My books definitely are ambassadors, as you called them. They express what the vision is, what the purpose is.

What is amazing is how stuck people are in their own habits. It is really hard to get people out of their habits. But once they shift, it also is amazing how rapid the progress can be.

When I ask people to contemplate selflessness, the sometimes react as if I've asked them to put their house on the market or give away all their money. If there was a self that existed in the way we think, discovering selflessness would be like putting our house on the market. But in the Buddhist tradition, the discovery of selflessness is called "completely joyful." It's not called "the raw end of the deal," or "I'd rather go back to bed," or "This is scary and depressing."

If we are going to live in a society, there has to be an attitude where people really do care for others.

In Tibetan, we say people who have good windhorse have the sense they can accomplish what they want to do.

Running and meditation are very personal activities. Therefore they are lonely. This loneliness is one of their best qualities because it strengthens our incentive to motivate ourselves.

We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is. We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is always changing.