Its no coincidence that the word holiday suggests a holy day, or that the longest book in the Torah concerns the Sabbath. If you wish to advance in any sphere, the best way is to take a retreat.

Travel is an act of humility

For more and more of us, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul.

Unlike many spiritual leaders, Dalai Lama is never been in a position to just sit on a mountain top handing out wisdom. He's had to live out his principles in the middle of this very complex situation, every day for sixty years or more. I think it's something that moves many people about his example.

I am simply a fairly typical product of a movable sensibility, living and working in a world that is itself increasingly small and increasingly mongrel. I am a multinational soul on a multinational globe on which more and more countries are as polyglot and restless as airports. Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone or going to school. I fold up my self and carry it around as if it were an overnight bag.

The more we run from a problem, the more we're actually running into it.

The Dalai Lama acknowledges that he's met Westerners who to some extent are clearly Easterners at heart, and he would never want them not to become Buddhists just because they happened to be born in California.