Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.
Mindfulness practices enhance the connection between our body, our mind and everything else that is around us. Mindful living is the key to understanding our struggles with weight and to empowering us to control our weight.
We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.
We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.
Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.
I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.
In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger.
If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.
If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.
Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.
To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.
The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest. But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don't know how to rest. We may even come back more tired than before we left.
If you're a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.
Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.
We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.
We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.
Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.
Science and mindfulness complement each other in helping people to eat well and maintain their health and well-being.
One Buddha is not enough; we need to have many Buddhas.
Everything we touch in our daily lives, including our body, is a miracle. By putting the kingdom of god in the right place, it shows us it is possible to live happily right here, right now.
If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.
Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.
Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish.
You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.
Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.
The happiest moments are when we sit down and we feel the presence of our brothers and sisters, lay and monastic, who are practicing walking and sitting mediation.
Happiness is the cessation of suffering.
When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.
Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.
Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.
You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.
When we have peace, then we have a chance to save the planet. But if we are not united in peace, if we do not practice mindful consumption, we cannot save our planet.
Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.
It's normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self's agenda.
I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food.
When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair, there is no hope.
When I became a novice monk, I lived in a temple where the atmosphere was quite like in a family. The abbot is like a father and other monks are like your big brothers, your small, younger brothers. It is a kind of family.
Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.
In Buddhist culture, offering food to the monk symbolizes the action of goodness, and if you have no opportunity to support the practice of spirituality, then you are somehow left in the realm of darkness.
True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There's no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected.
Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.
Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.
If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.
With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.
I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice.
When we give ourselves the chance to let go of all our tension, the body's natural capacity to heal itself can begin to work.
In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.
Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.
People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.
