The Winter Solstice is the time of ending and beginning, a powerful time -- a time to contemplate your immortality. A time to forgive, to be forgiven, and to make a fresh start. A time to awaken.

Cry to god. If you do that just for a couple minutes with your whole being, just like a child who so badly wants a cookie. You will break through the barrier of the mind.

You can live in the world and have friends, family and possessions. But don't take them all too seriously. Death removes everything. Feel death is every moment, as life is every moment.

In both Surfing the Himalayas and Snowboarding to Nirvana, I have tried to transmit as best I could the spirit of humor, and the sense of humor of the monks I have encountered.

The Buddhist mindset seeks to eliminate the self. That is to say, what we want to experience is life, not self. When there's less self and more life, we're very content, and when there's more self and less life we're quite unhappy.

As the prana current, kundalini and different energies begin to move through you, you will feel yourself moving and rocking. Keep the body still, otherwise that energy will be lost as it expresses itself through the physical.

Kundalini is seen as a serpent that can shoot up the shushumna, past the chakras, opening them all and bringing you into different states of awareness.