Whether you're in heaven or hell depends on your attitude.

As illustrated by the Zen story recently tumbled by Maggie Utgoff, perspective is everything...

Once upon a time, in a temple nestled in the misty end of south hill, lived a pair of monks. One old and one young.

‘What are the differences between Heaven and Hell?’ the young monk asked the learned master one day.

‘There are no material differences,’ replied the old monk peacefully.

‘None at all?’ asked the confused young monk.

‘Yes. Both Heaven and Hell look the same. They all have a dining hall with a big hot pot in the center in which some delicious noodles are boiled, giving off an appetizing scent,’ said our old priest. ‘The size of the pan and the number of people sitting around the pot are the same in these two places.’

‘But oddly, each diner is given a pair of meter-long chopsticks and must use them to eat the noodles. And to eat the noodles, one must hold the chopsticks properly at their ends, no cheating is allowed,’ the zen master went on to describe to our young monk.

‘In the case of Hell, people are always starved because no matter how hard they try, they fail to get the noodles into their mouths,’ said the old priest.

‘But isn’t it the same happens to the people in Heaven?’ the junior questioned.

‘No. They can eat because they each feed the person sitting opposite them at the table. You see, that is the difference between Heaven and Hell,’ explained the old monk.

The moral of this story is simple: A turn in mind is all the difference between Heaven and Hell lies (一念天堂，一念地獄). 

Be kind to people and people will be kind to you. 

You can create the conditions to make your own luck by practicing your openness, intuition, optimism, and resilience when things go badly.

A new year is a new beginning. A time to make new changes, experience new things, forgive those who have done you wrong, and put the past behind you.

You are the author of your own life, and you can make this next chapter one to remember.

You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequence of choice.

So don't worry, choose wisely if you want to get to heaven.

Everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

For now, we live. And who's got it better than us? Nobody.

Think of heaven and hell like any destination: not as places but as ways of looking at things.

Is it heaven or hell to spend 22 months making stop motion animation with jellybeans?

It mostly depends on whether you have choice.

Without choice, heaven or hell depends on who you are.

Kittie heaven is mousie hell, and if you're a mousie there's nothing you can do but commit.

But with choice, heaven or hell depends on attitude.

wow, what a great page this is!!  it's full of goodies!  thank you, adam.

You're very welcome. It's like a message in a bottle to you from 18 months ago.

I love that last video, the jellybean one. 

it IS like a message in a bottle.  :)

that last video is amazing!

Then you'll probably dig this:

http://pandawhale.com/post/22212/the-time-you-have-in-jellybeans

Wait, you've already dug it. I'm repeating myself. :(

but this time i saw a quote by ralph waldo emerson i hadn't seen before that is just lovely!  :)

That's the interesting thing about the pandawhale pages. 

Sometimes we see something new when we visit them again.