It's unlikely that you were a frog in a past life.

One of the beauties of the Buddhadharma is there are so many approaches, and not everything is right for everybody.

The power of thought is extremely powerful.

The Buddha said that samsara by its nature is painful. He didn't say it was a joyride.

The internet can be enormously helpful, just like books can, but I don't think it's the be all and end all for really practicing Buddhism. At a certain point, as with learning any skill, we need personal instruction from someone who is more advanced than us.

We only think about the difficult people and the horrible things that happen. That's what gets all the media attention.

If we could turn around and stand back, then we would see the whole complete pattern. And therefore what we have to do in this lifetime is to perfect this pattern, so that it will continue a most beautiful pattern next time and next time and next time and next time because we vowed until samsara is empty! Now, that's going to be a long time, so you'd better get prepared for the long haul, and the best way to do that is to really prepare yourself as much as possible in this lifetime, and not waste your opportunities so that we can genuinely benefit beings, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly.