“The goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians.”

Grief, unresisted, is grace. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt anymore, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t rip your heart out….In great grief, there’s an incredible love in it. In love there’s a tinge of bitter. In true love.

The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare.

When a group of people come together as a response to that kind of inward call, it creates a very powerful environment, where truth is held in the highest esteem and the reality of our being responds to that deepest intention.

You’re willing to realize that maybe everything you’ve ever thought about yourself really isn’t true.

The light of consciousness has no mind to change or alter anything. When you start to see the light that you really are, the light waking up in you, the radiance, you realize it has no intention to change you.

Neither one of these thoughts hold any intrinsic reality. They are an overlay. When someone says, ‘I love you,’ he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, ‘I hate you,’ she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views-literally.

Enlightenment is, in the end, nothing more than the natural state of being.

To be free of fear is to be full of Love.

Eventually, in the state of liberation, meditation will simply become your natural condition.

If we know who and what we are very thoroughly, we will express and manifest that in what we do. It is all very simple.

Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think they’re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy.

Since everything is already the Supreme Buddha Nature, where are you going to find it?

The process of finding the truth may not be a process by which we feel increasingly better and better. It may be a process by which we look at things honestly, sincerely, truthfully, and that may or may not be an easy thing to do.

What the universe will manifest when you are in alignment with it is a lot more interesting than what you try to manifest

A quiet mind married to integrity of heart is the birth of wisdom.

Truth has no finality to it. It is not something to be held on to. Truth is discovered minute to minute or not at all.

To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves.

I’ve tried Buddhism, Scientology, Numerology, Transcendental Meditation, Qabbala, t’ai chi, feng shui and Deepak Chopra but I find straight gin works best.

Therefore we have to train our mind. The meditation practice in Buddhism is all about training one’s own mind.

Suttas are not meant to be ‘sacred scriptures’ that tell us what to believe.

Instead of becoming the world’s expert on Buddhism, just let go, let go, let go.

To define Buddhism without a lot of words and phrases, we can simply say, ‘Don’t cling or hold on to anything. Harmonize with actuality, with things as they are.’

To observe and watch one’s own mind is something really interesting. The untrained mind will run and follow its old habit patterns. Because it has not been trained and taught, it will get lost in all kinds of stories and issues.

It just seemed like Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism – because that’s mainly what I’ve been exposed to – was a real solid organization of teachings to point someone in the right direction.