Your life and your practice should not be separate. You bring your practice into experience. You bring it about.

We live in a culture where information is becoming easier to access. Certain special practices have been kept very quiet and secret, and those traditions need to be respected. But there are a lot of teachings people can access that would benefit them greatly.

What distinguishes Shambhala is its intention of trying to create a society based upon certain principles. So, Shambhala's focus is not just on the individual, but on society as a whole.

In meditation we are continuously discovering who and what we are.

If we cut speed and relax with what’s going on in our life right now, kindness and patience will naturally come about.

One of the characteristics of every great teacher I've known is tremendous exertion. It's interesting: You may see them as spiritual people or compassionate people, but the driving force is that incredible exertion - and their ability to sustain it.

If you decide to go on a Buddhist path, you have to be careful if you start mixing a lot of different traditions you are not totally familiar with - mixing this kind of meditation with that kind of practice or this kind of visualization with that kind of mantra. Then you really are concocting your own thing, and you have no idea what is going to happen.