His holiness, theDalai Lama urged victims of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks and Hurricane Katrina to turn their tragedies into something that makes them stronger.

'Your sadness, your anger will not solve the problem,' the 70-year old monk said. 'More sadness, more frustration only brings more suffering for yourself.'"

His holiness spoke in idaho last week, at an event arranged by financial consultant Kiril Sokoloff, a Buddhist.

The Dalai Lama's favorite prayer:

For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world.

--from writings of the renowned eighth century Buddhist saint Shantideva

Writing | J-Log Journalism Blog: "The art and craft of writing - from objective newspaper pieces to literary stabs at capturing life, not quite a novel, not quite a feature. The written word in general."

Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life:

... The train moved. You know how trains begin to move, with a tug, as though trying to convince themselves they can do it.

I was wiping my aunt's lipstick from my cheek and looking out. When the train moved, Moysha moved with it, dragging his right foot. Another pull of the train, another tug of the foot. They were marching West, Moysha and the train.

I looked out the window, watching the dachas take the place of the nine-story buildings, the fields take the place of the dachas, and the woods take the place of the fields.

Have you read any emigre writers, the old aristocrats who went to Paris, then returned, because they couldn't live away from the birch trees?

That had to be a pile of garbage, even if birch trees were so great. I would survive without them. I wouldn't give them another thought. Let them disappear behind the window, let them fall away. Let them be gone, replaced by America:

America. The Empire State Building was built in 1931 and stands 102 stories high; Americans drive cars that are bigger than a Mercedes-Benz. One American car, a Country Squire, can transport eight passengers at 180 kilometers per hour, which is fast enough to get from Washington to New York in one hour and from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two or three. The Country Squire's sides look like wood, but are actually painted metal.

Americans make sandwiches with thin slices of bread, a thick layer of butter (as thick as the bread), and more cheese and sausage than you put on ten sandwiches here. Sometimes, instead of sausage, they use roasted beef, which is meat that has been cooked half as long as it should have been, and still has blood in it.

Americans live outside big cities, in settlements of small cottages. Inside those cottages everything is simple, modern and tasteful. Some people even make their own furniture. All American couches fold out as beds. And there are shelves on all the walls, so space doesn't get wasted.

Outside those modest cottages, Americans keep their cars. It's easier for an American to buy a car than for us to buy a refrigerator.

In America, you can work washing dishes in a restaurant, and people still respect you as though you were a millionaire, because in America all work is honorable...

I came across an excerpt from See What Happens in America
by Paul Goldberg and found it fascinating. I was looking for the source of the statement "All work is honorable." Was it Marx?