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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.

-Pico Iyer

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As Soon As I

Pico Iyer

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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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Priorities In Life

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Black And White

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Making A Living

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Falling In Love

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

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.

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A Comma . . . Catches The Gentle Drift Of The Mind In Thought, Turning In On Itself And Back On Itself, Reversing, Redoubling, And Returning Along The Course Of Its Own Sweet River Music; While The Semicolon Brings Clauses And Thoughts Together With All The Silent Discretion Of A Hostess Arranging Guests Around Her Dinner Table.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Travel Is An Act Of Humility

One Of The Interesting Things About Los Angeles Is That It's Still Supplying The Whole Of The World With Its Dreams Through Movies And Songs And Tv - Often Of An All-american Family At The Same Time As The Real Los Angeles Is Peopled By Souls From Vietnam, Guatemala, And Korea Who Look Nothing Like The Images Being Beamed Out. I Think All That Is Going To Have To Change And Illusion Is Going To Have To Catch Up With Reality In That Regard.

I Think Dalai Lama Efforts Have Been Heroic.

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

Nothing Makes Me Feel Better - Calmer, Clearer And Happier - Than Being In One Place, Absorbed In A Book, A Conversation, A Piece Of Music. It's Actually Something Deeper Than Mere Happiness: It's Joy, Which The Monk David Steindl-rast Describes As 'that Kind Of Happiness That Doesn't Depend On What Happens.

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

To Step Away From The World Isn't To Draw Back; It's Actually A Way To Tune In.

Technology, In Short, Cannot Teach Me How To Do Without Technology.

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.

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

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.

Writing Should ... Be As Spontaneous And Urgent As A Letter To A Lover, Or A Message To A Friend Who Has Just Lost A Parent ... And Writing Is, In The End, That Oddest Of Anomalies: An Intimate Letter To A Stranger

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Everyone Is A Wordsworth In Certain Moods, And Every Traveler Seeks Out Places That Every Traveler Has Missed.

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

I Often Think We're Most Happy When We Forget The Time.

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.

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Remember Many Years Ago, I Asked [dalai Lama] About Exile And He Said: "well, Exile Is Good Because It's Brought Me And My People Closer To Reality," And Reality Is Almost A Shrine Before Which He Sits. Exile Brings Us Up Against The Wall And Forces Us To Rise To The Challenge Of The Moment.

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."

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

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

He [dalai Lama] Feels, And I Feel, And Everyone Feels The Suffering And Frustration Of The Tibetans Who Long For Action, Who Long For A Militant Response. But, In Some Ways Very Few Of Those Individuals Have Ever Been In The Position Of Being Head Of State.

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

Hello Kitty Will Never Speak.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I'm One Of Those Perverse People Who Likes Being Alone. I Always Took Myself To Be A Community Of One. That's What I Am Comfortable With.

Death Undoes Us Less, Sometimes, Than The Hope That It Will Never Come.

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."

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.

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.

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

[the Dalai Lama] Told Me Some Years Ago, "i've Made Every Concession To China, And I've Been As Open And Tolerant As I Could, And Still Things Get Worse In Tibet." If You Look At It From One Point Of View, As He Himself Says, His Monastic Position Of Forbearance And Nonviolence Hasn't Reaped Any Benefits. And Yet, He's Thinking In Terms Of The Long Term, Of Centuries.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

For Citizens Who Think Themselves Puppets In The Hands Of Their Rulers, Nothing Is More Satisfying Than Having Rulers As Puppets In Their Hands.

The More Ways We Have To Connect, The More Many Of Us Seem Desperate To Unplug.

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

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