But sharing does not mean wanting others to abandon their own spiritual roots and embrace your faith. That would be cruel. People are stable and happ… - Thích Nhất Hạnh
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But sharing does not mean wanting others to abandon their own spiritual roots and embrace your faith. That would be cruel. People are stable and happy only when they are firmly rooted in their own tradition and culture. To uproot them would make them suffer. There are already enough people uprooted from their tradition today, and they suffer greatly, wandering around like hungry ghosts, looking for something to fill their spiritual needs. We must help them return to their tradition. Each tradition must establish dialogue with its own people first, especially with those young people who are lost and alienated. During the last fifteen years while sharing the Buddha’s Dharma in the West, I always urged my Western friends to go back to their own traditions and rediscover the values that are there, those values they have not been able to touch before. The practice of Buddhist meditation can help them do so, and many have succeeded. Buddhism is made of non-Buddhist elements. Buddhism has no separate self. When you are a truly happy Christian, you are also a Buddhist. And vice versa.
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About
Thích Nhất Hạnh
Thích Nhất Hạnh (born as Nguyễn Xuân Bảo; 11 October 1926 – 22 January 2022) was an expatriate Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, and prolific author in both Vietnamese and English. Nhất Hạnh is most commonly referred to as Thích Nhất Hạnh, in which the Vietnamese title Thích (釋), derived from "Thích Ca" or "Thích Già" (釋迦) and applied to all Vietnamese Buddhist monks and nuns, means "of the Shakya (Shakyamuni Buddha) clan".
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Duc (pixiduc) from Paris, France. (CC BY-SA)
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Nhat Hanh
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Nguyễn Đình Lang
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Nguyễn Xuân Bảo
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Trừng Quang
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Phùng Xuân
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Thầy Nhất Hạnh
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Thiền Sư Nhất Hạnh
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Thich Nhat Hanh
If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others. When we get angry, we have to produce awareness: “I am angry. Anger is in me. I am anger.” That is the first thing to do.
Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk. We will enjoy our walk without thinking of arriving anywhere.
"We will not just say, "I love him very much," but instead, "I will do something so that he will suffer less." The mind of compassion is truly present when it is effective in removing another person's suffering."