Joining the Sangha and renouncing worldly life is necessary in order to devote your whole life and all your energies toward the Dharma.

Our relative being is what rules our relative world.

There are many wonderfully qualified teachers out there, but that doesn't mean that each teacher is suitable to the same person, anymore than people fall in love with the same person.

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

Buddhism is the most active one! The whole time, we're dealing with the mind and how to tame it, and how to transcend our ordinary conventional mind. This takes an enormous amount of determination and perseverance. It also requires an attitude of being relaxed and spacious, rather than tense and stressed. It's certainly not a matter of lying back and expecting it all to happen. If we don't make it happen, it won't!

I think it's crucial to recognize that we are so fortunate to have this human birth where we can practice what we want, pick up and not just read books but actually understand them. This level of education is very rare throughout history, so we shouldn't take it for granted.

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