The Less Conscious One Is Of Being

[the Dalai Lama] Told Me Some Years Ago, "i've Made Every Concession To China, And I've Been As Open And Tolerant As I Could, And Still Things Get Worse In Tibet." If You Look At It From One Point Of View, As He Himself Says, His Monastic Position Of Forbearance And Nonviolence Hasn't Reaped Any Benefits. And Yet, He's Thinking In Terms Of The Long Term, Of Centuries.

In Our Appetite For Gossip, We Tend To Gobble Down Everything Before Us, Only To Find, Too Late, That It Is Our Ideals We Have Consumed, And We Have Not Been Enlarged By The Feasts But Only Diminished.

So It Is That Lonely Places Attract As Many Lonely People As They Produce, And The Loneliness We See In Them Is Partly In Ourselves.

It's Impressive That A Man [dalai Lama], On The Day After His Nobel Prize Was Announced, In October, 1989, Said To Me, "i Really Wonder If My Efforts Are Enough?" Most Of Us, If We Just Won The Nobel Prize, Would Think This Is Vindication, Or At Last There's A Chance For Tibet. He's The Rare Person Who Thinks, As A Buddha Would, "i Don't Know If I've Done Enough, I Don't Know If I Will Do Enough."

None Of The Things In Life - Like Love Or Faith - Was Arrived At By Thinking; Indeed, One Could Almost Define The Things That Mattered As The Ones That Came As Suddenly As Thunder.