The basic Buddhist stand on the question of equality between the genders is age-old. At the highest tantric levels, at the highest esoteric level, you must respect women: every woman.
And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.
Our relationship with alcohol is a hologram for how human beings relate to the natural world. When you get to that level of brown liquor - an age distillate of a fermented thing, grain that we learned how to plant and make grow - it is in some ways the best expression of what humans are able to do. Nobody else can make that! And it's delicious.
I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers.
A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do we know that his future will not be equal to our present? If he reach the age of forty or fifty, and has not made himself heard of, then indeed he will not be worth being regarded with respect.