The world won't necessarily change but your understanding of it will, and therefore the world will change. Your attention will no longer be confined to the physical body and the physical world.

I can assure you that next to my bed, there is always a copy of the Dharmapada which I read from every night.

I first went into samadhi when I was 19. I was meditating in the mountains and had been meditating on a daily basis for several years. Suddenly there was no time or space or life or death or myself or the Universe. I was absorbed in light.

Inside you is eternity. A human being is not so simple. We're told that we're Ted or Sally or Willie or whatever and that we grow up and have experiences. That has nothing to do with what life is. You are eternity.

Why don't you like being you for a change? Just be different and don't hate yourself and feel very good about all your different desires and all the things you didn't want and want. Go get them all, and see what it's like.

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 Buddha gave his first talks, and three or four ascetics became his first disciples. They recognized his enlightenment.