Tibetans are great with meritorious practices.

Even if one isn't a committed Buddhist, it just helps us become better human beings.

Learn not to be too ambitious; not to expect if you have a 9-to-5 job and three kids, that you're likely to get buddhahood in one lifetime.

As a human being, we have everything we need. It's enough suffering to give us incentive to go on, but not so much that we don't know where to turn.

In the early '60s there was very little reliable information on Tibetan Buddhism. I was living in London and I had joined the Buddhist Society. For the most part, people there were either interested in Theravada or Zen Buddhism. There was almost no one into Tibetan Buddhism at that time.

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.

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.