I meditated on my own for some time, read spiritual books, became a vegetarian and had incredible experiences every day, every meditation, where I was just thrown into the infinite - never realizing that other people didn't necessarily have those experiences in meditation that quickly.

We live in a world filled with automobiles, highways of the mind, urban disasters, billions of people living on a tiny planet, sharing the diminishing natural resources of the earth.

Some people meditate because they are sick and tired of their life, of the world, of the way people abuse each other and abrogate each other's freedoms.

When you can successfully stop thought for longer periods of time, you do move into other worlds. This can also happen in the very beginning, if a person meditates with someone who is very advanced.

As Buddhist monks, our task is to bring ourselves resolutely more and more into light, to forgive and forget, to forget those who create problems for us because to remember them is only to keep problems is mind.

Your mind is your life. It's your essence and your substance. It's the part of you that has always been and will always be. Its formations change constantly, which is what makes you always new.

Meditation simply means entering into states of mind which are happiness, profound happiness, simple happiness, beautiful happiness, complicated, uncomplicated - There are ten thousand states of mind.