Central Paradox Of The Machines That Have Made Our Lives So Much Brighter, Quicker, Longer And Healthier Is That They Cannot Teach Us How To Make The Best Use Of Them; The Information Revolution Came Without An Instruction Manual.

Its No Coincidence That The Word Holiday Suggests A Holy Day, Or That The Longest Book In The Torah Concerns The Sabbath. If You Wish To Advance In Any Sphere, The Best Way Is To Take A Retreat.

Travel Is An Act Of Humility

Writing Is, In The End, That Oddest Of Anomalies: An Intimate Letter To A Stranger.

I Do Think It’s Only By Stopping Movement That You Can See Where To Go. And It’s Only By Stepping Out Of Your Life And The World That You Can See What You Most Deeply Care About… And Find A Home.

There's So Much Visible Stuff Around Now, We're Tempted To Forget That It's Usually The Invisible That Matters Most.

Just As There Are Many More Californians Now To Be Found In The Temples Of Kyoto Or The Villages Of Bali Or The Mountains Of The Himalayas Than Ever Before, What Is Also Exciting Is That One Can Just Go Downtown Santa Barbara And Find Ayurvedic Medicine, Thai Restaurants, And Japanese Cars In Abundance.

I Think That Foreignness Is Always With You. Indeed, I Find California More Foreign To Me The Longer I Live Here. In Thirty Years Of Living Here On And Off, It Hasn't Lost Anything Of Foreignness. If Anything, It Has Gained.

As Soon As I Began To Talk To Dalai Lama, I Realized That Chinese And Tibetans From His Point Of View Are Mostly The Same. And As He Pointed Out During The Recent Disturbances, The Chinese Are Suffering Under A Tough Government Much As The Tibetans Are.

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Adventure Today Means Finding One's Way Back To The Silence And Stillness Of A Thousand Years Ago.

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The Average American Teenager Sends Or Receives 75 Text Messages A Day, Though One Girl In Sacramento Managed To Handle An Average Of 10,000 Every 24 Hours For A Month.

Mr. Trump Doesn't Radiate Many Of The Qualities I Respect. But What Do I Know? I've Never Met Trump. I Know He's Savvy Enough To Change His Tune According To His Audience And I Don't Know Very Much At All About How Government Works.

Yet [dalai Lama] Has Said Very Strongly That Basic Freedoms Of Thought And Speech Have To Be Respected In Tibet And They're Not At The Moment. Tolerance Doesn't Mean Accepting What's Unfair.

Home Is Not Just The Place Where You Happen To Be Born. Its The Place Where You Become Yourself.

Dalai Lama Was Leading His Country During The Rigors Of World War Ii, He Was In Beijing For A Year In 1954; He Was Up Against Mao Zedong And Zhou Enlai From The Time That He Was Fifteen. So He's No Newcomer Or Naive When It Comes To Politics.

The Ultimate Purpose Of Zen,' I Remembered The Roshi Telling Me, 'is Not In The Going Away From The World But In The Coming Back. Zen Is Not Just A Matter Of Gaining Enlightenment; It's A Matter Of Acting In A World Of Love And Compassion.

In The End, We Need Two Things To Lead A Balanced Life - A Sense Of The World And A Sense Of Ourselves; It's Like Breathing In And Breathing Out. And If You Can Only Get To Know The World By Stepping Out, And Losing Yourself In Experience, You Can Only Get To Know The Self By Stepping Back, And Finding Yourself In Contemplation. One Without The Other Leads To A Kind Of Madness.

Suffering Is A Privilege. It Moves Us Toward Thinking Of Essential Things And Shakes Us Out Of Complacency. Calamity Cracks You Open, Moves You To Change Your Ways.

[the Dalai Lama ] Says Western Traditions Can Teach Tibetans A Lot About Social Action, And He Thinks Some Christians Are Very Good At That.

