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As You Embrace Your Pain, You Get Relief And You Find Out How To Handle That Emotion. And If You Know How To Handle The Fear, Then You Have Enough Insight In Order To Solve The Problem. The Problem Is To Not Allow That Anxiety To Take Over.

-Nhat Hanh

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As You Embrace Your

Nhat Hanh

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As You Embrace Your Pain, You Get Relief And You Find Out How To Handle That Emotion. And If You Know How To Handle The Fear, Then You Have Enough Insight In Order To Solve The Problem. The Problem Is To Not Allow That Anxiety To Take Over.

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Peace Ca N Exist Only In The Present Moment. It Is Rid Iculous To Say "wait Until I Fi Nish This, Then I Will Be Free To Live In Peace." What Is "this" ? A Diploma, A Job, A House, The Payment Of A Debt? If Yo U Th Ink That Way, Peace Wi Ll Never Come. There Is Always Another "th Is" That Wi Ll Fo Llow The Present One. If You Are Not Living In Peace At This Moment, You Will Never Be Able To . If You Truly Wa Nt To Be At Peace, You Must Be At Peace Right Now. Otherwise, There Is Only "the Hope Of Peace Some Day.

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If You Truly Get In Touch With A Piece Of Carrot, You Get In Touch With The Soil, The Rain, The Sunshine. You Get In Touch With Mother Earth And Eating In Such A Way, You Feel In Touch With True Life, Your Roots, And That Is Meditation. If We Chew Every Morsel Of Our Food In That Way We Become Grateful And When You Are Grateful, You Are Happy.

If We Are Not Fully Ourselves, Truly In The Present Moment, We Miss Everything.

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The Moment You Wake Up, Right Away, You Can Smile... You Are Aware That A New Day Is Beginning, That Life Is Offering You Twenty-four Brand New Hours To Live, And That That's The Most Precious Of Gifts.

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Take My Hand. We Will Walk. We Will Only Walk. We Will Enjoy Our Walk Without Thinking Of Arriving Anywhere.

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The Heart Of The Matter Is Always Our Oneness With Divine Spirit, Our Union With All Life.

Seek Peace. When You Have Peace Within, Real Peace With Others Will Be Possible.

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.

So If We Love Someone, We Should Train In Being Able To Listen. By Listening With Calm And Understanding, We Can Ease The Suffering Of Another Person. [true Love. A Practice For Awakening The Heart.]

Happiness Is The Cessation Of Suffering. Well-being.

When We Speak, We Want To Say Something Sweet, But We Don't Say Something Sweet Because Something Is Ordering Us From Deep Down To Say Something Unkind. We Want To Open Our Hearts To People, But We Can't Do It, Because We Are Being Ordered Around By The Sufferings We Have Concealed Deep In Our Consciousness.

We Need To Be Aware Of The Suffering, But Retain Our Clarity, Calmness And Strength So We Can Help Transform The Situation.

Inside Every One Of Us Is A Garden, And Every Practitioner Has To Go Back To Their Garden And Take Care Of It. Maybe In The Past, You Left In Untended For A Long Time. You Should Know Exactly What Is Going On In Your Own Garden, And Try To Put Everything In Order. Restore The Beauty; Restore The Harmony In Your Garden. If It Is Well Tended, Many People Will Enjoy Your Garden.

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.

Anxiety, The Illness Of Our Time, Comes Primarily From Our Inability To Dwell In The Present Moment.

The Seed Of Suffering In You May Be Strong, But Don't Wait Until You Have No More Suffering Before Allowing Yourself To Be Happy.

From Time To Time, To Remind Ourselves To Relax And Be Peaceful, We May Wish To Set Aside Some Time For A Retreat, A Day Of Mindfulness, When We Can Walk Slowly, Smile, Drink Tea With A Friend, Enjoy Being Together As If We Are The Happiest People On Earth.

The Energy Of Compassion Is Very Strong. We Suffer. That Is Real. But We Have Learned Not To Get Angry And Not To Allow Ourselves To Be Carried By Anger. We Realize Right Away That That Is Fear. That Is Corruption.

To Live In The Present Moment Is A Miracle.

Live In The Present

With A Practice, We Can Always Remain Alive In The Present Moment. With Mindfulness, You Can Establish Yourself In The Present In Order To Touch The Wonders Of Life That Are Available In That Moment.

For Things To Reveal Themselves To Us, We Need To Be Ready To Abandon Our Views About Them.

You Can Use Your Life In A Very Useful And Intelligent Way. You Can Very Well Transform That Negative Energy Into A Positive Energy That Empowers You And Makes Life Meaningful.

If We Are Not Fully Ourselves, Truly In The Present Moment, We Miss Everything. When A Child Presents Himself To You With His Smile, If You Are Not Really There - Thinking About The Future Or The Past, Or Preoccupied With Other Problems - Then The Child Is Not Really There For You. The Technique Of Being Alive Is To Go Back To Yourself In Order For The Child To Appear Like A Marvellous Reality. Then You Can See Him Smile And You Can Embrace Him In Your Arms.

