Thích Nhất Hạnh Quotes

When we observe or listen to other people, we often don’t see them clearly or really hear what they’re saying. We see and hear our projections and prejudices instead.

Life is available only in the present moment.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Anger is like a howling baby, suffering and crying. The baby needs his mother to embrace him. You are the mother for your baby, your anger. The moment you begin to practice breathing mindfully in and out, you have the energy of a mother, to cradle and embrace the baby. Just embracing your anger, just breathing in and breathing out, that is good enough. The baby will feel relief right away.

Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness

Chanting from the heart: Buddhist ceremonies and daily practices (2007)

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

I am a continuation like the rain is the continuation of the cloud.

Dear friends, do you know that you are lucky people? You don't have any cows to lose.

Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.

To be truly present we have to stop our thinking. This is the secret of success.

I am inviting you to go deeper, to learn and to practice so that you become someone who has a great capacity for being solid, calm, and without fear, because our society needs people like you who have these qualities, and your children, our children, need people like you, in order to go on, in order to become solid, and calm, and without fear.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

During the war in Vietnam, we young Buddhists organized ourselves to help victims of the war rebuild villages that had been destroyed by the bombs. Many of us died during service, not only because of the bombs and the bullets, but because of the people who suspected us of being on the other side. We were able to understand the suffering of both sides, the communists and the anti-communists. We tried to be open to both, to understand this side and to understand that side, to be one with them. That is why we did not take a side, even though the whole world took sides. We tried to tell people our perception of the situation: that we wanted to stop the fighting. But the bombs were so loud. Sometimes we had to burn ourselves alive to get the message across, but even then the world couldn't hear us.