Since I was a small child, I'd believed we were inherently perfect, and that we had to keep coming back again and again until we recognized our innate perfection.

In India many people come to discuss things with me. I sometimes say that half of them come saying, "I have a problem, I want to find a teacher." The other half say, "I have a problem because I have a teacher!" So it's not so simple.

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 sometimes feel tremendous compassion and helplessness.

If you don't find that people find you're easier to live with than you were before, if you don't find that your heart is feeling warmer toward others and if your negative emotions are not getting any better, then there's something wrong. That is always the touchstone of the Dharma practice.

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.

From the point of view of emptiness, there is neither being nor non-being, but we're not on the point of view of emptiness, we're on the point of view of our relative being.