The Dalai Lama Says Don't

I Loved The Quiet Places In Kyoto, The Places That Held The World Within A Windless Moment. Inside The Temples, Nature Held Her Breath. All Longing Was Put To Sleep In The Stillness, And All Was Distilled Into A Clean Simplicity. The Smell Of Woodsmoke, The Drift Of Incense; A Procession Of Monks In Black-and-gold Robes, One Of Them Giggling In A Voice Yet Unbroken; A Touch Of Autumn In The Air, A Sense Of Gathering Rain.

I Remember Many Years Ago, I Asked [dalai Lama] About Exile And He Said: "well, Exile Is Good Because It's Brought Me And My People Closer To Reality," And Reality Is Almost A Shrine Before Which He Sits. Exile Brings Us Up Against The Wall And Forces Us To Rise To The Challenge Of The Moment.

Death Undoes Us Less, Sometimes, Than The Hope That It Will Never Come.

When I Was Two Years Old, I Heard About His [dalai Lama] Flight From Tibet. Being Very Little, I Said, "oh, Good Tibetans, Bad Chinese." Those Were The Black-and-white Ways That I Thought.

Nothing Makes Me Feel Better - Calmer, Clearer And Happier - Than Being In One Place, Absorbed In A Book, A Conversation, A Piece Of Music. It's Actually Something Deeper Than Mere Happiness: It's Joy, Which The Monk David Steindl-rast Describes As 'that Kind Of Happiness That Doesn't Depend On What Happens.