If you continue to be very honest with yourself about the amount of pain that's really going on around us all the time, then the simple act of walking down a busy street can be overwhelming: hundreds of helpless, soon-to-be corpses brushing past us in a single hour.

If though we maintain a clean and sincere spiritual practice, then the habit of watching out for possible angels among us graduates into direct encounters with these beings. And angels really do exist: the idea may seem a little corny, but all the paintings and descriptions of them around attest to the fact that someone, somewhere, has actually met them.

If the seed thing really works, and if you push it to its limit, then it stands to reason that eventually you'll be surrounded by such beings, all the time.

Mental purity and physical simplicity lead to a serene state of mind, no longer enslaved by excesses of food or sex. When the water of a lake is perfectly still, only then can we see the full moon reflected in it: ultimate reality, emptiness.