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.

Sometimes people feel disappointed when they hear about practicing compassion: "You mean I have to be nice?" It's kind of a letdown. We often overlook compassion, seeing it as merely a pit stop on the way to more advanced practices. We want something more; we don't even know what. But that's just a trick of our mind. One of the greatest teachings is to practice compassion.

To shift the direction of our planet, we must now be willing to experiment with the theory that within the speed and stress, we are good.

Every moment of our life is important.

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.

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.

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