Quotes by Thích Nhất Hạnh
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True love always brings joy to ourself and the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love.

A teacher cannot give you the truth The truth is already in you You only need to open yourself -- body, mind and heart- so that his or her teachings will penetrate your own seeds of understanding and enlightenment If you let the words enter you, the soil and the seeds will do the rest of the work.

You are not an observer, you are a participant.

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper? ?To be? is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

The heart of the matter is always our oneness with divine spirit, our union with all life.

The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching.

Our appointment with life is in the present moment. If we do not have peace and joy right now, when will we have peace and joy?

Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment. Fully alive, fully aware.

Nirvana is the complete silencing of concepts.

The way must be in you; the destination also must be in you and not somewhere else in space or time. If that kind of self-transformation is being realized in you, you will arrive.

Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path.

We have the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast. But in the name of freedom, people have done a lot of damage. I think we have to build a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast in order to counterbalance. Because liberty without responsibility is not true liberty. We are not free to destroy.

Mindfulness is like that--it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.

Look deeply; I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch ... to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

If we are not peaceful, if we are not feeling well in our skin, we cannot demonstrate real peace, and we cannot raise our children well either.

By listening with calm and understanding, we can ease the suffering of another person.

Action is called karma. And that's your continuation. When this body disintegrates, you continue on with your actions. It's like the cloud in the sky. When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it hasn't died. The cloud is continued in other forms like rain or snow or ice.

Words can travel thousands of miles. May my words create mutual understanding and love. May they be as beautiful as gems, as lovely as flowers.

From time to time, to remind ourselves to relax and be peaceful, we may wish to set aside some time for a retreat, a day of mindfulness, when we can walk slowly, smile, drink tea with a friend, enjoy being together as if we are the happiest people on Earth.

Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness.

Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us.

If we practice mindfulness, we always have a place to be when we are afraid.

Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves.

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart.

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

When we live in the spirit of gratitude, there will be much happiness in our life. The one who is grateful is the one who has much happiness while the one who is ungrateful will not be able to have happiness.

Freedom is the basic condition for you to touch life, to touch the blue sky, the trees, the birds, the tea, and the other person.

Walk and touch peace every moment.

Walk and touch happiness every moment.

Each step brings a fresh breeze.

Each step makes a flower bloom.

Kiss the Earth with your feet.

Bring the Earth your love and happiness.

The Earth will be safe

when we feel safe in ourselves.

I have arrived. I am home. My destination is in each step.

When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love.

May our heart's garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.

Happiness is available. Please help yourself to it.

I vow to live fully in each moment.

If you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it?

You do not suffer because things are impermanent. You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent.

You can use your life in a very useful and intelligent way. You can very well transform that negative energy into a positive energy that empowers you and makes life meaningful.

In mindfulness one is not only restful and happy, but alert and awake. Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.

Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.

Mindful time spent with the person we love is the fullest expression of true love and real generosity.

Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful.

I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight... I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.

Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration.

As we cultivate peace and happiness in ourselves, we also nourish peace and happiness in those we love.

If we can not smile, we cannot help other people to smile.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.

Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive.

Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.

In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies... if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

The happiest moments are when we sit down and we feel the presence of our brothers and sisters, lay and monastic, who are practicing walking and sitting mediation.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.

Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish.

With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.

The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest. But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don't know how to rest. We may even come back more tired than before we left.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don't allow our bodies to heal, and we don't allow our minds and hearts to heal.

Mindfulness practices enhance the connection between our body, our mind and everything else that is around us. Mindful living is the key to understanding our struggles with weight and to empowering us to control our weight.

In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person's suffering and bring that person joy.

Real peace is not in power, money, or weapons, but in deep inner peace.

Poison cannot penetrate the hand that is free of wounds.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

To love our enemy is impossible. The moment we understand our enemy, we feel compassion towards him her, and he she is no longer our enemy.

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering.
Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

Reconciliation is a deep practice that we can do with our listening and our mindful speech. To reconcile means to bring peace and happiness to nations, people, and members of our family... In order to reconcile, you have to possess the art of deep listening.

Mindfulness is to keep our consciousness alive to present reality.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

At the moment of his awakening at the foot of the bodhi tree, the Buddha declared, How strange--all beings possess the capacity to be awakened, to understand, to love, and to be free, yet they don't know it and they allow themselves to be carried away on the ocean of suffering.

Our spiritual ancestors have also given birth to us, and they, tol, continue to give birth to us.

Breathing in, I see all my ancestors in me: my mineral ancestors, plant ancestors, mammal ancestors, and human ancestors. My ancestors are always present, alive in every cell of my body, and I play a part in their immortality.

We need to practice mindfulness daily in order to fulfill our aspiration. We need to patiently pursue our aspiration, but we don't lose the present moment, we enjoy the present moment and we use it to realize our deepest desire.

The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.

Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy, in your daily life to stay rich.

Happiness is the cessation of suffering.

Because if the manifestations that happen in the present moment are beautiful and good, their continuation in the future will be also good and beautiful.

Silence is essential. We need silence just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.

Silence is something that comes from your heart, not from outside. Silence doesn't mean not talking and not doing things; it means that you are not disturbed inside. If you're truly silent, then no matter what situation you find yourself in you can enjoy the silence.

Every feeling is a field of energy. A pleasant feeling is an energy which can nourish. Irritation is a feeling which can destroy. Under the light of awareness, the energy of irritation can be transformed into and energy which nourishes.