Many practitioners think there is some giant balance scale, where someone is keeping track, like Santa Claus, and that will determine your allotment of presents. That's a very exoteric understanding of reincarnation.

You might say living in a monastery cuts down the commutation time. That alone gives you a couple extra hours a day to meditate. In a monastery you lead a relatively simply life. You don't need a lot of possessions.

This is just one little lifetime in a succession of lifetimes.

If you think that material success will bring you happiness, relationships, people, places, things, fame, fortune, you definitely should not practice tantra.

The mind must be made calm and still. Then it is aimed at the sky, at the brightness, at that infinitude of being that stretches out endlessly in every direction forever.

The immortal silence is there always waiting for you and that spirit is deathless and courageous. Remember, many have trod the path that you are walking on and they succeeded. They were no better than you, no wiser.

It is the Buddhist belief that all things, experiences and people are inherently empty. That is a simple way of saying that all physical and nonphysical things have another side.