We are only peripherally tied to the lives of others. It takes a long long time for us to become deeply involved with others, and for some this never happens.

Each culture has its own characteristic manner of locomotion, sitting, standing, reclining, and gesturing.

One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you.

When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brainthat is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious--to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.

Culture hides more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants.

Because we have put ourselves in our own zoo, we find it difficult to break out.

Each organism, no matter how simple or complex, has around it a sacred bubble of space, a bit of mobile territoriality which only a few other organisms are allowed to penetrate and then only for short periods of time.