I'm a boys' girl! I come from an army background and I haven't known what being a 'good Indian girl' means.
Dalai Lama is taking a subtle and nuanced view of politics and he is thinking in terms of events well beyond our lifetime.
And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.
Literally, when you wake up at 9 o'clock in the morning in Havana you don't know where you'll be at noon. But it's a safe guess that you'll either be married, arrested, or in the midst of some incredible transaction where somebody is stealing your passport or paying you in Dominican pesos for it, or whatever. It's a wild place.
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
I think that America is an ideal place for the privileged homeless, who are used to different cultures. It's easiest and most accommodating because it is a country of exiles and immigrants and newcomers. There are no walls, in that sense. There is always the sense that traditions are being made as we speak. So you can slot yourself in. If you are living at a distance in society, this is one of the most congenial societies to live in.
In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.
Communism destroyed so many generations. I look at my grandparents and their generation, and it's as if their lives were taken from them. It's really sad and frightening that something like that could have happened. But I don't really think of myself as Russian anymore. I didn't even live there for that long.
Talk what you will of the Jews,--that they are cursed: they thrive wherever they come; they are able to oblige the prince of their country by lending him money; none of them beg; they keep together; and as for their being hated, why, Christians hate one another as much.
A mouse has the precision that your finger can't approach.
And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.