The internet can be enormously helpful, just like books can, but I don't think it's the be all and end all for really practicing Buddhism. At a certain point, as with learning any skill, we need personal instruction from someone who is more advanced than us.

For some people, every door opens, and they meet just who they need to meet when they need to meet them, all the conditions come together. For other people, there is one problem after the other, even though they are so sincere. And from a Tibetan point of view, this is because of a lack of merit.

Just entering into the dharma and taking refuge and bodhisattva vows is a tremendous amount of merit, but we need more and more and more.

In this life you have obstacles.

Western Tibetan Buddhists are always looking out there at the distant snow peaks and they lose the flowers along the path.

My mother was superb. Even when I said to her, when I was nineteen, oh, I'm going to India. Her immediate reaction was, oh yes dear, and when are you leaving? She didn't say, oh how could you leave me, your mother? Or wait a bit dear until you get a bit older and you know your own mind. She just said, well, when are you going? And that was because she loved me, not because she didn't love me.

The first thing is to learn how to quiet the mind, relax the mind, and bring the awareness to the front so that we are conscious of what we're doing when we're doing it without all the commentary.