Buddhist quotes - August

I just could not end the month of August without at least my quote post.
I have had a great Summer and I am looking forward to going back to work.

We just recently had our general Kayo Kai meeting, where the force of all my negativity slammed into me, leaving me in a sobbing pool of tears. Ah, well.

I am challenging the deepest of my deep-seated karma, my fundamental sense of worthlessness, which is at the core of my tendency to always experience bullying and aggressive behaviour in my environment. So, of course, the brown and sticky is hitting the fan. Hard.

One aspect of this karma is my pathological need for praise and external approval. I keep coming back to the Eight Winds Gosho for guidance and I try to read it with my life, even though sometimes it is really hard and painful.

It is, as often is for my favourite Gosho, a letter addressed to Shijo Kingo.

Here we go:

Worthy persons deserve to be called so because they are not carried away by the eight winds: prosperity, decline, disgrace, honor, praise, censure, suffering, and pleasure. They are neither elated by prosperity nor grieved by decline. The heavenly gods will surely protect one who is unbending before the eight winds. But if you nurse an unreasonable grudge against your lord, they will not protect you, not for all your prayers.

Damn you, Nichiren Daishonin, you seem to always know how to right-kick me in the bum. This is so accurately what I need to do it is scary.

After saying this, Nichiren proceeds to first talk about other disciples who ended up in unfavourable circumstances because they refused to follow his advice, then to outline the bigger picture, talking about other schools of Buddhism and even the political situation, then, in the very last paragraph of the letter, as if by showing Shijo Kingo how small his problems are, he says:

As for your own problem, I advise you not to go to court. Neither harbor a grudge against your lord, nor leave his service. Stay on in Kamakura. Go to attend on your lord less frequently than before; wait upon him only from time to time. Then you can expect that your wish will be fulfilled. Never conduct yourself in a shameful manner. Be unmoved by greed, by the desire for fame, or by anger. [emphasis mine]

 Damn. *headbangs on her way to bed*