The mind that wants to know the truth of something, and that's willing to do the work required for such a discovery, will inevitably find that for which it is searching; our highest aspirations are reflections of unrealized possibilities. All scripture, from the east to the West, confirms this timeless truth: We need only ask, and it shall be given.
The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.
-- Chuang-Tzu (369-286 BCE, China)
An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,
when they are held up to each other,
that's when the real making begins.
That's what art and crafting are.
A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise.
The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again
so they can be used for fine carpentry.
-- Jalal al Din Rumi (1207-1273, Balkh, Persia)
The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.
-- Meister Eckhart (1260-ca. 1327, Thuringia)
We invent nothing. We borrow and re-create. We uncover and discover. All has been given... we have only to open our eyes and our hearts to become one with that which is.
-- Henry Miller (1891-1980, United States)
God is the mirror of silence in which all creation is reflected.
-- Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952, India)
The mirror is thoroughly egoless and mindless. If a flower comes it reflects a flower; if a bird comes, it reflects a bird. It shows a beautiful object as beautiful, an ugly object as ugly. Everything is revealed as it is. There is no discriminating mind or self-consciousness on the part of the mirror. If something comes, the mirror reflects; if it disappears, the mirror just lets it disappear... no traces of anything are left behind. Such non-attachment, the state of no-mind, or the truly free working of a mirror is compared here to the pure and lucid wisdom of Buddha.
-- Zenkei Shibayma (1894-1974, Japan)
God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes but everybody who looks at it sees something different.
-- Rabbi Harold Kushner (1935-, United States)