The Buddha in Your Mirror: Practical Buddhism and the Search for Self

While the specific details of rebirth, in what form and when, are ultimately unknowable, the Buddhism described in this book stresses the importance of seeing the big picture—discovering the eternity of life within oneself. In this Buddhism, the challenge presented by the issue of death is to find the most valuable way to live.

Likewise, our lives, which are one with this universe, have also always existed in one form or another, following an unending cycle of birth and death, decline and renewal, subject to the physical laws of this universe.

According to the Buddhist view, life is eternal. It is believed to undergo successive incarnations, so that death is thought to be not so much the cessation of an existence as the beginning of a new one.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to make you happy.

Happiness in any situation cannot be achieved without a sense of control. Depending upon another to validate that we are worthy of love gives that person control over our emotions and our self-esteem. We have given up our power.

Our inner lives are kaleidoscopic, changing color and pattern with infinite variety and subtlety amid the welter and chaos of contemporary existence. In truth, when something happens to elate us, our fundamental circumstances have hardly changed at all; what has changed is the person within, and that person has been constantly changing from the mom

To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. —Abraham Lincoln

To understand that life means difficulty liberates us because it helps us to understand problems and suffering as natural parts of life, not as signs of our inadequacies.