Nhat Hanh Quotes

Around us, life bursts with miracles, a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops.

You are what you want to become. Why search anymore? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The kingdom of God, the Pure Land, nirvana, happiness, and liberation are all you.

Reconciliation is to understand both sides;

to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer.

What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

Some people live as though they are already dead.

There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.

To be beautiful means to be yourself.

You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.

But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.

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

Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is not the other person. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person. When we are armed with compassion and understanding, we fight not against other people, but against the tendency to invade, to dominate, and to exploit.

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.

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

Only the present moment contains life.

Be Yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just Be.

I have lost my smile, but don't worry. The dandelion has it.

You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.

Because you are alive, everything is possible.

People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one's perception of reality.

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

We all have the seeds of love in us.We can develop this wonderful source of energy, nurturing the unconditional love that does not expect anything in return.

In the Light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.

Walk so that your footprints bear only the marks of peaceful joy and complete freedom. To do this you have to learn to let go. Let go of your sorrows, let go of your worries. That is the secret of walking meditation.

If you think that peace and happiness are somewhere else and you run after them, you will never arrive.

There are many ways to calm a negative energy without suppressing or fighting it. You recognize it, you smile to it, and you invite something nicer to come up and replace it; you read some inspiring words, you listen to a piece of beautiful music, you go somewhere in nature, or you do some walking meditation.

Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk. We will enjoy our walk without thinking of arriving anywhere.

If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.

Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

If we are not empty, we become a block of matter. We cannot breathe, we cannot think. To be empty means to be alive, to breathe in and to breathe out. We cannot be alive if we are not empty. Emptiness is impermanence, it is change. We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible.

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.

To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.

Smile, breathe and go slowly." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen monk, author and peace activist.

Today is the most important day of our lives.

May our heart's garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.

Many people think excitement is happiness.... But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.

Freedom is the basic condition for you to touch life, to touch the blue sky, the trees, the birds, the tea, and the other person.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

I am inviting you to go deeper, to learn and to practice so that you become someone who has a great capacity for being solid, calm, and without fear, because our society needs people like you who have these qualities, and your children, our children, need people like you, in order to go on, in order to become solid, and calm, and without fear.

Letting go gives us freedom and freedom is the only condition for happiness

If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today

The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.

This is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.

It's like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud you cannot have lotus flowers. Without suffering, you have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate.

We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

When you have a toothache, you think that not having a toothache will make you very happy. But when you don't have a toothache, often you are still not happy. If you practice awareness, you suddenly become very rich, very very happy.