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"For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home."
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"Detach yourself from things. Your soul will be lighter and your mind will be free."
"One binds the worldly life with bad thoughts, one binds the worldly life with good thoughts. With the absence of thoughts (avichaar) there is moksha [liberation]."
"Let go of everything. That is how you get everything."
"Sometimes stepping away from what you desire the most, is the best action to take: because it gives the process the momentum to take its own course."
"But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing...and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, 'I am a mechanic.' At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job."
"Back turned, you don't have to look at what you've left behind. And the person who first turned their back on you can't watch you break down and cry. Never allow an enemy to see weakness in you."
"It isn't so much life's problems that challenge us but the emotional turbulence stirred up while trying to deal with them. People possessing the gift of emotional detachment are lucky in that their personal problems seem far less problematic."
"Vitarags [the enlightened one] do not have a desire for giving or receiving charity. They are in the state of 'shuddh upyog' [pure awareness of pure soul]."
"You should live in the world but remain untouched by it."
Explore more quotes by Tahir Shah
"I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand."
"A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation."
"Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom."
"Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you can't imagine life without them."
"An intelligent enemy,' he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, 'rather than a foolish friend.' Or, 'He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.' Or, the favourite of Jan Fishan Khan: 'Nothing is what it seems."
"For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure."
"The last thing we wanted was for the Machiguenga to be sad again. Sadness appeared to bring out their violence."
"There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades."
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