Yes, we know more than ever before, and it's a wonder that we get to inhabit a world full of driverless cars and 3D printers. But that doesn't mean that we know any more about the essential things in life - love, faith, death - and it would be dangerous to assume we did. The only thing that gets us through sometimes is a proper, humbled sense that we don't have a clue, we can't be sure what's going to happen next and life will always be much larger than our ideas of it.

More than any religious figure that I can think of, Dalai Lama goes out of his way to attend interfaith conferences; religious harmony is one of his urgent priorities in life.

I suddenly realized I was racing around so much, I could never catch up with my life

None of the things in life - like love or faith - was arrived at by thinking; indeed, one could almost define the things that mattered as the ones that came as suddenly as thunder.

But it’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it.

The reason I love travel is not just because it transports you in every sense, but because it confronts you with emotional and moral challenges that you would never have to confront at home. So I like going out in search of moral and emotional adventure which throws me back upon myself and forces me to reconsider my assumptions and the things I took for granted. It sends me back a different person.

For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where's your home?" I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.