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.

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.

We travel, in essence, to become young fools again -- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

Hello Kitty will never speak.

Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.

I think Dalai Lama's efforts have been heroic.

Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice.

I sometimes think that so much of our life takes place inside our heads -- in memory or imagination or interpretation or speculation -- that if I really want to change my life, I might best begin by changing my mind.

The Dalai Lama says Western traditions can teach Tibetans a lot about social action, and he thinks some Christians are very good at that.

What if? points in both directions.

With the war in Iraq, he Dalai Lama feels that the causes of that lie maybe hundreds of years ago, and he says, What we do now may have consequences far into the future that we will never see.

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

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

The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.

Though I knew that poverty certainly didn't buy happiness, I wasn't convinced that money did, either.

Home is, in the end, not just the place where you sleep, but the place where you stand.

A holy day, after all, is a day for considering everything you otherwise think too little about.

Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

A traveler is really not someone who crosses ground so much as someone who is always hungry for the next challenge and adventure.