If you ever come to one of my seminars, you will notice I have volunteer workers. When I work with individuals like that, I expect a level of excellence displayed. Everything has to be done perfectly.

It is not bad living in a monastery. I've done it many times in many lives. But I think you can do a better job outside the monastery, if you have the necessary component parts.

It's an adversarial world outside of the safety of nirvana and enlightenment. In life, all beings need to feed on other beings just in order to exist. Some beings also like to cause others to needlessly suffer, just out of pure maliciousness

Real winning and losing all takes place at the meditation table. This is where the battles are. Winning is stopping thought. Losing is sitting there and being subjected to all kinds of ridiculous thoughts

We are all incarnate Buddhas. We just have not realized it deeply. We have not moved the mind - what our friend Don Juan calls the assemblage point.

You can stay in the safe, secure oblivion and pain of ignorance, not knowing, and just die. You'll just die, like everyone else, and shuffle into another incarnation that won't be very different.

Only the enlightened are consistently happy. Their happiness is not predicated upon the events and experiences that take place in this world. Instead it is based on the boundless inner energy they gain from their connection with the world of enlightenment.