I think there is a tendency for people to become more isolated as they move along a spiritual path. With more development, people get more isolated. Also, as they have more wealth, they get more isolated.

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.

Each of us holds human destiny in our hands. It will be completely determined by how the mind feels about itself.

Shambhala vision is universal. It has no bias towards one type of culture or group. It is not ethnocentric and does not encourage one specific kind of person, race, or religion. Shambhala vision promotes a universality in relationship to basic goodness. All human beings are basically good and an enlightened society, at various levels of manifestation, can occur in any culture.

Sometimes it seems like most people are being pulled into a negative energy, but then you meet strong individuals or strong leaders and they are free from it.

You have people who are good at English but don't have the training in Buddhism or Shambhala, or they have the training but are not good in English. Getting that mixture is really rare.

Our mind is always subject to being distracted by thoughts of what happened in the past and ideas of what could happen in the future, but the living experience is what is happening NOW.