When Jesus says you must leave your family to follow Him, he doesn't necessarily mean physically. He means leave your dependence on them, make an emotional break with them.
If you want to help sentient beings, you have to get your hands dirty.
Retreating from the world will not liberate you. Happiness is not found in a secluded forest hut or isolated cave. Enlightenment comes when you connect to the world. Only when you truly connect with everyone and everything else do you become Enlightened. Only by going deeply and fully into the world do you attain liberation.
Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.
When you ask for patience, what you get is a line at the bank. In other words, life gives you the people, places, and situations that are going to allow you to once and for all develop what it is you need.
It's silly not to hope. It's a sin he thought.
When I speak now, my experience in art wells up so articulately that I am surprised even while I am talking. I move around a podium as easily as if it were my living room and although I am keyed up I am not anxious. I feel as if I were doing what I should be doing - the feeling I have when intent in my studio.