The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion.

Dalai Lama has made new opportunities for women that they never had in Tibet, introduced science into the monks' curriculum and had Tibetan students in exile take their classes in English after the age of ten so that they will know more about the outside world. But one of the great things he's done is to bring all the Tibetan groups together in exile, as perhaps they couldn't have been when they weren't in exile and they weren't under such pressure.

America has a hold on imaginations that no other country does. I think that is partly because it is an immigrant country and there is still a kind of innocence in America that translates very well everywhere in the world.

Any school would gain, if the students began the day with meditation, cleared their heads and got themselves centered.

Destinations are less important than the spirit you bring to them.

One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.

The Dalai Lama says Tibet and the modern world can engage in a conversation; perhaps Tibet has something to share with the rest of us based on its researches into mind, and we have a lot that we can share with Tibet.