My Christmas Present To Myself Each Year Is To See How Much Air Travel Can Open Up The World And Take Me To Places As Far From Sheltered California And Japan As Possible.

In An Age Of Speed, I Began To Think Nothing Could Be More Exhilarating Than Going Slow. In An Age Of Distraction, Nothing Can Feel More Luxurious Than Paying Attention. And In An Age Of Constant Movement, Nothing Is More Urgent Than Sitting Still.

America Has A Hold On Imaginations That No Other Country Does. I Think That Is Partly Because It Is An Immigrant Country And There Is Still A Kind Of Innocence In America That Translates Very Well Everywhere In The World.

Most Of Us Who Have Been Lucky Enough To Hear, Read And See The Dalai Lama, Often Come Away Thinking, "what A Kind, Inspiring And Golden Human Being!" That Is True, But I Think It Does Him An Injustice.

In An Age Of Acceleration, Nothing Can Be More Exhilarating Than Going Slow.

The Dalai Lama Says That When A Catholic And A Buddhist Speak, The Buddhist Becomes A Deeper Buddhist And The Catholic Becomes A Deeper Catholic.

It's Impressive That A Man [dalai Lama], On The Day After His Nobel Prize Was Announced, In October, 1989, Said To Me, "i Really Wonder If My Efforts Are Enough?" Most Of Us, If We Just Won The Nobel Prize, Would Think This Is Vindication, Or At Last There's A Chance For Tibet. He's The Rare Person Who Thinks, As A Buddha Would, "i Don't Know If I've Done Enough, I Don't Know If I Will Do Enough."

In An Age Of Constant Movement, Nothing Is More Urgent Than Sitting Still.

I Think Dalai Lama Efforts Have Been Heroic.

Travel, For Me, Is A Little Bit Like Being In Love, Because Suddenly All Your Senses Are At The Setting Marked “on.

I Think [dalai Lama]is Far And Away The Most Solid, Deep-thinking, Far-sighted Politician I've Met, And I've Been A Journalist For 26 Years For Time Magazine, So I've Met A Lot Of Politicians.

A Holy Day, After All, Is A Day For Considering Everything You Otherwise Think Too Little About.

Some People Will Always Ground Themselves Very Strongly In A Piece Of Soil, A Grandmother's Property, A Tiny Plot Of Land, And That's Great. But In The Age Of Movement, There's No Question That The Number Of People Who Don't - Or Can't - Is Growing Exponentially.

I Think People's Minds Are Going To Have To Assimilate In The Sense That All The World Is International Now. The Whole World Has Gone Global. I Think Cities Like San Francisco And Los Angeles Are The Models Of Our Future.

A Person Susceptible To "wanderlust" Is Not So Much Addicted To Movement As Committed To Transformation.

I Like California Because It Still Has The Glamour And Romanticism And Exoticism Of A Very Foreign Place. It Was The Place That When I Was Young, I Was Raised On "i Love Lucy" And Listening To The Grateful Dead And Reading Jack Kerouac. They, To Me, Were All Symbols Of This Very Foreign Sense Of Promise And Movement. After All This Time Here I'm Glad I Still Have It.

That's The Great Advantage Of Being A Foreigner: You're Not Paying Your Dues, But You Are Getting All The Benefits.

As Soon As I'm On The Road, I See, Often Palpably, That I Know Nothing At All, Which Is Always A Great Liberation.

In An Age Of Distraction, Nothing Can Feel More Luxurious Than Paying Attention.

When I'm Wandering Around The Himalayas, Most Of The People That I See Are Westerners From Germany, California, Or The Netherlands, Who Are Wearing Sandals, Indian Smocks, And Are In Search Of Enlightenment, Antiquity, Peace, And All The Things They Can't Get In The West. Most Of The People They Meet Are Nepali Villagers In Lee Jeans, Reeboks, And Madonna T-shirts Who Are Looking For The Paradise That They Associate With Los Angeles - A Paradise Of Material Prosperity And Abundance.

