We have compassion because of the incredible pain and suffering which we as unenlightened beings cause to ourselves and all others through our ignorance. This is why we're trying to get out. This is why the bodhisattva has meaning. Because we're saying, no we won't get out, we won't escape until we've helped all other beings to escape, but most other beings don't even want to escape. They don't even know that there is an escape, and it's hard, so it's going to take an awfully long time.

Distraction is the main problem for us all - what the Buddha called the monkey mind. We need to tame this monkey mind.

The very best players, when they are practicing, put everything they've got into it. But then they leave it for a while. And it's the same in 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.

We need to be sincere in our practice, but at the same time we can't take ourselves too seriously.

Sometimes people come and they have so much pain and confusion in their eyes... what to do? A few words is a little bit of balm but doesn't really solve the deep disease within.

Realization is wonderful, but you have to expand it until there's not a single defilement left in the mind and the mind is completely open and spacious. Even in that condition, you still use the relative mind. You use them both.