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

You can't teach someone to be enlightened. It's something you have to go and do. You can't teach someone to meditate well. It's something you have to go and do.

Just because it doesn't work out for you, doesn't mean that it's not wonderful for someone else.

The tantras can be very confusing for a person who is new to Buddhism, and for several thousand years the rule was not to expose a person or a new monk to the tantras until they had practiced for many, many years.

Nature soothes us. Nature heals us, and something more, the woods are a place of power. Any woods that are still surviving on this planet, those are powerful areas to have kept themselves free from the encroachment of the industrial societies of our earth.

You don't have to do anything to be happy, nor do you have to avoid anything. Happiness comes from within your mind. Happiness already exists.

You should always feel, no matter how many times you've meditated before, that this is your first meditation. You have no idea what will happen or what won't happen.