Tibetan Quotes

A lot of the powerful religious leaders, from Jesus to Buddha to Tibetan monks, they're really talking about the same things: love and acceptable, and the value of friendship, and respecting yourself so you can respect others. ~ Jena Malone

The person who is tormenting the Tibetans feels they have to get rid of the Tibetans in order to be happy. ~ Robert Thurman

No sane person fears nothingness. ~ Robert A.F. Thurman

All the philosophical theories that exist have been created by the mistaken dualistic minds of human beings. In the realm of philosophy, that which today is considered true, may tomorrow be proved to be false. No one can guarantee a philosophy's validity. Because of this, any intellectual way of seeing whatever is always partial and relative. The fact is that there is no truth to seek or to confirm logically; rather what one needs to do is to discover just how much the mind continually limits itself in a condition of dualism.

Dualism is the real root of our suffering and of all our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. When we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political or social conviction may condition us. We have to abandon such concepts as 'enlightenment', 'the nature of the mind', and so on, until we are no longer satisfied by a merely intellectual knowledge, and until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence. ~ Namkhai Norbu

Up to now my involvement in the Tibetan freedom struggle has been part of my spiritual practice, because the issues of the survival of the Buddha Teaching and the freedom of Tibet are very much related. In this particular struggle, there is no problem with many monks and nuns, including myself, joining. ~ Dalai Lama

Tibetan Buddhism had an enormous impact on me. ~ Richard Gere

Without hope, Chöd practitioners are freed from the limits of hope and fear; having cut the ropes of grasping, definitely enlightened, where does one go? ~ Machik Labdrön

We can learn to return home to our open hearts at any moment. ~ Loch Kelly

It just seemed like Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism - because that's mainly what I've been exposed to - was a real solid organization of teachings to point someone in the right direction. Some real well thought out stuff. But I don't know, like, every last detail about Buddhism. ~ Adam Yauch

The Peace Panda Says:Sorry China,You May Take Tibetan Lives ... But You Will Never Take Away Tibet's Spirit!
One Day ... TIBET Will Be FREE! ~ Timothy Pina

I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana. ~ Joni Mitchell

By mental cultivation I mean a disciplined application of mind that involves deepening our familiarity with a chosen object or theme. Here I am thinking of the Sanskrit term bhavana, which connotes "cultivation," and whose Tibetan equivalent, gom, has the connotation of "familiarization." These two terms, often translated into English as meditation, refer to a whole range of mental practices and not just, as many suppose, to simple methods of relaxation. The original terms imply a process of cultivating familiarity with something, whether it is a habit, a way of seeing, or a way of being. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Our ancient sources of wisdom call on human beings to rise to their highest capacity and behave in extraordinarily open and generous ways to one another, under difficult circumstances to transcend differences and create understanding across all barriers of convention and fear. This wisdom is fragile as our environment is fragile, threatened by an overwhelming material culture. I believe in a spiritual ecology. In today's world, Judaism and Tibetan Buddhism and other wisdom traditions are endangered species. ~ Rodger Kamenetz

Rest as the awareness that is aware without using thought. ~ Loch Kelly

Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists. ~ Robert Wright

What makes a difference is when we take our mind and put it into the scriptures, when we read the Buddhist Canon, the Pali Canon, when we read the Tibetan books, when we read anything inspiring - somebody else's journey into the world of enlightenment. ~ Frederick Lenz

Peace in the world depends on peace in the hearts of individuals; this depends on each of us practising ethics by disciplining our negative thoughts and emotions, and developing basic spiritual qualities. ~ Dalai Lama

I teach Zen, tantric mysticism, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, Tibetan mysticism, occultism and psychic development. I also teach poetry and literature, film and many other different things. ~ Frederick Lenz

As we love truly and deeply, we see the white light of truth in them. Seeing this reminds us that the same light exists within us too - As the Tibetans say: "Recognition is liberation." ~ Frederick Lenz

