Some additional quotes:

“I think our culture’s dominant story is a kind of prison.  It’s a story of separation – from one another, from nature, and ultimately even from ourselves.  In extraordinary moments…we break out of the story.  We encounter a world of being one with ourselves, others, nature, and life in a very direct way.  It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring.  It shifts our awareness of our world and ourselves in radical ways.  It brings a great sense of hope and possibility but also great uncertainty.  It can also be hard suddenly finding ourselves outside the story that has organised our life up to that point.  It’s wonderful to be free, but also terrifying.”

“There’s an old saying in Buddhism, ‘There’s nothing more difficult than changing yourself'”

“If you asked any of us, or virtually any citisen of today’s global society, if we actually want to destroy species as a result of our purchasing decisions, we would all say, ‘No, of course not!’  Wouldn’t any of us respond exactly the same if you asked us if we wanted to create global warming and melt the polar ice caps, or if we wanted to prevent people in developing countries from gaining access to clean drinking water because it’s owned by soft drink producers whose business expands because we buy their products?  Yet this is exactly what is happening.  Our purchasing decisions are mediated through the network of institutions that span the world to bring us the goods and services we buy….We’re just doing what we think we need to do to be successful, and I suspect if we could really see the consequences of our actions, we wouldn’t like ourselves very much.”

 How do we change?  Create new systems, new ways of behaving?  Not an easy task……  but all of us, yes all of us, have something to add to the solution, to the process of finding answers, questioning solutions, trying things, and remembering and reminding that there is no one right answer, but many pieces of the puzzle that help create the picture.