Thích Nhất Hạnh Quotes

When we see that some suffering or some pain is coming up, we don't try to run away from it. In fact, we have to go back and take care of it.

failures are not your own self. See to it that you are free from them. Only when you can relinquish them can you really be free and no longer assailed by them.

Each of us is like the waves and also like the water. Sometimes we’re excited, noisy, and agitated like the waves. Sometimes we’re tranquil like still water. When water is calm, it reflects the blue sky, the clouds, and the trees. Sometimes, whether we’re at home, work, or school, we become tired, agitated, or unhappy and we need to transform into calm water. We already have calmness in us; we just need to know how to make it manifest.

If we want peace, we have to be peace. Peace is a practice and not a hope.

Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your perceptions need you, your feeling needs you. The wounded child in you needs you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.

Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves.

If we take good care of ourselves, we help everyone. We stop being a source of suffering to the world, and we become a reservoir of joy and freshness. Here and there are people who know how to take good care of themselves, who live joyfully and happily. They are our strongest support. Whatever they do, they do for everyone.

We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon.

When we’re able to love our enemy, that person is no longer our enemy. The idea of “enemy” vanishes and is replaced by the person who is suffering and needs our compassion.

Breathing in, I know I have an unpleasant feeling. Breathing out, I am here for this unpleasant feeling. Breathing in, I calm the feeling in me. Breathing out, I calm the feeling in me.

If we continue to hold on to a dream for something in the future, we lose the present moment. And if we lose the present, we lose everything.

Buddha taught, “Breathing in, I recognize my feeling. Breathing out, I calm my feeling.” If you practice this, not only will your feeling be calmed down but the energy of mindfulness will also help you see into the nature and roots of your anger. Mindfulness helps you be concentrated and look deeply. This is true meditation. The insight will come after some time of practice. You will see the truth about yourself and the truth about the person who you thought to be the cause of your suffering. This insight will release you from your anger and transform the roots of anger in you. The transformation in you will also help transform the other person. Mindful speaking can bring real happiness, and unmindful speech can kill. When someone tells us something that makes us happy, that is a wonderful gift. But sometimes someone says something to us that is so cruel and distressing that we feel like committing suicide. We lose our joie de vivre.

Mindfulness is the awareness of what is going on in us and around us in the present moment. It requires stopping, looking deeply, and recognizing both the uniqueness of the moment and its connection to everything that has gone on before and will go on in the future.

When mindfulness is present, the Buddha and the Holy Spirit are already there,

If we lose the present moment, we lose life.