Nhat Hanh Quotes

298 Sourced Quotes

Meditation is not meant to help us avoid problems or run away from difficulties. It is meant to allow positive healing to take place. To meditate is to learn how to stop—to stop being carried away by our regrets about the past, our anger or despair in the present, or our worries about the future.

Nhat Hanh
Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

Nhat Hanh
When your mind is liberated, your heart floods with compassion.

Nhat Hanh
The Buddha said, 'Nothing can survive without food.' This is a very simple and very deep truth. Love and hate are both living phenomena. If we do not nourish our love, it will die and may turn into hate. If we want love to last, we have to nurture it and give it food every day. Hate is the same; if we don't feed it, it cannot survive.

Nhat Hanh
Meditation means to look deeply, to touch deeply, so we can realize we are already home.

Nhat Hanh
When we enter the present moment deeply, our regrets and sorrows disappear, and we discover life with all its wonders.

Nhat Hanh
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.

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

Nhat Hanh
Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, any time.

Nhat Hanh
We are determined not to take as the aim of our life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure, nor to accumulate wealth while millions are hungry and dying. We are committed to living simply and sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.

Nhat Hanh
If you are truly present and know how to take care of the present moment as best you can, you are doing your best for the future already.

Nhat Hanh
If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. 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.

Nhat Hanh
Our appointment with life is in the present moment. If we do not have peace and joy right now, when will we have peace and joy?

Nhat Hanh
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.

Nhat Hanh
If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that when the truth comes and knocks on our door, we won't want to let it in.

Nhat Hanh
People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.

Nhat Hanh
Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment. Fully alive, fully aware.

Nhat Hanh
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.

Nhat Hanh
When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted. If we find ways to cherish and develop our spiritual heritage, we will avoid the kind of alienation that is destroying society, and we will become whole again.... Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions, and this will benefit everyone.

Nhat Hanh
It is often said that the Buddha's teaching is only a raft to help you cross the river, a finger pointing to the moon. Don't maistake the finger for the moon. The raft is not the shore. If we cling to the raft, if we cling to the finger, we miss everything. We cannot, in the name of the finger or the raft kill each other. Human life is more precious than any ideology, any doctrine.

Nhat Hanh
We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness and strength so we can help transform the situation.

Nhat Hanh
The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.

Nhat Hanh
Every day we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life..., our way of looking at things, we will know ohw to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.

Nhat Hanh
There are always some people who are ready to embrace a doctrine, a notion, a dogma, and they miss the real teaching.

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

Nhat Hanh
We are always running, and it has become a habit. We struggle all the time, even during our sleep. We are at war with ourselves, and we can easily start a war with others.

Nhat Hanh
In Buddhism, there are three gems: Buddha, the awakened one; Dharma,
the way of understanding and loving; and Sangha, the community that
lives in harmony and awareness. The three are interrelated, and at
times it is hard to distinguish one from another. In everyone there
is the capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love. So in
ourselves we find Buddha, and we also find Dharma and Sangha.

Nhat Hanh
To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.
To meditate means to observe.
Your smile proves it.
It proves that you are being gentle with yourself,
that the sun of awareness is shining in you,
that you have control of your situation.
You are yourself,
and you have acquired some peace.

Nhat Hanh
The buddha called suffering a holy truth, because our suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your suffering and let it reveal to you the way to peace.

Nhat Hanh
If we know how to create the energy of love, understanding, compassion, and beauty, then we can contribute a lot to the world.

Nhat Hanh