And at a relatively early stage I probably realized intuitively that when it came to settling down or being part of a family or a community, I was not very well-prepared. But the compensation was that there were other things for which my background had equipped me quite well.  So, if you set me down in Rwanda tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t be culture shocked and I would probably feel no more estranged than I do in India, England or America. So I think, yeah, in that sense, my upbringing schooled me, I suppose, in expatriation and in outsidership, which is to say in writing, in a way, certainly in observation, because everywhere I was, whether it was in England or California or India, it was a foreign place to me.

Paul Theroux is very good in suggesting that there is a dishonesty in claiming we don’t have judgments. We all make very unfair judgments about the places we go...and that’s part of the process of how a dialogue begins and evolves. And I think I have one small advantage over some people, which is that when I am traveling around Asia, looking at how it took in western stuff, I am partly an Asian and partly Western, so I can claim a small acquaintance with both sides of the dialogue.

...is therefore an ideal place because I never will be a true citizen here, and will always be an outsider, however long I live here and however well I speak the language. And the society around me is as comfortable with that as I am… I am not rooted in a place, I think, so much as in certain values and affiliations and friendships that I carry everywhere I go; my home is both invisible and portable. But I would gladly stay in this physical location for the rest of my life, and there is nothing in life that I want that it doesn’t have.

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

I was, in short, a traveler at birth, for whom even a visit to the candy store was a trip through a foreign world where no one I saw quite matched my parents' inheritance, or my own... it does involve, for some of us, the chance to be transnational in a happier sense, able to adapt anywhere, used to being outsiders everywhere and forced to fashion our own rigorous sense of home. (And if nowhere is quite home, we can be optimists everywhere.)

"What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be determined experientially and experimentally.
These limits are beliefs to be transcended."

Everyone’s looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that’s something people find hard to accept. Don’t confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow.

Pity those who seek for shepherds, instead of longing for freedom! An encounter with the superior energy is open to anyone, but remains far from those who shift responsibility onto others. Our time on this Earth is sacred, and we should celebrate every moment.