Occupation: Essayist Birth: February 11, 1957
You can see exile as loss, and then it will be a loss for you. You can treat it as opportunity and then all kinds of benefits accrue..
It's impressive that a man [Dalai Lama], on the day after his Nobel Prize was announced, in October, 1989, said to me, "I really wonder if my efforts….
In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention..
A lack of affiliation may mean a lack of accountability, and forming a sense of commitment can be hard without a sense of community. Displacement can….
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 ch….
Death undoes us less, sometimes, than the hope that it will never come..
And it’s only by going nowhere - by sitting still or letting my mind relax - that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher a….
Going nowhere isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love i….
In the past, Ive visited remote places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of mysel….
I'm one of those perverse people who likes being alone. I always took myself to be a community of one. That's what I am comfortable with..
Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger..
I've also learned from [Dalai Lama] that we make the world by how we choose to look at it. In any situation you can make it constructive or dismaying….
The Australians, it seems to me, thrive on their remoteness from the world and see it as a way of keeping up a code of "No worries, mate," while pedd….
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 ….
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 ….
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 t….
To this day, at my relatively advanced age, I still don't have a place I can really call home. I've never bought property. I just move between tempor….
As Thoreau famously sead, it doesn't matter where or how far you go - the farther commonly the worse - the important thing is how alive you are. Writ….
Home is essentially a set of values you carry around with you and, like a turtle or a snail or whatever, home has to be something that is part of you….
Like the moon on the water, in a way. When you confront a Zen master, what you're really seeing are not his limitations but yours..
Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent ... and writing is, in th….