From the point of view of the relative world, merit is very important.

When I heard that our bodies change when we get a bit older, I thought, oh good, now I'll go back to being a boy again. But it didn't happen like that.

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

We don't want to go to heaven. We want to be reborn so that we can keep going and realize the dharma so we can benefit other beings, endlessly. It's a very different thing.

Still all the tulkus being born are men.

The new nuns don't know that they're 'supposed' to be meek and submissive, and so in many ways they believe they can do anything, because they've seen the earlier ones do it. In this way, there's nothing for them to doubt.

My mother was superb. Even when I said to her, when I was nineteen, oh, I'm going to India. Her immediate reaction was, oh yes dear, and when are you leaving? She didn't say, oh how could you leave me, your mother? Or wait a bit dear until you get a bit older and you know your own mind. She just said, well, when are you going? And that was because she loved me, not because she didn't love me.