Quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. It's so clear. Mindfulness is the energy and practice that helps you go back to the here and now so that you encounter life.

A guided meditation is an opportunity to look deeply into the mind, to sow wholesome seeds there, and to strengthen and cultivate those seeds so that they may become the means for transforming the suffering in us.

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

Don't agonize over the past, because the past is gone. Don't worry about the future, because the future is not yet here.

Suppose you want something very much. You think that if you don't get that something, happiness won't be possible. You get caught in that idea. But, in reality, there are people who have that thing who are miserable, and there people who don't have that thing who are perfectly happy.

Living peacefully and happily is the best way to show our gratitude and is our greatest gift for the world and the next generation.

If you can see your mother as a fragile five-year-old girl, then you can forgive her very easily with compassion. The five-year-old girl who was your mother is always alive in her and in you.

We have an idea of happiness. We believe that only certain conditions will make us happy. But it is often our very idea of happiness that prevents us from being happy.

Feeling the heat of anger right now, I close my eyes and look into the future. Three hundred years from now, where will you, where will I, be?

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.3

vow to speak purely and lovingly. When my mouth is fragrant with right speech, a flower blooms in the garden of my heart.

We cannot be by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be with everything else in the cosmos.

Breath remains the vehicle to unite body and mind and to open the gate to wisdom.

TO ME, THE definition of hell is simple: it is a place where there is no understanding and no compassion.

Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing, both inside and around yourself.

Someone asked me, "Aren't you worried about the state of the world?" I allowed myself to breathe and then I said, "What is most important is not to allow your anxiety about what happens in the world to fill your heart. If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and you will not be able to help.

Machine thinking is the opposite of mindfulness. If we're really engaged in mindfulness when walking along the path to the village, then we will consider the act of each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality.

When there is mist on the mountains, it is beautiful, and when there is no mist, it is also beautiful. All four seasons are beautiful. [...] There is nothing to stop you from being in touch with life in the present moment. The question is, Do you have eyes that can see the sunset, feet that can touch the earth? [...] Don't think that happiness will be possible only when conditions around you become perfect. Happiness lies in your own heart.

Fear is based on ignorance. Lack of understanding is also a primary cause of anger.

Our practice is to water the flower in our loved one, and not bring them more garbage.

Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism in China, how much merit he had earned by building temples all over the country. Bodhidharma said, "None whatsoever." But if you wash one dish in mindfulness, if you build one small temple while dwelling deeply in the present moment — not wanting to be anywhere else, not caring about fame or recognition — the merit from that act will be boundless, and you will feel very happy.

You have to realize that happiness is not something you find at the end of the road. You have to understand that it is here, now.

The only place where we can touch Jesus and the Kingdom of God is within us.

The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you