The mirror....

" Shodo Harada Roshi compares the original mind of human beings, the mind we have at birth, with a clean mirror, pure and uncluttered, with nothing whatsoever - without shape, form or color. If something comes before it, the mirror reflects it, but the mirror itself gives birth to nothing. If the reflected object leaves, its image disappears, but the mirror itself loses nothing. Within the mirror there is no birth, no death. No matter how dirty the thing reflected, the mirror does not get dirty, nor does it become beautiful because something beautiful is reflected in it. The mirror doesn't get dirty, clean or beautiful. Just because something is reflected doesn't mean anything increases in it either, nor does anything ever decrease. A mirror is without increase or decrease."

- Women Facing Retirement, A Time for Self-Reflection

Not fixed entities....

"People are not fixed entities,
but dynamic energies
expanding or contracting
in relation to your thoughts
about them."

-Alan Cohen

Hell is other people...

" Many people labor in life under the impression that they are doing something right, yet they may not show solid results for a long time. They need a capacity for continuously adjourned gratification to survive a steady diet of peer cruelty without becoming demoralized. They look like idiots to their cousins, they look like idiot to their peers, they need courage to continue. No confirmation comes from them, no validation, no fawning students, no Nobel, no Shnoble. 'How was your year?' brings them a small but containable spasm of pain inside, since almost all of their years will seem wasted to someone looking at their life from the outside.Then bang, the lumpy event comes that brings the grand vindication. Or it may never come.

Believe me, it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure. We are social animals; hell is other people."

-The Black Swan
The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Happiness...

You can't afford to let your happiness depend on the behavior of another person.

-- Alan Cohen

Forgiveness....

" Forgiveness is not easy. "I've heard people say that forgiveness is for wimps,' writes Marietta Jager. 'Well, I say then that they must never have tried it. Forgiveness is hard work. It demands diligent self-discipline, constant corralling of our basest instincts, custody of the tongue, and a steadfast refusal not to get caught up in the mean spiritedness of our times. It doesn't mean we forget, we condone, or we absolve responsibility. It does mean we let go of the hate, that we try to separate the loss and the cost from the recompense or punishment we deem is due...."

- Getting To Peace, William Ury

The Gaia oath...

"Physicians have the Hippocratic Oath; perhaps we need something similar for our practice of planetary medicine… We should be the heart and mind of the Earth not its malady. Perhaps the greatest value of the Gaia concept lies in its metaphor of a living Earth, which reminds us that we are part of it and that our contract with Gaia is not about human rights alone, but includes human obligations."

-James Lovelock

This is what I need...

Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege!! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.

~ Joseph Campbell Quotes