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Quote by Pankaj Mishra

“The Buddha would not have liked people to call themselves Buddhist. To him that would have been a fundamental error because there are no fixed identities. He would have thought that someone calling himself a Buddhist has too much invested in calling himself a Buddhist.”

Quote by Pankaj Mishra

Author

Pankaj Mishra is an Indian-born British essayist and historian, recognized for his insightful and critical essays on history, politics, and culture. Born in 1969, he has gained attention for his exploration of the complexities of modernity and its effects on the world. more

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“I meditate at airports because those are the places where I’m extremely tense, and I often meditate while I’m walking down the street. I have a thought and become aware of that thought and thereby create another level of awareness.”

Levels Streets Awareness Walking Airports Tense

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“The whole idea of mindfulness is all about having a second-level monitoring of your thoughts and being able to recognize them as being negative or harmful before they become a part of your being, before they become some kind of action like writing an angry letter to someone or speaking too strongly to someone.”

Writing Kind Ideas Whole Able Action Levels Mindfulness Negative Letters Angry Monitoring

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“I don't think of myself as particularly earnest. I have long bouts of cynicism and skepticism. So much of my early life was full of uncertainties. It still is. My "Buddha book" expresses that. Perhaps that's what created this impression of earnestness.”

Thinking Long Stills Book Impression Uncertainty Cynicism Skepticism Earnest Earnestness Early Life

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“The ’60s was the last time when large groups of people in the West searched for alternative modes of being. In a society like India’s, which is still not fully modern or totally organized, and has a great deal of tolerance for otherness in general, they find the cultural license to try other things, to be whatever they want to be.”

People Want Trying Lasts Deals Groups Modern India West Tolerance Alternatives Organized Last Time License Otherness Large Groups

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“I suppose I've become less judgmental about individuals leading lives according to false ideas and false consciousness, because sometimes entire societies are prey to false ideologies and national delusions.”

Ideas Sometimes Individual Consciousness Ideology Delusion Prey Judgmental

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“I've never really felt that being part of a literary community is all that important. It can be extremely detrimental to a writer. It can damage successful writers by giving them an exalted sense of what they've done, and it can crush less successful writers by infecting them with envy and malice at an early stage in their careers.”

Giving Important Done Felt Community Careers Successful Stage Envy Damage Crush Malice Exalted Detrimental

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“I wrote for many years without showing my writing to anyone, because I was constantly comparing it to what I was reading. You have to compare yourself to the best and feel totally inadequate.”

Feels Writing Years Reading Compare Inadequate

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“The people who encouraged me weren't necessarily writers or readers themselves. They were people who were just pleased to see me devote my life to reading and writing.”

People Writing Reading Reader Reading And Writing

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“There is a lot of anxiety in India about writers selling out to foreign audiences, but I’m neither flattering the Indian audience nor the American audience. I’m uneasily somewhere in the middle.”

Audience Middle Anxiety India Selling Indian Flattering Selling Out

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“The internet has created a transnational audience. If you publish something in the New York Times, it's read all over the world. Who knows how big this audience is or how long it will last.”

Ifs Knows World Long Bigs Lasts Audience Know How New York Internet Publish New York Times

Author:Pankaj Mishra