“Don’t be attached to visions or lights in meditation, don’t rise or fall with them.”

Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened.

I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it – incredibly.

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.

We should conquer ourselves, rather than conquer others. Whether coming or going, standing, sitting or lying down, our mind should be focused in this way.

Know and watch your heart. It’s pure but emotions come to colour it. So let your mind be like a tightly woven net to catch emotions and feelings that come, and investigate them before you react.

We say that to ‘give up all evil and to develop the good’ is the heart of the Buddha’s teaching.

If we want to really see the Buddha, we should observe his virtuous qualities.

The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you? You hold on to things causing your confusion. Let nature teach you.

We don’t meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.

If you haven’t wept deeply, you haven’t begun to meditate.

We have limited time in our life, therefore we should try to teach ourselves, not to teach others.

Investigate yourself to find the truth – inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important.

Why do we have time to breathe? Because we see the importance of the breath.

If suffering arises you must contemplate right there, you don’t have to run away.

A woman wanted to know how to deal with anger. I asked when anger arose whose anger it was. She said it was hers.

The Dharma Path is to keep walking forward. But the true Dharma has no going forward, no going backward, and no standing still.

Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won’t fall.

Women are rising. And I think that’s all the violence and war – it could be the last gasp of the patriarchy, actually.

Only cream and SOBs rise to the top.

A monarch should be ever intent on conquest, lest his neighbours rise in arms against him.

It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.

Therefore the doubts which have arisen in your heart out of ignorance should be slashed by the weapon of knowledge.

This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate ‘me,’ and in turn the sense of ‘me’ strengthens itself this way.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.