A Lack Of Affiliation May Mean A Lack Of Accountability, And Forming A Sense Of Commitment Can Be Hard Without A Sense Of Community. Displacement Can Encourage The Wrong Kinds Of Distance, And If The Nationalism We See Sparking Up Around The Globe Arises From Too Narrow And Fixed A Sense Of Loyalty, The Internationalism That's Coming To Birth May Reflect Too Roaming And Undefined A Sense Of Belonging.

So It Is That Lonely Places Attract As Many Lonely People As They Produce, And The Loneliness We See In Them Is Partly In Ourselves.

We Travel, Initially, To Lose Ourselves; And We Travel, Next To Find Ourselves. We Travel To Open Our Hearts And Eyes And Learn More About The World Than Our Newspapers Will Accommodate. We Travel To Bring What Little We Can, In Our Ignorance And Knowledge, To Those Parts Of The Globe Whose Riches Are Differently Dispersed. And We Travel, In Essence, To Become Young Fools Again- To Slow Time Down And Get Taken In, And Fall In Love Once More.

Falling In Love

I Wanted To Bring The Book Out Right Now Because I Think Anyone Who Cares About Tibet Knew There Would Be Disturbances In The Run Up To The Olympics [2008]. Many Tibetans Feel It's Their Last Chance To Broadcast Their Suffering And Frustration And Pain To The World Before The Olympics Take Place And China Is Accepted As A Modern Nation And The World Forgets About Tibet.

With The War In Iraq, He [dalai Lama] Feels That The Causes Of That Lie Maybe Hundreds Of Years Ago, And He Says, "what We Do Now May Have Consequences Far Into The Future That We Will Never See."

In Terms Of Technology And Science, Tomorrow Does Know More Than Yesterday; But When It Comes To Emotions, Living With Uncertainty, Terror, I'm Not Sure We Know Any More Than Shakespeare Did, Or The Buddha. And The Power Of New Things - The Iphone Or Facebook - Is So Strong And Intoxicating That We Sometimes Forget That None Of Them Can Fundamentally Change Our Relation To Ourselves And To What Matters.

One Curiosity Of Being A Foreigner Everywhere Is That One Finds Oneself Discerning Edens Where The Locals See Only Purgatory.

And If Travel Is Like Love, It Is, In The End, Mostly Because It's A Heightened State Of Awareness, In Which We Are Mindful, Receptive, Undimmed By Familiarity And Ready To Be Transformed. That Is Why The Best Trips, Like The Best Love Affairs, Never Really End.

...home Lies In The Things You Carry With You Everywhere And Not The Ones That Tie You Down.

I'd Spent Thirty Years Visiting The Dalai Lama, And Twenty Years As A Journalist Going To Difficult Places, War Zones And Revolutions From North Korea To Haiti And Beirut To Sri Lanka, And The Question Came Up: What Does This Man Have To Offer To This World Which Seems So Torn Up And So Attached To Conflict?

The Beauty Of Being Foreign Is That It Snaps You Awake.

We Travel, In Essence, To Become Young Fools Again - To Slow Time Down And Get Taken In, And Fall In Love Once More.

Falling In Love

The More Internationalism There Is In The World, The More Nationalism There Will Always Be, As People Feel Scared Of The Other Streaming Into Their Neighbourhood And Don't Always Know Where To Lay Their Foundations In A World On The Move.

In A World Full Of Shifting Borders, Everything Is Happening All At Once In Every Possible Direction.

Our Own Country Seemed More Polarized Than It's Ever Been And Since The Two Terrorist Attacks Of 9/11, Religion Was In Greater Disrepute Than At Any Other Time In My Lifetime.

Many People Would Say That A Tibetan Monk, Even In Lhasa, May Be Free While The Ruler Of China May Not Be Free.

For Me The First Great Joy Of Traveling Is Simply The Luxury Of Leaving All My Beliefs And Certainties At Home, And Seeing Everything I Thought I Knew In A Different Light, And From A Crooked Angle.

