Pure and simple, balance is happiness.

How can you possibly be happy if you think you're a person? Because we all know, just by definition, that people are definitely not happy because they take everything too seriously. They take themselves seriously.

Picture that the waves of golden light have now become a solid river of golden light that is constantly passing through you. Picture this golden light expanding beyond your body and filling up the entire room.

In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.

Bodies come and go, ages come and go, yugas come and go, eternities come and go. Selves come and go.

We are alive for a certain period of time in any given lifetime. We are competing against time. It is a race to see if we can wake up before we go to sleep again. That is the challenge.

Buddhists understand that today and all other days have turned out the way they have because of karma. The interconnection of one moment with another moment, of one action with another action, is karma.