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.

I really don't know what I could teach and don't really plan to teach.

The Buddha himself said, "I still use conceptual thinking, but I'm not formed by it." And that's the Buddha.

In the early '60s there was very little reliable information on Tibetan Buddhism. I was living in London and I had joined the Buddhist Society. For the most part, people there were either interested in Theravada or Zen Buddhism. There was almost no one into Tibetan Buddhism at that time.

I think it's a meritorious action to become a monk, provided that your motivation is pure.

For so many centuries women have been suppressed and regarded as inferior. And that of course is not right at all, that we all have buddha-nature - so what's the difference?

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