I will say that the power of being a stranger in someone else's religious community has its own lessons, really. It is something like the power of visiting another very happy extended family and being at their table.

Some of my best friends are Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh, my students as well. This is the sea in which I swim.

When immigrants come, the freedom to practice their faith is a guarantee. They may have trouble with their neighbors, but freedom of religion is part of the blueprint for America, and that is the recipe for the religious diversity that we have today.

There are two great things that we need to find in life: one is love, probably the most important, and the second is work, and they compete with one another from time to time.

The practice of leaving settled society to undertake a spiritual journey, or a spiritual life really, is something that is much more common in India. Common especially to a certain phase of life, to the end of life. But not so unusual for younger people as well.

I do think that the U.S. has an opportunity as a democracy to really exemplify what a religiously diverse society can be when it embraces the pluralism.

The issue of "who we are" has been an ongoing one. It's part of the ongoing identity crisis of America.