If you lose interest in the dharma, then you might be reborn in a place where you are unlikely to meet with the dharma. And then you're completely off the path.

Just entering into the dharma and taking refuge and bodhisattva vows is a tremendous amount of merit, but we need more and more and more.

Traditionally, women didn't have much a role in Buddhism. The books were all written by monks, for other monks. So the general view of the feminine was rather misogynistic, with women playing the role of the forbidden other, waiting to pounce on innocent little monks! In that society, it was hard for women to become educated and get the deeper teachings and really become accomplished.

In our endless past lives, we've all done everything, you name it, we've done it. Good, bad, intermediate.

If you become a monk because it's an easy life, because you're going to be fed, and sheltered and people will respect you, then that is not a very meritorious motivation.

Our relative being is what rules our relative world.

If you see young tulkus when they're with other little monks, it's like in a Broadway show or something where the main character is spotlighted and the others kind of fade into the background. And you think, who is that tulku? Because that's all you see, even though they're all dressed the same and they're all the same age, but it's like the tulku is illumined. They don't look like the other ones.