Dalai Lama Is Taking A Subtle And Nuanced View Of Politics And He Is Thinking In Terms Of Events Well Beyond Our Lifetime.

Home Is Essentially A Set Of Values You Carry Around With You And, Like A Turtle Or A Snail Or Whatever, Home Has To Be Something That Is Part Of You And Can Be Equally A Part Of You Wherever You Are. I Think That Not Having A Home Is A Good Inducement To Creating A Metaphysical Home And To Being Able To See It In More Invisible Ways.

I Love The Fact That We Can't Explain Coincidences. I Think It's Like Sometimes You Walk Into A Crowded Room And You'll See A Stranger And You Feel As If You Know Her Better Than The Friends That You Came With. And The Very Fact That You Can't Explain It Is What Gives It Its Power, That It Lies In Some Deeper Or Mysterious Realm, I Think.

I Like The Way That American Has Become A Kind Of Spiritual Home Even For People Who Have Never Seen It. American Dreams Are Strongest Of All In The Hearts Of People Who Have Only Seen America In Their Dreams. I Think It's Refreshing And Reviving To Go Around The World And See How America Still Occupies This Special Place.

The Dalai Lama Says Tibet And The Modern World Can Engage In A Conversation; Perhaps Tibet Has Something To Share With The Rest Of Us Based On Its Researches Into Mind, And We Have A Lot That We Can Share With Tibet.

We Can Better See What We Don't Have. The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener And Now We Can Actually Go And Visit His Grass Much More And Feel The Absence Of Green In Our Own Lives.

We May Be Joined These Days More By The Questions We Have In Common Than By The Answers We Share.

More Than Any Religious Figure That I Can Think Of, Dalai Lama Goes Out Of His Way To Attend Interfaith Conferences; Religious Harmony Is One Of His Urgent Priorities In Life.

Priorities In Life

Dalai Lama Has Made New Opportunities For Women That They Never Had In Tibet, Introduced Science Into The Monks' Curriculum And Had Tibetan Students In Exile Take Their Classes In English After The Age Of Ten So That They Will Know More About The Outside World. But One Of The Great Things He's Done Is To Bring All The Tibetan Groups Together In Exile, As Perhaps They Couldn't Have Been When They Weren't In Exile And They Weren't Under Such Pressure.

Every Day There Are Small Moments When We Have A Choice: Will We Take In More Stuff, Or Just Clear Our Minds Out For A Bit?

I Exult In The Fact I Can See Everywhere With A Flexible Eye; The Very Notion Of Home Is Foreign To Me, As The State Of Foreignness Is The Closest Thing I Know To Home.

For If Every True Love Affair Can Feel Like A Journey To A Foreign Country, Where You Can’t Quite Speak The Language, And You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, And You’re Pulled Ever Deeper Into The Inviting Darkness, Every Trip To A Foreign Country Can Be A Love Affair, Where You’re Left Puzzling Over Who You Are And Whom You’ve Fallen In Love With.

Unlike Many Spiritual Leaders, Dalai Lama Is Never Been In A Position To Just Sit On A Mountain Top Handing Out Wisdom. He's Had To Live Out His Principles In The Middle Of This Very Complex Situation, Every Day For Sixty Years Or More. I Think It's Something That Moves Many People About His Example.

What More Could One Ask Of A Companion? To Be Forever New And Yet Forever Steady, To Be Strange And Familiar All At Once, With Enough Change To Quicken My Mind, Enough Steadiness To Give Sanctuary To My Heart. The Books On My Shelf Never Asked To Come Together And They Would Not Trust Or Want To Listen To One Another. But Each Is A Piece Of A Stained-glass Whole, Without Which I Wouldn’t Make Sense To Myself Or To The World Outside.

Finding A Sanctuary, A Place Apart From Time, Is Not So Different From Finding A Faith.

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