In a monastic setting, if someone doesn't want to obey the rules and just wants to live the way they've always lived as a lay person, then why did they become ordained? They have no sense that they have to give something up to gain so much.

To want not to want, you'll tie yourself in knots. So this is why the Tibetans always say, just relax the mind and open.

The purpose of dharma is to help your mind to expand, to grow, to clarify. It should uphold us and create an inner sense of peace, joy, and clarity.

Every country that meets Buddhism molds it into their own indigenous religion, as America will. A very clear example of this is Japan, which threw out almost all the dharma, and just kept that essence, which spoke to them.

What I like about Tibetan Buddhism is it was taken to Tibet in the 7th century and then again in the 11th. It has everything that had been collected in India up until that time. And so on all levels, it's so vast.

We've been human countless times and done everything you can imagine. So we've been planting all these negative seeds, and they're going to come up.

Women are fully capable of doing everything.