Unlike some of my other dharma brothers who got names that were very long and obscure, and nobody could remember or pronounce, that they didn't like. They wanted to give their names back, but it wasn't like that, it wasn't transactional. He would name some people and say 'you're married', and then they were married, but you know it wasn't really transactional.

However, we need to participate and manage skillfully, helpfully, and harmoniously, for a better world, family and society to be possible. So everybody's spiritual by nature I believe, not that they necessarily have to be religious. Everybody wants, or cares about, and has values even if they don't talk about them all the time explicitly, like some noisy preachers do with their foghorn voices and dogmatic views.

But you know the difference between sex and love. And sex can be part of love, but what moves your heart, what's really intimate, that's the real spirit. And that's very personal, it's also transpersonal. It's not impersonal, it's beyond any of us, it's transcendent of any of us, yet imminent in dwelling, imminent to each of us.

Embracing our environment is a good direction, a very spiritual direction. It's too Aristotelian to separate man from the animals and man; humans from the environment.

So we're all living spirit. It's not about isms and schims or religions. Religions are almost like political institutions, but the heart of it is the spirituality.

Our lack of compassion stems from our inability to see deeply into the nature of things.

Who's willing to face the unknown- the difficulties, the disappointments, the surprises of the unfamiliar. If you're going to change, you have to face those things, and who's able? Who has the skillful means, the knowhow, the perseverance, the help, the fortitude to keep going?