We have to transform those ordinary actions of our day into dharma practice because otherwise nothing is going to move.

Realization is wonderful, but you have to expand it until there's not a single defilement left in the mind and the mind is completely open and spacious. Even in that condition, you still use the relative mind. You use them both.

For so many centuries women have been suppressed and regarded as inferior. And that of course is not right at all, that we all have buddha-nature - so what's the difference?

On a relative level where we live, we need to have a sense of identity, otherwise we'd fall apart, wouldn't we?

I think if you really start practicing, the energy comes. I was always very happy and grateful for the opportunity to have the time, solitude and good health to be able to do it.

There are wars, there's pestilence, there are plagues, there is corruption in religious circles, corruption in the government, when was it not?

All of the external circumstances and the rude and difficult people we meet, instead of getting angry, upset, or frustrated, we see that we can take them all and use them on the path in a way that actually invigorates and strengthens us, rather than defeats us. It's all very practical advice, and that's why I talk a lot about how to make our daily life into Dharma practice, otherwise it's easy to feel hopeless and helpless.