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.

If we greet situations with a positive attitude, we will eventually create positive returns. If we respond with a negative attitude, negative things will eventually come our way.

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.

I know many Catholic priests and nuns who use the Buddhist teachings to become better Catholics, and Jews who use them to become better Jews. Why not?! It just takes us towards more deeply recognizing our original nature, which is what we all share after all.

When one has a decisive realization of the inherent nature of the mind, which has no ego, it has no sense of duality between oneself and the cup, and a deep sense of interpenetration of the whole dharma. Then whatever we do is spontaneously perfect Buddha activity. And anybody who is even slightly tuned in will get a very deep experience of that.

All of us are playing roles, and there's nothing wrong with playing roles because we have to live in this world - the problem is only when we believe in those roles.

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.