You Would Not Cry If You Knew That By Looking Deeply Into The Rain You Would Still See The Cloud.

Our Mind Is The Foundation Of All Our Actions, Whether They Are Actions Of Body, Speech, Or Mind, I.e., Thinking. Whatever We Think, Say, Or Do Arises From Our Mind. What Our Consciousness Consumes Becomes The Substance Of Our Life, So We Have To Be Very Careful Which Nutriments We Ingest.

Do Not Say That I'll Depart Tomorrow Because Even Today I Still Arrive.

Peace Is Every Step

The Kingdom Of God Is Available To You In The Here And The Now. But The Question Is Whether You Are Available To The Kingdom. Our Practice Is To Make Ourselves Ready For The Kingdom So That It Can Manifest In The Here And The Now. You Don't Need To Die In Order To Enter The Kingdom Of Heaven. In Fact, You Have To Be Truly Alive In Order To Do So.

The Most Precious Gift We Can Offer Others Is Our Presence.

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.

Knowing That Anger Makes Me Ugly, I Smile Instead. I Return To Myself And Meditate On Love.

Smile, Breathe And Go Slowly." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Monk, Author And Peace Activist.

If We Chew Every Morsel Of Our Food, In That Way We Become Grateful, And When You Are Grateful, You Are Happy.

If You Come To Plum Village In The Summertime, You See Many Lotus Flowers. Without The Mud The Lotus Flowers Cannot Grow. You Cannot Separate Lotus Flowers From The Mud. It Is The Same With Understanding And Love. These Are Two Kinds Of Flowers That Grow On The Ground Of Suffering

Without Collective Awakening The Catastrophe Will Come. I Think People In The Mass Media, Journalists, Film Makers And Others, You Can Contribute To The Collective Awakening If You Are Awake And Then Your Life Will Embody That Awakening.

The Bad Things, Don't Do Them. The Good Things, Try To Do Them. Try To Purify, Subdue Your Own Mind. That Is The Teaching Of All Buddhas.

If You Have A Friend Who Suffers, You Have To Help Him.«my Dear Friend, You Are On Safe Ground. Everything Is Okay Now. Why Do You Continue To Suffer? Don't Go Back To The Past. It's Only A Ghost; It's Unreal». And Whenever We Recognize That These Are Only Movies And Pictures, Not Reality, We Are Free. That Is The Practice Of Mindfulness.

The Best Way To Take Care Of The Future Is To Take Care Of The Present Moment.

The Miracle Is To Walk On The Earth.

Understanding And Love Are Not Two Separate Things, But Just One. To Develop Understanding, You Have To Practice Looking At All Living Beings With The Eyes Of Compassion. When You Understand, You Cannot Help But Love. And When You Love, You Naturally Act In A Way That Can Relieve The Suffering Of People.

Loneliness Cannot Be Alleviated Just By The Coming Together Of Two Bodies, Unless There Is Also Good Communication, Understanding, And Loving Kindness.

That Is Why Those Who Are Not Capable Of Being There In The Present Moment, They Don't Really Live Their Life - They Live Like Dead People.

When You Suffer, You Can Look Deeply At Your Situation And Find The Many Blessings That Are Already Surrounding You. It Is Wonderful To Sit With A Pen And Paper And Write Down All The Conditions For Happiness That Are Already There, Already Available To You Right In This Moment.

There Is No Real Separation Between Self Or No-self. Anything You Do For Yourself You Do For The Society At The Same Time. And Anything You Do For Society You Do For Yourself Also.

Be Peace, Don't Just Talk About It.

It's Wonderful To Be Alive And To Walk On Earth.

It Is Best If We Do Not Listen To Or Look At The Person Whom We Consider To Be The Cause Of Our Anger. Like A Fireman, We Have To Pour Water On The Blaze First And Not Waste Time Looking For The One Who Set The House On Fire. "breathing In, I Know That I Am Angry. Breathing Out, I Know That I Must Put All My Energy Into Caring For My Anger." So We Avoid Thinking About The Other Person, And We Refrain From Doing Or Saying Anything As Long As Our Anger Persists. If We Put All Our Mind Into Observing Our Anger, We Will Avoid Doing Any Damage That We May Regret Later.

The Miracle Is Not To Walk On Water, Or In The Air, Or On Burning Charcoal. The Miracle Is To Walk On Earth. You Breathe In, You Become Aware Of The Fact That You Are Alive. You Are Alive And You Are Walking On This Beautiful Planet. The Greatest Of Of All Miracles Is To Be Alive.

The Secret To Happiness Is Happiness Itself. Wherever We Are, Any Time, We Have The Capacity To Enjoy The Sunshine, The Presence Of Each Other, The Wonder Of Our Breathing. We Don't Have To Travel Anywhere Else To Do So. We Can Be In Touch With These Things Right Now.

When We Are Angry, Our Anger Is Our Very Self. To Suppress Or Chase Away Our Anger Is To Suppress Or Chase Away Ourselves. When Anger Is Born, We Can Be Aware That Anger Is An Energy In Us, And We Can Change That Energy Into Another Kind Of Energy. If We Want To Transform It, First We Have To Know How To Accept It.

