I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives.

As people alive today, we must consider future generations: a clean environment is a human right like any other. It is therefore part of our responsibility toward others to ensure that the world we pass on is as healthy, if not healthier, than we found it.

I think, that in the twenty-second century, there will be more female reincarnations at female institutions. Then there'll be competition between male lama institutions and female lama institutions. It'll be a positive sort of competition.

My message is always the same: to cultivate and practice love, kindness, compassion and tolerance.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

We need to employ a secular approach to ethics, secular in the Indian sense of respecting all religious traditions and even the views of non-believers in an unbiased way. Secular ethics rooted in scientific findings, common experience and common sense can easily be introduced into the secular education system. If we can do that there is a real prospect of making this 21st century an era of peace and compassion.

Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to the elevation of your spiritual practice, provided you are able to transform calamity and misfortune into the path.