The more internationalism there is in the world, the more nationalism there will always be, as people feel scared of the Other streaming into their neighbourhood and don't always know where to lay their foundations in a world on the move.

Just as there are many more Californians now to be found in the temples of Kyoto or the villages of Bali or the mountains of the Himalayas than ever before, what is also exciting is that one can just go downtown Santa Barbara and find ayurvedic medicine, Thai restaurants, and Japanese cars in abundance.

Suffering is a privilege. It moves us toward thinking of essential things and shakes us out of complacency. Calamity cracks you open, moves you to change your ways.

We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say.

From the beginning, I've stressed that home is something internal, invisible, portable, especially for those of us with roots in many physical places; we have to root ourselves in our passions, our values and our deepest friends. My home, I've always felt, lies in the songs and novels that I love, in the wife and mother that I'm never far away from, in the monastery to which I've been returning for 25 years.

Many people would say that A Tibetan monk, even in Lhasa, may be free while the ruler of China may not be free.

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