It's very important to realize that every person that you meet, everything that you do, with the right attitude and a little awareness and skillful means - we can transform everything - all our joys and sorrows.

I'd say look at the teacher's students. Do you want to be like them? If you see a good and harmonious sangha, and if they're practicing well and are good people with good hearts, then you have a cause for trust.

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.

We only think about the difficult people and the horrible things that happen. That's what gets all the media attention.

The more you realize, the more you realize how much there is to realize and, at the same time, how much you realize that there is nothing to realize. So, it's an enormous job, not something that is going to be finished in this lifetime.

On a relative level where we live, we need to have a sense of identity, otherwise we'd fall apart, wouldn't we?

We are educated. We can think. We have the freedom to think.