My first intellectual challenge was to try to understand this incredible city of Banaras (also called Varanasi) in India and its meaning for Hindus. That was the place I lived for the first year I was in India and I've been back many times. It's a kind of home to me.

There's still plenty of people who have this deep conviction that America is a Christian country and ought to say so in its Constitution, etc. But that's not the legal basis on which we're framed. So the flourishing of religion, of religious diversity, is really built into who we are.

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.

We tend to gravitate towards our tribes; the challenge is to understand the people of other tribes.

The idea that the United States government would have to figure out what to do about the headscarf is simply ludicrous. We don't get involved in that.

People came as immigrants from all over the world, and Hindu and Muslim and Buddhist and Sikh communities became part of the landscape of the U.S.

India is simply dotted with pilgrimage places, and with teachers and very powerful spiritual guides.