The thing to do in this lifetime is to create more merit.

In one way I would like to teach, but I have no qualifications to teach Westerners.

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.

A realized being would not be making any fresh karma because karma is very much connected to the ego but would still be receiving the results of past karma.

Meditation is a way to take us to a deeper level of awareness.

All the other religions I had ever read about dealt with the idea of God, and your relationship with God. Buddhism is the only religion that deals with man himself and the nature of the mind - how to deal with yourself and your condition, here and now, as opposed to having to deal with something outside yourself.

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.