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Thich Nhat Hanh

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01Undated

It is my conviction that there is no way to peace - peace is the way.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

02Undated

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

03Undated

Please don't wait until the doctors tell you that you are going to have a baby to begin to take care of it. It is already there. Whatever you are, whatever you do, your baby will get it. Anything you eat, any worries that are on your mind will be for him or her. Can you tell me that you cannot smile? Think of the baby, and smile for him, for her, for the future generations. Please don't tell me that a smile and your sorrow just don't go together. It's your sorrow, but what about your baby? It's not his sorrow, its not her sorrow.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

04Undated

If you do not know how to take care of yourself, and the violence in you, then you will not be able to take care of others. You must have love and patience before you can truly listen to your partner or child. If you are irritated you cannot listen. You have to know how to breath mindfully, embrace your irritation and transform it. Offer ONLY understand and compassion to your partner or child - This is the true practice of love.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

05Undated

Ignorance is in each cell of our body and our consciousness. It's like a drop of ink diffused in a glass of water.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

06Undated

This love meditation is adapted from the Visuddhimagga by Buddhaghosa, a 5th century C.E. systematization of the Buddha's teaching. We begin by practicing the love meditation on ourselves ("May I"). Until we are able to love and take care of ourselves, we cannot be much help to others. After that, we practice them on others ("May he/she/they") - first on someone we like, then on someone neutral to us, and finally on someone who makes us suffer. May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.May I be safe and free from injury.May I be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety.May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of of understanding and love.May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself.May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in myself.May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day.May I be able to live fresh, solid, and free.May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not indifferent.Love is not just the intention to love, but the capacity to reduce suffering, and offer peace and happiness. The practice of love increases our forbearance, our capacity to be patient and embrace difficulties and pain. Forbearance does mean that we try to suppress pain.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

07Undated

New cells are born everyday and old cells die, but they have neither funerals nor birthdays.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

08Undated

My joy is like Spring, so warmit makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.My pain is like a river of tears,so vast it fills the four oceans.Please call me by my true names,so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

09Undated

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.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

10Undated

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

11Undated

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

12Undated

The third element of love is mudita, joy. True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

13Undated

If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us - to make some hardship lighter. When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

14Undated

Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

15Undated

To take good care of ourselves, we must go back and take care of the wounded child inside of us. You have to practice going back to your wounded child every day. You have to embrace him or her terderly, like a big brother or a big sister. You have to talk to him, talk to her. And you can write a letter to the Little child in you, of two or three pages, to that you recognize his or her presence, and will do everything you can to heal his or her wounds.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

16Undated

We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

17Undated

The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering and then to take care of the suffering. The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgement. So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the child. Even if the mother doesn't understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her acto f taking the child into her arms with tenderness can alreadby bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

18Undated

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

19Undated

Do everything in mindfulness so you can really be there, so you can love.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

20Undated

Meditation consists of generating three kinds of energy: mindfulness, concentration, and insight. These three energies give us power to nourish happiness and take care of our suffering. Suffering may be there. But with the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we can embrace and take care of that suffering and nourish happiness at the same time.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

21Undated

Look deeply at your anger, as you would look at your own child. Don’t reject it or hate it. The point of meditation is not to turn yourself into a battlefield, one side opposing the other. Conscious breathing soothes and calms the anger, and mindfulness penetrates it. Anger is just an energy, and all energies can be transformed. Meditation is the art of using one kind of energy to transform another.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

22Undated

When feeling lonely or anxious, most of us have the habit of looking for distractions, which often leads to some form of unwholesome consumption -- whether eating a snack in the absence of hunger, mindlessly surfing the Internet, going on a drive, or reading. Conscious breathing is a good way to nourish body and mind with mindfulness.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

23Undated

Letting go takes a lot of courage sometimes. But once you let go, happiness comes very quickly. You won't have to go around search for it.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote

24Undated

The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous.

Thich Nhat Hanh / quote