My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible.

The Dalai Lama, these days, encourages Westerners not to take up Buddhism, partly because he feels that our roots are deep in other traditions, and we should go deeper into our own traditions rather than just acquiring the surfaces of others.

I think America the symbol and America the notion are still very different from America the nation. What's touching and almost regenerative is that whatever is happening in the reality of America, where there is a murder rate worse than Lebanon's and where there is so much homelessness and poverty, still America will be a shorthand throughout the world for everything that is young and modern and free.

Movement is only as good as the sense of stillness that you can bring to it to put it into perspective.

American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams.

Most of us who have been lucky enough to hear, read and see the Dalai Lama, often come away thinking, "What a kind, inspiring and golden human being!" That is true, but I think it does him an injustice.

All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.