“In order not to leave any traces, when you do some-thing, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. You will have something remaining which is not completely burned out. Zen activity is activity which is completely burned out, with nothing remaining but ashes. This is the goal of our practice. That is what Dogen meant when he said, "Ashes do not come back to firewood.” Ash is ash. Ash should be completely ash. The firewood should be firewood. When this kind of activity takes place, one activity covers everything.”
— Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
"The past is a room full of baggage and rubbish and sometimes things that are of use, but if they are of real use, I have kept them."
— Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother
"Though my understanding of peace continues to grow and change, I do know that peace is not the absence of conflict; it's the absence of violence within conflict. To settle conflicts requires that we touch aggression, touch anger, touch violence, but that we do not surrender to these qualities within us — this is what I have learned (and am still learning). We can and must learn how to be in disagreement with each other. Conflict will exist; what matters is how we address it. When we enter conflict, we come face-to-face with suffering, our own and others'. In conflict, if we make others responsible for our suffering rather than taking responsibility for it ourselves, the conflict will most likely not be resolved, and it will probably escalate — taking the form of violence and aggression."
— Claude AnShin Thomas, At Hell's Gate
“I am responsible for accepting or choosing the values by which I live. If I live by values I have accepted or adopted passively and unthinkingly, it is easy to imagine that they are just “my nature”, just “who I am", and to avoid recognizing that choice is involved. If I am willing to recognize that choices and decisions are crucial when values are adopted, then I can take a fresh look at my values, question them, and if necessary revise them. Again, it is taking responsibility that sets me free.”
— bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love