“All losses are sad. The end of an important relationship is also a death. When people fall out of love with each other, or when what seemed like a solid friendship falls into ruin, the hope for a shared future--a hope that provided a context and a purpose to life--is gone. [p. 149]”
“... change and loss and sadness and grief are the shared lot of all human beings ... we are all making our way from one end of life to the other hoping--for whatever intervals of time we can manage it--to feel safe and content and strong and at ease. [p.40]”
“The end of health or of vigor is sad. [p. 149]”
“One of the ways we build intimate relationships with other people is by sharing our fears with them, telling them the things that still frighten us. ..."When we begin to appreciate the ways in which people have been frightened in their lives, we can be compassionate toward them, rather than angry [p. 97].”
“Sadness isn't a kilesha, a habit pattern evoked by challenge. Sadness sis what the mind feels when it is bereaved or bereft. All the wisdom in the world about the inevitability of change or the lawfulness of does not ease the heaviness in the mind that we feel when we lose someone, or something, we hold dear [p. 148]. ”
“Becoming aware of fragility, of temporality, of the fact that we will surely all be lost to one another, sooner or later, mandates a clear imperative to be totally kind and loving to each other always [p.119].”
“Anger is often a big problem for people who grew up in families where the overt expression of anger was an everyday occurrence. They have too much opportunity to practice anger and not enough sense of the other possibilities. Rage becomes, for them, the habitual response of the mind to unpleasant situations. ... When people begin to see that anger, like any other mind energy, is just a transient phenomenon and therefore workable, they are very relieved [p. 83].”