I've always loved the Sangha. I have the deepest, deepest respect for them. I'm very sorry that in the West people don't appreciate what the monastic order is about.

The very best players, when they are practicing, put everything they've got into it. But then they leave it for a while. And it's the same in dharma practice.

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.

One of the advantages of being born in an affluent society is that if one has any intelligence at all, one will realize that having more and more won't solve the problem, and happiness does not lie in possessions, or even relationships: The answer lies within ourselves. If we can't find peace and happiness there, it's not going to come from the outside.

We're not making up merit scores for ourselves. We're making up merit scores so that we can be reborn in a situation where we can really live to benefit ourselves and others.

Try to develop some genuine love and compassion, some real caring for others.

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.