If we are to produce a more civilized society, a more just society, it has to be based on the truth.
We need to be sincere in our practice, but at the same time we can't take ourselves too seriously.
We do look for inspiration amongst our own sex. Why not? You go into temples and they're full of all the lineage lamas who are male. What message does that give to a young girl, except that somehow she got trapped in the wrong body because of bad things she did in a past life?
If you're meeting with the dharma, you have probably been a human being before.
The world is full of incredible people who are embodiments of compassion. Some of them have a spiritual path; some of them don't.
When we read history we find that in all ages people have thought, this is the dark age.
To me the special quality (which of course many men have as well) is first of all a sharpness, a clarityIt cuts through - especially intellectual ossification. Itgets to the point. To me the dakini principle stands for the intuitive force.
They're turnin' kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers But what's the real cost 'cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper Why are we still payin' so much for sneakers when you got them made by little slave kids? What are your overheads?!
Childhood was fairly solitary. I grew up in a very small town called Navan in County Meath. I never knew my father. He left when I was an infant and I was left in the care of my mother and my grandparents.
The question of the value of nationality in art is perhaps unsolvable.
My kind of nightmare quote is from Deborah Tolman, who does research on girls and desire and is, I think, brilliant. She told me that by the time girls are teenagers, when she asks them how sexual experience made them feel, they respond by how they think they looked; they think that how they look is how they feel.