I was reading an essay from Yakrider: Cause&Effect and some of his thoughts really hit me like a sledgehammer to the back of the head. It's an essay regarding cause and effect and how we Westerners perceive these two variables as responisble for our daily fortunes and misfortunes. You cannot have one without the other, so why boast about our good luck or cry about our bad? Everything is interconnected and whether the circumstances in our lives can be defined as "good" or "bad", these events evolve into other circumstances which will once again be good or bad, and will continue on and on.

Here are some great quotes and sayings from the essay:

If we look at a constant whirlpool in water, we see that while the whirlpool retains its basic pattern indefinitely, the water within it however is always changing, never the same. This is us. Though we appear to be the same each day, we are actually exactly like the whirlpool, similar pattern; new content. The we we were yesterday is not the same we we are today. There is only the we we are now.
-Yakrider

"Everything the same; everything distinct."
-Zen proverb.

A farmer in the hills only horse ran away during the evening and later that day the neighbors gathered and said "poor farmer, isn't it terrible you have lost your only horse." The farmer seemed unfazed and said "who is to say what is good and what is bad?". The next evening the run away horse led sixteen wild horses and ponies to the farmers stable. When the neighbors gathered, they couldn't believe his luck and exclaimed, "oh farmer, that's great, what luck has come your way, you now have sixteen new horses." The farmer replied "Who is to say what is good and what is bad?" The following day the farmer's son was trying to break one of the horses, fell and broke his right leg. That evening the neighbors came and said "poor farmer, how terrible it is your son broke his leg." Once again the farmer replied, "But who is to say..." The next day the Chinese Army came to the farmer house to draft his son but because of his broken leg, he was deemed unfit to serve at this time...
-Yakrider