It's only when all the dust is completely gone from the mirror, and there is only mirror, no dust, that we're really enlightened. So that's a lot of work.

I've often said that the seventh paramita should be a sense of humor, so we don't take ourselves too seriously.

If you've made a lot of negative seeds, and not a lot of positive seeds, even though you meet with the dharma, you're going to have problems.

We do look for inspiration amongst our own sex. Why not? You go into temples and they're full of all the lineage lamas who are male. What message does that give to a young girl, except that somehow she got trapped in the wrong body because of bad things she did in a past life?

I think to dwell continually on the dark side creates gloom and despair and anger and hatred, and that just adds to the darkness. So rather than that, we need to think of the beauty in the world, and also send out love and compassion to all beings in this world. Not just the people we like, but people who we find difficult. Because they are very deeply in need of compassion.

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.

It's not a matter of how much you know or can define, or how many millions of mantras or thousands of prostrations you have done, or how many months of wangs you've attended. The important thing is whether or not the mind is really changing, whether our negative emotions are really coming under control, whether we are really beginning to understand ourselves, whether our mind is really improving, and whether in our hearts there is genuine love and caring for other people.