The guru is a tremendous tradition because is a guide, it's a guide to life, and we can guide energetically, we can guide in our thought, we can have a prayer that travels wonderful things.

A conventional person can be restrained by the prejudices of its tradition. Convention has too many prejudicial restraints. But unconventional is good, because what happens is the heart is open, it's free, it's non-judgmental. It's not accommodating, but it's embracing, there is a difference. To accommodate means it's already condescending, you condescend to accommodate. To embrace is free, it's totally free.

I discovered that some things are written for us. It's not that we can't change our ancestral bearings, or that the path or purpose of any of our lives is really written in stone. But what tends to happen sometimes is the path is so deeply inscribed in the birth that it becomes you and every variation away from it brings you back in ways that you are not controlling.

Women are different from men in major, major ways. I have found more courage in women than you could ever find in men, and I love men, in terms of father, brother, everyone, disciples, students etc. Yet men have certain powers of compassion that are hard-pressed to be found in a woman to that degree.

Suffering is there because there's something we're not understanding about our full divinity, and there are so many ways we could go into understanding.

Everyone must live, and everyone must express themselves, and must express themselves in the way of their karma.

The nature of the mind is to jump all over the place, and it does, that's why meditation is so important.