If I ever write an autobiography about teaching meditation in the West, I'll call it "Pissing In the Wind - Teaching Buddhism in America".

The challenge of power is how to use it and not abuse it. When you abuse it, it reverses on you and it hurts you.

Sometimes in life, we have to go backward a certain distance in order to go forwards. If we have conflicts within ourselves that we have not resolved, then we will find ourselves living inside of these conflicts, not in the realms of light.

I would suggest to you that at this moment you are the only self that you have ever had; you've never had a childhood; there wasn't a five-minute-ago time.

You cannot compel someone to love. Love is like the wind. It comes when it does, it stops when it does, it changes direction when it does. Who are you and I to criticize the wind?

Occupy yourself with what's in your life now. Address those situations and subjects as fully as possible with your best efforts. That is what produces happiness and clarity and knowledge and power.

You're not capable of stepping into nirvana at this time. If you did it would be disastrous. You're tonal would be swamped.