You do not need to fabricate at all. Once you utterly let be, involvement in thoughts of past, present and future subside. By letting be, you are no longer involved in the thoughts of the three times. When utterly letting be, wakefulness is vividly present. ~ Tulku Urgyen

I have been clear in my position for quite a while, but the Chinese have not responded. Therefore, we are now in the process of holding a referendum on our policy among all the Tibetan community in exile and even inside Tibet, to check whether the majority thinks we are on the right track. ~ Dalai Lama

If you want to do your best for future generations of humanity, for your friends and family, you must begin by taking good care of yourself. ~ Tarthang Tulku

Anyen Rinpoche is a compassionate embodiment of wisdom. The skillful teachings in The Tibetan Yoga of Breath will be a source of peace and happiness for many in these troubled times, for which I am very grateful. ~ Garchen Rinpoche

I think many people knows what I am thinking. The whole world knows I am not seeking independence, therefore is many Tibetan disappointed, and also some of our supporters - many Indians, many Europeans, many Americans are also disappointed because I am not seeking independence. ~ Dalai Lama

Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves," said a Tibetan sage six hundred years ago, and the book where I found this edict followed it with an explanation of the word "track" in Tibetan: shul, "a mark that remains after that which made it has passed by - a footprint for example. In other contexts, shul is used to describe the scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the channel worn through rock where a river runs in flood, the indentation in the grass where an animal slept last night. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I think that's what's great about being an actress is you get to learn so many different things like that, like learning a little bit of Tibetan here, learning a Southern accent there. ~ Jaime King

You can feel as brave as Columbus starting for the unknown the first time you enter a Chinese lane full of boys laughing at you, or when you risk climbing down in a Tibetan pub for a meal of rotten meat. ~ Ella Maillart

Dreams are a reservoir of knowledge and experience yet they are often overlooked as a vehicle for exploring reality. In the dream state our bodies are at rest, yet we see and hear, move about and are even able to learn. When we make good use of the dream state it is almost as if our lives were doubled: instead of a hundred years we live to be two hundred
Tibetan Buddhist Tarthang Tulku from ~ Stephen LaBerge

I re-traced your footsteps to that miserable little Tibetan monastery. It was hard to get the monks to talk, what with that vow of silence and all – and how do you threaten someone who regards death as a promotion? ~ Anne Flanagan

Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Just calling one's practice "approach and accomplishment" and staying in retreat for years will produce nothing but hardship. Completing hundreds of millions of mantras will not even bring the warmth of the ordinary qualities that mark one's progress on the path! In other words, if the essential points of the path are not taken into account, perseverance will amount to nothing more than chasing a mirage. ~ Patrul Rinpoche

It is important to direct our intelligence with good intentions. Without intelligence, we cannot accomplish very much. Without good intentions, the way we exercise of our intelligence may have destructive results. ~ Dalai Lama

The Himalayan Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau have been among the most affected by global warming. The Himalayas ... provide more than half of the drinking water for 40% of the world's population ... Within the next half-century, that 40% of the world's people may well face a very serious drinking water shortage, unless the world acts boldly and quickly to mitigate global warming. ~ Al Gore

As long as I am alive, I am fully committed to amity between Tibetans and Chinese. Otherwise there's no use. ~ Dalai Lama

Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength. ~ Dalai Lama

Here are pictures of the sources for Daoist mijue "master to disciple" oral teachings, as shown in the manuals used by Daoist masters themselves. The manuals are insufficient for the casual reader to use, the oral koujue explanations given on a personal one-to-one basis are essential. After seeing how Daoists from Longhu Shan,as well as foreign ("american") Dao for $$$ have falsified their use, I am reluctant to share them in full, until a true Qingwei or Zhengyi Grade five and above master ask to see them. The Qingwei (5 thunder-vajra") Daoist seen performing the purification mudra in image #5 below (a mudra shared by Daoists, Tendai Tantric Buddhists in Japan, and Tibetan masters) said when he had seen the manuals shown in pictures 1-4. "Where is the other half of the Thunder-Vajra manual?" Then I knew that it was OK to give it to him! He gave me his address in Jiangxi province; I intend to bring the mijue manual to him on my next trip to China, as Master Zhuang asked me to do, (before his death in 1976, an order given to his maternal great grandfather by the 61st Longhu Shan master, in 1868)!
[Saso facebook post, May 7 2015] ~ Michael Saso

