I didn't defraud the government by taking money that was not mine.
Like the moon on the water, in a way. When you confront a Zen master, what you're really seeing are not his limitations but yours.
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.
Faces are the most interesting things we see; other people fascinate me, and the most interesting aspect of other people - the point where we go inside them - is the face. It tells all.
One could say the higher the spirit goes, the more deeply the soul sinks down into the waters of melancholy and tragedy. Drowning in that water is as sweet as rising.
If you want to create wealth, it is imperative that you believe that you are at the steering wheel of life, especially your financial life.
To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people.