When I was going into one of my first meditation retreats, I asked my father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, for some advice. He said, "How you act when you're alone affects the rest of your life." Even in solitude, the ruler engages in virtue.

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.

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.

Whatever we do lays a seed in our deepest consciousness, and one day that seed will grow.

Even when we speak of selflessness, the mind goes to "me." We think, "I'm selfless," but everything is selfless.

If you rise with a positive attitude - because everything is possible, everything is doable - if you have that level of confidence, you exude it. It actually inspires the people around you.