When I speak about love and compassion, I do so not as a Buddhist, nor as a Tibetan, nor as the Dalai Lama. I do so as one human being speaking with another. I hope that you at this moment will think of yourself as a human being rather than as an American, Asian, European, African, or member of any particular country. These loyalties are secondary. If you and I find common ground as human beings, we will communicate on a basic level. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Tibetan Buddhists say that a person should never get rid of their negative energy, that negative energy transformed is the energy of enlightenment, and that the only difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle. If we stop struggling and open up and accept what is, that neurotic energy naturally arises as wisdom, naturally informs us and becomes our teacher. ~ Natalie Goldberg

When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore; he belongs to the world. ~ Richard Gere

St. Benedict said to take care of your mind, body and soul. I swim for an hour every morning, do 15 minutes of Tibetan stretching and breathing exercises, and play soccer with friends four or more nights a week. ~ Brunello Cucinelli

Prostration: placing the body in reverence, to submit, to surrender. In many faiths it is used to relinquish the ego. In Tibetan tantric Buddhism they do one hundred thousand prostrations to overcome pride. In Islam, prostration has been known to overcome many diseases. ~ Eve Ensler

We just have to remind ourselves that the source of any happiness is mind itself. ~ Ole Nydahl

Philosophically speaking, from the Buddhist point of view, both human beings and animals possess what in Tibetan is called shepa, which can be roughly translated as "consciousness," albeit to different degrees of complexity. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

In twenty years' time I'll be eighty-three, just an old man with a stick moving like a sloth bear. While I'm alive, I am fully committed to autonomy, and I am the person who can persuade the Tibetan people to accept it. ~ Dalai Lama

A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe. ~ Fritjof Capra

The humble person has nothing to lose and nothing to gain. If she is praised, she feels that it is humility, and not herself, that is being praised. If she is criticized, she feels that bringing her faults to light is a great favor. "Few people are wise enough to prefer useful criticism to treacherous praise," wrote La Rochefoucauld, echoing the Tibetan sages who are pleased to recall that "the best teaching is that which unmasks our hidden faults." Free of hope and fear alike, the humble person remains lighthearted. ~ Matthieu Ricard

Dear David, Are you a Tibetan monk yet? I used to hate you because you didn't love me so much you would give up your whole life for me. I expect this of every man. In retrospect, I realize that I was also selfish: I should have stopped making demands that you not be the closet female-hating sadist you are. ~ Kathy Acker

Tibetans look at a person who holds himself above others, believing he is better than others and knows more, and they say that person is like someone sitting on a mountain top: it is cold there, it is hard, and nothing will grow. But if the person puts himself in a lower position, then that person is like a fertile field. ~ B. Alan Wallace

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console. ~ Dalai Lama

O Nobly Born, now there is born in you exceeding compassion for all those living creatures who have forgotten their true nature. - Mahamudra text of Tibetan yogi Longchenpa ~ Jack Kornfield

In Tibetan, we say people who have good windhorse have the sense they can accomplish what they want to do. ~ Sakyong Mipham

One of the best characteristics of the Tibetan people is their complete tolerance of other creeds. Their monastic theocracy has never sought the conversion of infidels. ~ Heinrich Harrer

Tibetans must take full authority and responsibility for developing industry, looking from all different perspectives, taking care of the environment, conserving resources for long-term economic health, and safeguarding the interests of Tibetan workers, nomads, and farmers. ~ Dalai Lama

