Reincarnation is the dissolution of the self. It's like going swimming in the ocean, no one ever comes out, because one has become the ocean.

I feel that there's a certain danger in always being in a lovely rural setting. You can lose touch.

Simply by performing good actions and thinking good thoughts you will not attain enlightenment. It takes something more.

I have been sought out by a number of people who would have felt uncomfortable coming to a large public meditation. They don't want people to come up and ask for autographs.

We sit here on the oasis of human consciousness and the verbal plane trying to talk about something that we just have to go and see and do and feel.

People in the West sometimes have these marvelous visions of India and Tibet. They assume that there are all these sadhus walking around and everybody is breathing enlightenment. Forget it. Don't look at it through rose-colored glasses.

The outer form of Buddhism, of practice, is etiquette - a series of ways to live intelligently that keep you alive, awake and happy, wakeful.