We, especially those of us in depoliticized and pacified societies, need to cast a colder eye at our self-perceptions, now and in the past, as sentinels and embodiments of Enlightenment virtues of reason, dissent, and skepticism.

Despite all the boosterish talk of globalization breaking down barriers, most writers in Anglo-America are still working within the nationalist assumptions of their traditionally powerful societies.

Today, practically every country outside the West is undergoing an intellectual, political, and cultural churning, from China to Bolivia, Egypt to Indonesia, but we haven't really had, after the 1960s, a major oppositional culture in Western Europe and America. The Occupy movement was so startling and welcome partly because it was the first such eruption of mass protests in decades.

Whether you are in the West, the East, the North, or the South, we should all feel pressured to attempt more, find new ways of outwitting ourselves, in our writing and thinking.

Buddhism doesn't really have much time for political mass-movements. We are so trained to think of politics in terms of acting collectively, acting as part of mass-movements, that it's become hard for us to imagine a form of politics that is based on a high degree of introspection and self-examination.

Gandhi saw how people have to re-think their own individuality before engaging in political activity. Otherwise they're just playing the game that the adversary has set out.

I wrote for many years without showing my writing to anyone, because I was constantly comparing it to what I was reading. You have to compare yourself to the best and feel totally inadequate.