Western Tibetan Buddhists are always looking out there at the distant snow peaks and they lose the flowers along the path.

People get very deep experiences and they think they're enlightened. That's not enlightenment, that's just some realization.

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

We're not lowly sinners, we're not worthless beings. We are something jewel-like and beautiful.

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.

We have compassion because of the incredible pain and suffering which we as unenlightened beings cause to ourselves and all others through our ignorance. This is why we're trying to get out. This is why the bodhisattva has meaning. Because we're saying, no we won't get out, we won't escape until we've helped all other beings to escape, but most other beings don't even want to escape. They don't even know that there is an escape, and it's hard, so it's going to take an awfully long time.

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.