It is as if I have entered what the Tibetans call the Bardo-literally, between-two-existences- a dreamlike hallucination that precedes reincarnation, not necessarily in human form ... In case I should need them, instructions for passage through the Bardo are contained in the Tibetan book of the dead- a guide for the living since it teaches that a man's last thoughts will determine the quality of his reincarnation. ~ Peter Matthiessen

My aim is to create a happy society with genuine friendship. Friendship between Tibetan and Chinese peoples is very essential. ~ Dalai Lama

It's much easier for me to say that, the kind of music I didn't listen to was pretty much that. I mean everything, from jazz to classical to popular. And Tibetan horns were a great part of it in 1966, '67. ~ David Bowie

Bhagavan - in Tibetan, "One who has destroyed the four Maras,"2 which are death, distraction, pride, and the emotional obscurations. The ~ Dalai Lama XIV

There's a Tibetan saying: 'Wherever you have friends that's your country, and wherever you receive love, that's your home.'" There ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Tibetan thangka paintings and derive strength from their beauty. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

Peace is not just the mere absence of violence or disturbance. It's when there is a possibility of conflict, but you deliberately avoid violence and adopt methods to solve the problem through peaceful means. That is real peace. ~ Dalai Lama

One of the happier ironies of recent history is that even as Tibet is being wiped off the map in Tibet itself, here it is in California, in Switzerland, in Japan. All over the world, Tibetan Buddhism is now part of the neighborhood. In 1968, there were two Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West. By 2000, there were 40 in New York alone. ~ Pico Iyer

It is important to have determination and optimism and patience. If you lack patience, even when you face some small obstacle, you lose courage. There is a Tibetan saying, "Even if you have failed at something nine times, you have still given it effort nine times." I think that's important. Use your brain to analyze the situation. Do not rush through it, but think. Once you decide what to do about that obstacle, then there's a possibility that you will achieve your goal. ~ Dalai Lama

Enlightenment occurs when your mind merges with nirvana, with what Tibetans call the Dharmakaya, the clear light of reality, which is the highest plane of transcendental wisdom and perfect understanding. ~ Frederick Lenz

I have lived my life defined as a refugee in Nepal and India, a resident alien and immigrant in the United States. At last, I am a Tibetan in Tibet, a Khampa in Kham, albeit as a tourist in my occupied and tethered country. ~ Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

The Sanskrit word samsara - which traditionally represents the summation of all our confusion and destructive patterns of behavior - literally means "wandering around." The Tibetan word for a sentient being caught up in confusion - drowa - could be translated as "always on the go." I like to think of this word as meaning "commuter. ~ Ethan Nichtern

Drawing from the costumed and goth-infused death metal found in the icy Netherlands, doom metal down-tuned all the guitars, drew inspiration from the drones of Tibetan monks and Hindu ragas, and created a new mythology of metal, one that embraced decay and darkness as an essential part of the human condition. ~ Peter Bebergal

Im a Tibetan monk, not a vegetarian, ~ Dalai Lama

Because my main concern is the Tibetan Buddhist culture, not just political independence, I cannot seek self-rule for central Tibet and exclude the 4 million Tibetans in our two eastern provinces of Amdo and Kham. ~ Dalai Lama

China can keep her troops on the external frontiers of Tibet, and Tibetans will pledge to accept the appropriate form of union with China. ~ Dalai Lama

There is no miserable place waiting for you, no hell realm, sitting and waiting like Alaska - waiting to turn you into ice cream. But whatever you call it - hell or the suffering realms - it is something that you enter by creating a world of neurotic fantasy and believing it to be real. It sounds simple, but that's exactly what happens. ~ Lama Thubten Yeshe

In comparison, Mount Everest, though 29,029 feet above sea level, rests on the 17,000-foot-high Tibetan plateau and rises just 12,000 feet from base to summit. A similar plateau boosts the Andes; without those geological booster seats, those peaks all would lie in Denali's shadow. ~ Andy Hall

