Each of us is a moving center, a space of divine mystery. And though we spend most of our time on the surface in the daily details of ordinary existence, most us hunger to connect to this space within, to break through to bliss, to be swept away into something bigger than us.

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.

If you want to give birth to your true self, you are going to have to dig deep down into that body of yours and let your soul howl. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that if you turn off your head, your feet will take you where you need to go.

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.

I believe in the power of motion, the wisdom of gravity, the emptiness of true love, the fact that there is no way out but through the body, no way up unless we all go together, no way down unless we follow the beat, no way in unless we embrace the dark.

I want to take you to a place of pure magic... It's the place athletes call the "zone". Buddhists call "satori" and ravers call "trance". I call it the Silver Desert. It's a place of pure light that holds the dark within it. It's a place of pure rhythm.

When we give ourselves over completely to the spirit of the dance, it becomes a prayer