Quotes by Thích Nhất Hạnh

Our own life has to be our message.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Wrong perceptions cannot be removed by guns and bombs. They should be removed by deep listening, compassionate listening, and loving space.

You can practice deep listening in order to relieve the suffering in us, and in the other person. That kind of listening is described as compassionate listening. You listen only for the purpose of relieving suffering in the other person.

Be Yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just Be.

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.

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

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

Deep listening helps us to recognize the existence of wrong perceptions in the other person and wrong perceptions in us.

Seek peace. When you have peace within, real peace with others will be possible.

With understanding, those we love will certainly flower.

If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love.

When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.

Working for peace in the future is to work for peace in the present moment.

It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available -- more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don't have to run into the future in order to get more.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

Every path, every street in the world is your walking meditation path.

Your presence is a miracle.

Wisdom and joy arise when you learn to exist now rather than in the nonexistent past or future.

If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.

Simple practices like conscious breathing and smiling are very important. They can change our civilization.

If the people who hurt us have anger or desperation within them then they suffer. When you see that someone suffers, you might be motivated by a desire to help him not to suffer anymore.

To educate people for peace, we can use words or we can speak with our lives.

You are like fireworks. You go out into your children, your friends, your society, and the whole world.

Human beings are innately loving beings. When we fail to love, it is because an element of ignorance has intruded into our experience, submerging our natural impulse to love.

I would not be happy if I could not become a monk. They call it the beginner's mind -- the deep intention, the deepest desire that a person may have. And I can say that until this day, this beginner's mind is still alive in me.

If we are free from attachment, we can easily recognize ourselves in other people, in different forms of manifestation, and then we don't have to suffer.

It is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love. Every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love.

The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love; love is another name for understanding.

Compassion is a mind that removes the suffering that is present in the other.

To condemn someone to death is to surrender; it proves that you failed. You are not able to change him, to change her; you have to kill him or her. You surrender. ... You only demonstrate your lack of capacity, your helplessness. This is failure.

They criticize the silent ones. They criticize the talkative ones. They criticize the moderate ones. There is no one in the world who escapes criticism.

The desire to be a free person is very worthwhile. To be free means you are no longer the victim of fear, anger, craving, or suspicion.

That is why those who are not capable of being there in the present moment, they don't really live their life -- they live like dead people.

When we change our daily lives -- the way we think, speak and act -- we change the world.

The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.

The more compassionate you are, the more generous you can be. The more generous you are, the move loving friendliness you cultivate to help the world.

To be or not to be is not the question.

The question is whether you can transcend these notions.

Our nature is the nature of no birth and no death. It is impossible for a cloud to pass from being into nonbeing. And that is true with a beloved person. They have not died. They have continued in many new forms and you can look deeply and recognize them in you and around you.

A bodhisattva doesn't have to be perfect. Anyone who is aware of what is happening and who tries to wake up other people is a bodhisattva. We are all bodhisattvas, doing our best.

The root-word buddha means to wake up, to know, to understand; and he or she who wakes up and understands is call a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature.

Looking deeply into the wrong perceptions, ideas, and notions that are at the base of our suffering is the most important practice in Buddhist meditation.

To take care of the environment, we must first take care of the environmentalist.

In us, there is a river of feelings, in which every drop of water is a different feeling, and each feeling relies on all the others for its existence. To observe it, we just sit on the bank of the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows by, and disappears.

The electron is first of all your concept of the electron.

We need to move beyond the idea of 'environment' and fall back in love with Mother Earth.

Wisdom is a living stream, not an icon to be preserved in a museum. Only when a practitioner finds the spring of wisdom in his or her own life can it flow to a future generation.

Awareness is a mirror reflecting the four elements. Beauty is a heart that generates love and a mind that is open.

We try many ways to be awake, but our society still keeps us forgetful. Meditation is to help us remember.

Loneliness cannot be alleviated just by the coming together of two bodies, unless there is also good communication, understanding, and loving kindness.

You have an appointment with life, an appointment that is in the here and now.

When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.

Breathe and you dwell in the here and now, breath and you see impermanence is life.

Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in.

Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out.

Breathing in, I am grateful for this moment.

Breathing out, I smile.

Breathing in, I am aware of the preciousness of this day.

Breathing out, I vow to live deeply in this day.

Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live. Select a vocation that helps realise your ideal of compassion.

Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.

The joy of life is born of concentration. When you are having a cup of tea, the value of that experience depends on your concentration. You have to drink the tea with 100 percent of your concentration.

It's like a mother, when the baby is crying, she picks up the baby and she holds the baby tenderly in her arms. Your pain, your anxiety is your baby. You have to take care of it. You have to go back to yourself, to recognize the suffering in you, embrace the suffering, and you get a relief.

We try to live every moment like that, dwelling peacefully in the present moment, and respond to events with compassion.

It's like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud you cannot have lotus flowers. Without suffering, you have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate.

Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself.

Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

The moment you understand the importance of loving yourself, you will stop hurting others.

Only your compassion and your loving kindness are invincible, and without limit.

Our walking is not a means to an end. We walk for the sake of walking.

Every moment is a moment of happiness.

We ourselves need love; it's not only society, the world outside, that needs love. But we can't expect that love to come from outside of us. We should ask the question whether we are capable of loving ourselves as well as others.

When we shout at the oak tree, the oak tree is not offended. When we praise the oak tree, it doesn't raise its nose. We can learn the Dharma from the oak tree; therefore, the oak tree is part of our Dharmakaya. We can learn from everything that is around, that is in us.

An oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do. If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, then we are all in trouble.

If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.

Without understanding, your love is not true love. You must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the one you love.

I have lost my smile, but don't worry. The dandelion has it.

We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

The roots of war are in the way we live our daily lives -- the way we develop our industries, build up our society, and consume goods.

In the Light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.

When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With the smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world.

Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy.

Enlightenment, peace, and joy will not be granted by someone else. The well is within us, And if we dig deeply in the present moment, The water will spring forth.

In all the practice centers in the tradition of Plum Village whenever the phone rings or the clock chimes in the dining hall, people stop everything they are doing and breathe consciously, releasing all thinking and any tension.

Our smile will bring happiness to us and to those around us. Even if we spend a lot of money on gifts for everyone in our family, nothing we buy could give them as much happiness as the gift of our awareness, our smile. And this precious gift costs nothing.

Without full awareness of breathing, there can be no development of meditative stability and understanding.

Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late.

With mindfulness -- the practice of peace -- we can begin by working to transform the wars in ourselves. Conscious breathing helps us do this.

We are determined not to take as the aim of our life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure, nor to accumulate wealth while millions are hungry and dying. We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.

As long as you find something beautiful, good, and true to believe in and abide by, you have the equivalent of God in your life.

I don't have to hate any person because I can always start anew, I can always reconcile.

Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk. We will enjoy our walk without thinking of arriving anywhere.

The fact that I am standing there and washing bowls is a wondrous reality. I'm being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions.

May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize our true home.

Your true home is in the here and the now.

I hold my face in my two hands. No, I am not crying. I hold my face in my two hands to keep the loneliness warm -- two hands protecting, two hands nourishing, two hands preventing my soul from leaving me in anger.

Live in such a way that you embody true peace, that you can be peace in every moment of your daily life.  It is possible for everyone to generate the energy of peace in every step.

If love is in our hearts, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle. Because understanding is the very foundation of love, words and actions that emerge from our love are always helpful.

Before you do something to help, your presence already can bring some relief.

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.

To meditate means to observe.

Your smile proves it.

It proves that you are being gentle with yourself,

that the sun of awareness is shining in you,

that you have control of your situation.

You are yourself,

and you have acquired some peace.

I do many kinds of work, and if you forbid me from binding books, from gardening, from writing poetry, from practicing walking meditation, from teaching children, I will be very unhappy. To me, work is pleasant. Pleasant or unpleaseant depends on our way of looking.

We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible... If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest.

Reality is reality. It transcends every concept. There is no concept which can adequately describe it, not even the concept of interdependence.

When your mind is liberated, your heart floods with compassion.

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.

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.

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.

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.