The fastest, cleanest, most joyful way to break out of your own box is by dancing. I'm not talking about doing the stand-and-sway. I'm talking about dancing so deep, so hard, so full of the beat that you are nothing but the dance and the beat and the sweat and the heat.

Compassion is a chameleon: it can wear the face of fear, anger, sadness, joy or even dispassion, depending on what's needed at the time. The compassionate Buddha has a smile in one eye and a tear in the other, and our Buddha mission is to lead people to true freedom, not to hold their hand and tell them that everything is going to be all right. In teaching, compassion means doing whatever needs to be done to get to the next phase.

Dancing, singing, storytelling and silence are the four universal healing salves.

We have lost awe and wonder. In reference to the mystery of life itself, we've lost respect for movement in our planet.

Your body is the ground metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopaedia, your life story.

When I am dancing, it feels like my prayer. It's like an offering. I offer my head back to the dance, I offer my shoulders back to the dance, my elbows, my hands, my spine, my knees, my feet, my whole self, my bones, my blood, my experience, my suffering... I offer it all back to the dance and I say: take it, do whatever you want with me. Release me.

There is no true joy and compassion except through the difficult emotions - all we get without the experience of fear, anger, and sadness are cheap imitations of joy and compassion - pleasantness and sentimentality.