Imagine God inside your computer, your phone, everyone else's computer. Imagine someone who almost is the Black Corporation, with all its power and riches and reach. And who, despite all this, seems pretty sane and beneficent by the standards of most gods. Oh, and who sometimes swears in Tibetan ... ~ Stephen Baxter

(1) When a situation has become too frustrating, a quandary too persistently insolvable; when dealing with the issue is generating chronic discontent, infringing on freedom, and inhibiting growth, it may be time to quit beating one's head against the wall, reach for a big fat stick of metaphoric dynamite, light the fuse, and blast the whole unhappy business nine miles past oblivion. (2) After making an extreme effort, after pulling out all the stops, one is still unable to score Tibetan peach pie, take it as a signal to relax, grin, pick up a fork, and go for a slice of the apple. ~ Tom Robbins

The times when you are suffering can be those when you are most open, and where you are extremely vulnerable can be where you greatest strength really lies.
Say to yourself: 'I am not going to run away from this suffering. I want to use it in the best and richest way I can, so that I can become more compassionate and more helpful to others.'
Suffering, after all, can teach us about compassion. If you suffer you will know how it is when others suffer. And if you are in a position to help others, it is through your suffering that you will find the understanding and compassion to do so. ~ Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying

Death and dying provide a meeting-point between the Tibetan Buddhist and modern scientific traditions. I believe both have a great deal to contribute to each other on the level of understanding and of practical benefit. ~ Dalai Lama

They asked a wise man: Why don't we ever hear you backbiting and slandering?

He said: I'm still not happy with myself to start with others. ~ Ahmad Musa Jibril

In 1995, the Chinese government picked a 6-year-old child to succeed the Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism. ~ Barbara Demick

Now he's far away, floating in the clouds, playing Scrabble with the Dalai Lama, but wouldn't you know it, all the tiles are in Tibetan. ~ Neal Shusterman

But beyond the mind, beyond our thoughts, there is something we call the 'nature of the mind', the mind's true condition, which is beyond all limits. If it is beyond the mind, though, how can we approach an understanding of it?
Let's take the example of a mirror. When we look into a mirror we see in it the reflected images of any objects that are in front of it; we don't see the nature of the mirror. But what do we mean by this 'nature of the mirror'? We mean its capacity to reflect, definable as its clarity, its purity, and its limpidity, which are indispensable conditions for the manifestation of reflections. This 'nature of the mirror' is not something visible, and the only way we can conceive of it is through the images reflected in the mirror. In the same way, we only know and have concrete experience of that which is relative to our condition of body, voice, and mind. But this itself is the way to understand their true nature. ~ Namkhai Norbu

If, on the other hand, I relate to others from the perspective of myself as someone different - a Buddhist, a Tibetan, and so on - I will then create walls to keep me apart from others. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Are, however, the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the US: the absence of resentment and envy, deep indifference towards the non-believer's way of life. ~ Slavoj Zizek

I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

No single Tibetan dreaming return of previous sort of backwardness, therefore as far as economy development is concerned, Tibet remain within the People's Republic of China, we will get greater benefit. ~ Dalai Lama

[A]ccording to Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition, a being that achieves Buddhahood, although freed from Samsara,the 'wheel of suffering', as the phenomenon of existence is known, will continue to return to work for the benefit of all other sentient beings until such time as each one is similarly liberated. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

[A Tibetan Legend]

"There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian powers have arisen. Although they waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable devastation and technologies that lay waste the world. It is now, when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.

"You cannot go there, for it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. But you cannot recognize a Shambhala warrior by sight, for there is no uniform or insignia, there are no banners. And there are no barricades from which to threaten the enemy, for the Shambhala warriors have no land of their own. Always they move on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.

"Now comes the time when great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors, moral and physical courage. For they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power and dismantle the weapons. To remove these weapons, in every sense of the word, they must go into the corridors of power where the decisions are made.

