As a leader, people push you. They really want to keep pushing you until you get aggressive. Then they say, "Oh, see, it doesn't work."

I would say courage first; then wisdom, which is a sense of knowledge and confidence; and also the wish and desire to uplift. The underlying notion is "How do I help?" That attitude really is a spiritual journey and a path.

Your regular teachers will get mad at you. If you keep asking something again and again, they will get tired of saying the same thing. A book will not do that. A book always will be there for you. In whatever you want, the book will be there.

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.

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

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

The most outrageous thing we can do in this world is to accept what happens and fly with it.