The proper way to create friends is to have a warm heart, not simply money or power. The friend of power and the friend of money are something different.
I set out to really build this universe of interfaith connectedness, where people could see that other people in different parts of the world are very much like them.
Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.
We passed law that encouraged consumption through different purchasing habits like, you know, hybrid vehicles. You buy hybrid, you get a tax credit. We've encouraged the spread of ethanol as an alternative to crude oil. We have asked for Congress to pass regulatory relief so we can build more refineries to increase the supply of gasoline, hopefully taking the pressure off of price. And so the strategy is to recognize that dependency upon crude oil, in a global market, affects us economically here at home. And, therefore, we need to diversify away as quickly as possible.
No matter who you are, no matter what your culture is, it is absolutely possible to look out and extend yourself in such a way, that you can connect to other people and find that we are more alike than we are different.
That which arises dependent on something is not in the least that thing, neither is it different from it. Therefore, it is neither permanent or nothing.
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.