"The Shambhala warriors know they can do this because the weapons are manomaya, mind-made. This is very important to remember, Joanna. These weapons are made by the human mind. So they can be unmade by the human mind! The Shambhala warriors know that the dangers that threaten life on Earth do not come from evil deities or extraterrestrial ~ Joanna Macy

At home I have a Tibetan terrier. I'm still not sure if he's a genius or very thick. It's a fine line. ~ Hugh Bonneville

If your unicorn shifts disconcertingly between a goat, a horse, a rhinoceros, a marine mammal from the North Atlantic, assorted Tibetan ungulates and a six-eyed ass whose ears will terrify, the work of this book is almost done. ~ Chris Lavers

The Himalayas are the crowning achievement of the Indo-Australian plate. India in the Oligocene crashed head on into Tibet, hit so hard that it not only folded and buckled the plate boundaries but also plowed into the newly created Tibetan plateau and drove the Himalayas five and a half miles into the sky. The mountains are in some trouble. India has not stopped pushing them, and they are still going up. Their height and volume are already so great they are beginning to melt in their own self-generated radioactive heat. When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in a warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as 20,000 feet below the sea floor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth.

If by some fiat, I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence; this is the one I would choose: the summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone. ~ John McPhee

As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love. ~ Frederick Lenz

A Tibetan Lama said to me, "The best place to stand, Ram Dass, is halfway between hope and hopelessness." So I can write a scenario for the 21st century in either direction. One is that it all goes to hell and that it's truly the dark age. ~ Ram Dass

In Tibetan, authentic presence is wangthang, which literally means, 'field of power' ... The cause or the virtue that brings about authentic presence is emptying out and letting go. You have to be without clinging. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips – biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They get the munchies.) ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Hundreds of political prisoners still suffer in Tibetan prisons. Freedom of speech is not allowed in any sense. It is illegal to possess a photo of the Dalai Lama. ~ Joanna Lumley

The world-traveler must, on the one hand, be ready (and actually seek) to visit a tribe in the Solomon Islands or stay with Tibetan nomads; on the other hand, he has to be prepared, when it is required, to wear his suit to attend a classical music concert in a big metropolis. Just as an important part of exploring Brazil is to visit its shantytowns, it is an indispensable part of understanding the French culture to eat at a gourmet restaurant in Paris. ~ Nicos Hadjicostis

William Butler Yeats's "Second Coming" seems perfectly to render our present predicament: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." This is an excellent description of the current split between anaemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. "The best" are no longer able to fully engage, while "the worst" engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism.
However, are the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the U.S.: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers' way of life. If today's so-called fundamentalists really believe they have their way to truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns him. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist's search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful Other, they are fighting their own temptation. These so-called Christian or Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalists.
It is here that Yeats's diagnosis falls short ~ Slavoj Zizek

There is an uncommonly harsh beauty to the Tibetan landscape. Its nakedness makes it seem incapable of deception, but under its calm deportment it conceals winds so brutal that yaks are known to die while their jaws are in masticating bliss. On hot summer days the sun licks up the rain within minutes. No puddles are formed; no moisture lingers in the air. It is only the droplets on tiny leaves of the baby turnip plant that betray rain. ~ Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

The Chinese had accused the Tibetans of being terrorists, which is weird. A Tibetan terrorist is like an Amish hacker. It just doesn't fit. ~ Robin Williams

Among the Tibetans, one wife has many husbands, because men are too poor to support a whole wife. ~ Bertrand Russell

People think of animals as if they were vegetables, and that is not right. We have to change the way people think about animals. I encourage the Tibetan people and all people to move toward a vegetarian diet that doesn't cause suffering. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes and what not, are some of my happiest memories today. You know, one day, during one of those trips, I sold all my well-thumbed copies of 'Inside Outside' to the Tibetan guy who ran the old book store on Netaji Road for seventy rupees, six Tintins and a disarming smile. And all of a sudden, that moment, standing at the corner of Netaji road, I found out who I was.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') ~ Kunal Sen