Our thinking can create liberation or it can create imprisonment. It depends on how we use our mind.

Just because someone is very charismatic, it doesn't mean that they're genuinely qualified.

Learn not to be too ambitious; not to expect if you have a 9-to-5 job and three kids, that you're likely to get buddhahood in one lifetime.

Most of the people I talk to are not going to go off and live in a cave. Why should they? So I talk about how people can stop separating dharma practice - going on retreats, going to dharma centers, hearing talks, reading books - from their ordinary life.

I've always loved the Sangha. I have the deepest, deepest respect for them. I'm very sorry that in the West people don't appreciate what the monastic order is about.

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

For any practice to work, the mind which is meditating on the object must merge. Often they are facing each other. One has to become completely absorbed, then the transformation will occur.