Taking Hold of Bodhicitta...

When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.

Milarepa 

“Just as it is known that an image of one's face is seen depending on a mirror but does not really exist as a face, so the conception of "I" exist dependent on mind and body, but like the image of a face the "I" does not at all exist as its own reality."   Nagarjuna 

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible."    Nagarjuna 

With joy I celebrate the virtue that relives all beings
From the sorrows of the state of loss,
Exalting i the happy states enjoyed
By those who yet are suffering.

I revel in the stores of virtue,
Cause of gaining the enlightened state,
And celebrate the freedom won
By living from the round of pain.

And in the Buddhahood of the protectors I delight
And in the grounds of realization of the Buddha's heir. 

Their enlightened attitude, an ocean  of great good,
That seeks to place all beings in the state of bliss,
 And every for the benefit of beings:
Such is my delight and joy.0

And so I join my hands and pray
The Buddha who resides in every quarter:
Kindle now the Dharna light
For those who grope, bewildered, in t6h4 dark of pain!

I join my hand beseeching the enlightened ones
Who wish to pass into nirvana:
Do not leave us wandering in blindness,
Stay among us for unnumbered ages!

Through these actions now performed
And all the virtues I have gained,
May all the pain of every living being
Be wholly scattered and destroyed!

For all ailing in the world ,
Until their every sickness has been healed,
May I myself become for them
The doctor, nurse, the medicine itself.

Raining down a flood of  food and drink,
May I dispel the the ills of thirst and famine.
And in the aeons marked by scarcity and want,
May I myself appear as drink and sustenance.

For the sentient beings, poor and destitute,
May I become a treasure ever-plentiful,
And lie before them closely in their reach,
A varied source of all that they might need.

My body, thus, and all my goods besides,
And all my merits and to be gained,
I give them all and do not count the cost,
To bring about the benefit of beings.

The Way of the Bodhisattva, By Shantideva
Stanzas 1 through 11