We're not making up merit scores for ourselves. We're making up merit scores so that we can be reborn in a situation where we can really live to benefit ourselves and others.

The real spiritual power is enabling beings to realize the nature of the mind. That's the power of Buddha activity.

There is an enormous joy and satisfaction in doing what you really want to do and are best fitted to do. When it all comes together like that, it gives you a wonderful sense of well-being and satisfaction knowing that you have been doing what you were intended to do for this lifetime.

Most of the spiritual traditions were very theistic and the idea of an external god pulling the strings didn't resonate with me. I then discovered Buddhism and found the perfect path. I felt so grateful to the Buddha for having given the path, and not just explaining the end result, but showing so clearly how to get there.

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

We've been human countless times and done everything you can imagine. So we've been planting all these negative seeds, and they're going to come up.

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.