  We outline the evaluation of the cosmological constant in the framework of
the standard field-theoretical treatment of vacuum energy and discuss the
relation between the vacuum energy problem and the gauge-group spontaneous
symmetry breaking. We suggest possible extensions of the 't Hooft-Nobbenhuis
symmetry, in particular, its complexification till duality symmetry and discuss
the compatible implementation on gravity. We propose to use the discrete
time-reflection transform to formulate a framework in which one can eliminate
the huge contributions of vacuum energy into the effective cosmological
constant and suggest that the breaking of time--reflection symmetry could be
responsible for a small observable value of this constant.
