Quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh

The practice of being mindful of your breathing, your walking, your breakfast-making helps you go home to yourself in the here and now, to be mindful of what is going on in your body, your feelings and your perceptions[.]

Mindfulness is the energy that can recognize whatever is occurring, including your own negative habit energies coming up.

When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die. But with mindfulness, your attention will water the wilting flower. "I know you are here, beside me, and it makes me very happy." With attention, you will be able to discover many new and wonderful things — her joys, her hidden talents, her deepest aspirations. If you do not practice appropriate attention, how can you say you love her?

We need to practice mindfulness daily in order to fulfill our aspiration. We need to patiently pursue our aspiration, but we don't lose the present moment, we enjoy the present moment and we use it to realize our deepest desire

The S?t? school of meditation has the saying: "You cannot conceive the inconceivable. Not trying to conceive what is inconceivable is the essence of meditation.

Every step brings you home to the here and the now, so you can connect with yourself, your body, and your feelings. That is a real connection. You don't need a device that tells you how many friends you have or how many steps you've walked or how many calories you've burned.

The meditation on interdependence is to help one penetrate reality in order to be one with it, not to become caught up in philosophical opinion or meditation methods. The raft is used to cross the river. It isn't to be carried around on your shoulders. The finger which points at the moon isn't the moon itself.

If a person is disappointed and weary of life, it means a strong will is lacking. And if there is no strong will, how is it possible to live the life of someone who needs to practice perseverance and perhaps endure some hardship?

If you feel that your dreams aren't coming true, you might think that you need to do more, or to think and strategize more. In fact, what you might need is less—less noise coming to you from both inside and outside—so that you have the space for your heart's truest intention to germinate and flourish.

You can't take the other person out of you. You can't take yourself out of others. The suffering still continues.

It is because of the practice of meditation--stopping, calming, and looking deeply--that I have been able to nourish and protect the sources of my spiritual energy and continue this work.

Our deep aspiration is an immense source of energy.

The practice community is not a refuge for souls saddened by disappointment.

They persistently refused to support either armed party and believed that both sides were but the reflection of one reality, and the true enemies were not people, but ideology, hatred, and ignorance.

Es posible vivir felizmente en el momento presente. En realidad, este es el único momento».

We let individualism prevail in the twentieth century, and frankly, we have made a mess of it. We must begin anew for the twenty-first century; we need a new, different direction. We can no longer continue destroying ourselves and the planet we live on. With determination we can abandon the cult of individualism and the self, and act and live in harmony, in the spirit of interbeing.

The reality is that the past is gone; all that's left of it now is impressions or images lingering in the depths of our consciousness. Yet these images from the past continue to haunt us, block us, and otherwise influence our behavior in the present, causing us to say and do things we don't really want. We lose all our freedom.

If, in our heart, we still cling to anything — anger, anxiety, or possessions — we cannot be free.

With mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we can free ourselves from feelings of restlessness and craving, and realize that, right now, we already have more than enough conditions to be happy.

T]he good, the beautiful, and the true are to be found in everyone, but very few people know that. People think that the true, the beautiful, and the good exist somewhere else, in someone else. They don't know that they are true, beautiful, and good at their core.

When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds, there could be no rain, and there would be no flower. Without time, the flower could not bloom. In fact, the flower is made entirely of non flower elements; it has no independent, individual existence. It 'inter-is' with everything else in the universe.

you should cultivate freedom, including freedom from your own concepts and ideas.

Because God the Sonnets is made of the energy of the Holy Spirit, He is the door for us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven...The Buddha is also described as a door, a teacher, who shows us the way in this life.

Those who do not share the concerns of the Sangha cannot be a part of the Sangha.