Life wears us down. We all die here. Depending upon the way you expose yourself to energies and powers and forces will determine whether you have a lot of energy or you lose energy.

The secret teaching was the bodhisattva ideal, to live for others, for the welfare of all beings. That's enlightenment, not some flashy state of luminosity.

The spirit of the West, of America, is different than the East. The cultural conditioning is very different. It seems to be harder for people to work in teams, more difficult for people here to live in harmony, in a monastery.

You can focus on Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, Ramakrishna, Lao Tsu, Yukteswar, Yogananda, Vivekananda, any of the great spiritual teachers who have lived, or on a living teacher, and draw light from them.

There is a way to reach enlightenment and get beyond suffering.

We connect the dots in the drawing with our mind. We give them a meaning, a figurative sense, which is self-reflexive in that it creates us, because we are the experiencer of the moment.

Buddhism isn't about temples, and incense, and shaved heads, and robes. It's not about church. There are aspects of Buddhism that involve that. People enjoy that, it helps them, it strengthens their practice.