Basically, I want to spend my time in retreat, but to my own amazement, I agreed to help with a project to start a training center for nuns. I agreed because I think it's really very important for the Western Sangha. I don't know how I'm going to help, but it's important.

There is an enormous joy and satisfaction in doing what you really want to do and are best fitted to do. When it all comes together like that, it gives you a wonderful sense of well-being and satisfaction knowing that you have been doing what you were intended to do for this lifetime.

At one time I thought that if I could really understand renunciation and bodhichitta from the depths of my heart, then, for this lifetime that would be enough.

If nuns begin getting more empowered, where does that leave us?

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

Our relative being is what rules our relative world.

If you don't find that people find you're easier to live with than you were before, if you don't find that your heart is feeling warmer toward others and if your negative emotions are not getting any better, then there's something wrong. That is always the touchstone of the Dharma practice.