Top 635 Quotes & Sayings by Nhat Hanh - Page 10

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

With understanding, those we love will certainly flower.

The Buddha said that if we know how to look deeply into our suffering and recognize what feeds it, we are already on the path of emancipation.

The first thing I learned was that even if you have a lot of money and power and fame, you can still suffer very deeply.

Meditation is not an escape from life... but preparation for really being in life.

Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift!

Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you.

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.

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.

When we smile, the muscles around our mouth are stretched and relaxed, just like doing yoga. Smiling is mouth yoga. We release the tension from our face as we smile. Others who run into us notice it, even strangers, and are likely to smile back. It is a wonderful chain reaction that we can initiate, touching the joy in anyone we encounter. Smiling is an ambassador of goodwill.

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.

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.

When practiced to its fullest, mindful eating turns a simple meal into a spiritual experience, giving us a deep appreciation of all that went into the meal's creation as well a deep understanding of the relationship between the food on our table, our own health, and our planet's health.

"I am breathing in and liberating my mind. I am breathing out and liberating my mind." One practices like this.

Each minute we spend worrying about the future and regretting the past is a minute we miss in our appointment with life - a missed opportunity to engage life and to see that each moment gives us the chance to change for the better, to experience peace and joy.

At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that's precisely the point.

As a population, if a large number of people make even small moves to eat less meat and more plant-based foods, the livestock industry will shrink. Over time, farmers will find other crops to support their livelihoods. Through such collective awakening we can make a difference in our world.

When it comes to health and well-being, regular exercise is about as close to a magic potion as you can get.

Anyone can practice some nonviolence, even soldiers. Some army generals, for example, conduct their operations in ways that avoid killing innocent people; this is a kind of nonviolence.

It is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of practice

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.

Inside every one of us is a garden, and every practitioner has to go back to their garden and take care of it. Maybe in the past, you left in untended for a long time. You should know exactly what is going on in your own garden, and try to put everything in order. Restore the beauty; restore the harmony in your garden. If it is well tended, many people will enjoy your garden.

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.

There's no way I can be tossed around like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.

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

The necessary condition for the existence of peace and joy is the awareness that peace and joy are available.

Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what's the use of seeing?

I am you and you are me; it is obvious we inter-are.

In the mountains of wisdom no climbing is in vain.

The miracle is to walk on the earth.

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 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.

Sometimes we believe that happiness is not possible in the here and now, that we need a few more conditions to be happy. So we run toward the future to get the conditions we think are missing. But by doing so we sacrifice the present moment; we sacrifice true life.

To reconcile conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of both sides.

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.

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

Just listen Be peace.

When we speak, we want to say something sweet, but we don't say something sweet because something is ordering us from deep down to say something unkind. We want to open our hearts to people, but we can't do it, because we are being ordered around by the sufferings we have concealed deep in our consciousness.

Maybe we have enough technology to save the planet but it is not enough because the people are not ready.

The 7 factors of enlightenment: mindfullness, investigation of mental objects, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity.

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.

The problem that faces us is the problem of awakening. What we lack is not an ideology or doctrine that will save the world. What we lack is mindfulness of what we are, of what our situation really is. We need to wake up in order to rediscover our human sovereignty. We are riding a horse that is running out of control. The way of salvation is a new culture in which human beings are encouraged to rediscover their deepest nature.

When we eat mindfully, we consume exactly what we need to keep our bodies, our minds, and the Earth healthy. When we practice like this, we reduce suffering for ourselves and for others.

Water flows from high in the mountains Water runs deep in the Earth Miraculously, water comes to us, And sustains all life.

When someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, one allows it to spill all over the people around him or her. When you suffer, you make people around you suffer. That's very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won't spread it everywhere.

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

Follow your breathing, dwell mindfully on your steps, and soon you will find your balance.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge. You have to be able to transcend your knowledge the way people climb a ladder. If you are on the fifth step of a ladder and think that you are very high, there is no hope for you to climb to the sixth.

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

We must look deeply into the nature of our volition to see whether it is pushing us in the direction of liberation from suffering and toward peace and compassion, or in the direction of affliction and misery. What is it that we really want deep in our heart? Is it money, fame, power? Or is it finding inner peace, being able to live life fully and enjoy the present moment?

Scientists tell us that we have enough technology to save our planet. . . . Yet we don't take advantage of this new technology. . . . The technological has to work hand-in-hand with the spiritual. Our spiritual life is the element that can bring about the energies of peace, calm, brotherhood, understanding, and compassion. Without that, our planet doesn't stand a chance.

In April, we cannot see sunflowers in France, so we might say the sunflowers do not exist. But the local farmers have already planted thousands of seeds, and when they look at the bare hills, they may be able to see the sunflowers already. The sunflowers are there. They lack only the conditions of sun, heat, rain and July. Just because we cannot see them does not mean that they do not exist.

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.

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.

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

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

Even if we cannot be completely non-voilent, by being vegetarian we are going in the direction of non-voilence

Happiness is not an individual matter.

Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come. I think people in the mass media, journalists, film makers and others, you can contribute to the collective awakening if you are awake and then your life will embody that awakening.