Shallow Understanding Accompanies Poor Compassion; Great Understanding Goes With Great Compassion.

The Secret Of Buddhism Is To Remove All Ideas, All Concepts, In Order For The Truth To Have A Chance To Penetrate, To Reveal Itself.

Fear, Separation, Hate And Anger Come From The Wrong View That You And The Earth Are Two Separate Entities, The Earth Is Only The Environment. You Are In The Centre And You Want To Do Something For The Earth In Order For You To Survive. That Is A Dualistic Way Of Seeing.

The Most Important Thing That We Can Do For The Healing Of Our World Is To Hear Inside Ourselves, The Sounds Of The Earth Crying.

There Are Some People Who Eat An Orange But Don't Really Eat It. They Eat Their Sorrow, Fear, Anger, Past, And Future.

Recognize That It Is Not Really Possible To Steadily Help Others When We Ourselves Are Not In Good Physical, Mental, Or Emotional State. We May Be Able To Carry On For A While, But Sooner Or Later We End Up Feeling Depleted, Discouraged, Or Weak. We Cannot Keep On Giving When We Are Running On An Empty Tank. We Need To Be Solid.

You Are Not An Observer, You Are A Participant.

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.

Be Angry, It's Okay. To Be Angry, That Is Very Human. And To Learn How To Smile At Your Anger And Make Peace With Your Anger Is Very Nice.

When The Energy Of Compassion And Love Touches Us, Healing Establishes Itself.

To Make Your Voice Heard Is Difficult. Sometimes We Have To Burn Ourselves In Order To Be Heard. It Is Out Of Compassion That You Do That. It Is The Act Of Love And Not Of Despair.

Without Being Peace, We Cannot Do Anything For Peace. If We Cannot Smile, We Cannot Help Other People To Smile. If We Are Not Peaceful, Then We Cannot Contribute To The Peace Movement.

To Make Peace, Our Hearts Must Be At Peace With The World.

We Talk About Social Service, Service To The People, Service To Humanity, Service To Others Who Are Far Away, Helping To Bring Peace To The World - But Often We Forget That It Is The Very People Around Us That We Must Live For First Of All. If You Cannot Serve Your Wife Or Husband Or Child Or Parent - How Are You Going To Serve Society? If You Cannot Make Your Own Child Happy, How Do You Expect To Be Able To Make Anyone Else Happy? If All Our Friends In The Peace Movement Or Of Service Communities Of Any Kind Do Not Love And Help Each Other, Whom Can We Love And Help?

Most Of Us Experience A Life Full Of Wonderful Moments And Difficult Moments. But For Many Of Us, Even When We Are Most Joyful, There Is Fear Behind Our Joy.

Are We Treating Our Body Kindly By The Way We Eat, By The Way We Drink, By The Way We Work? Are We Treating Ourselves With Enough Joy And Tenderness And Peace? Or Are We Feeding Ourselves With Toxins That We Get From The Market - The Spiritual, Intellectual, Entertainment Market?

Just Listen Be Peace.

You Can Only Recognize Your Happiness Against The Background Of Suffering.

When You Hold A Child In Your Arms, Or Hug Your Mother, Or Your Husband, Or Your Friend, If You Breathe In And Out Three Times, Your Happiness Will Be Multiplied At Least Tenfold.

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.

Live In Such A Way That You Embody True Peace, That You Can Be Peace In Every Moment Of Your Daily Life. It Is Possible For Everyone To Generate The Energy Of Peace In Every Step.

The Terrorists, They Have The Wrong Perception. They Believe That The Other Group Is Trying To Destroy Them As A Religion, As A Civilization. So They Want To Abolish Us, To Kill Us Before We Can Kill Them. And The Antiterrorist May Think Very Much The Same Way - That These Are Terrorists And They Are Trying To Eliminate Us, So We Have To Eliminate Them First. Both Sides Are Motivated By Fear, By Anger, And By Wrong Perception.

The More We See, The More We Understand. The More We Understand, The Easier It Is For Us To Have Compassion And Love. Understanding Is The Source Of Love. Understanding Is Love Itself. Understanding Is Another Name For Love; Love Is Another Name For Understanding.

The Desire To Be A Free Person Is Very Worthwhile. To Be Free Means You Are No Longer The Victim Of Fear, Anger, Craving, Or Suspicion.

I Would Not Be Happy If I Could Not Become A Monk. They Call It The Beginner's Mind - The Deep Intention, The Deepest Desire That A Person May Have. And I Can Say That Until This Day, This Beginner's Mind Is Still Alive In Me.

Every Moment Is A Moment Of Happiness.

Moments Of Happiness

To Abandon The Present In Order To Look For Things In The Future Is To Throw Away The Substance And Hold Onto The Shadow.

We Who Have Touched War Have A Duty To Bring The Truth About War To Those Who Have Not Had A Direct Experience Of It. We Are The Light At The Tip Of The Candle. It Is Really Hot, But It Has The Power Of Shining And Illuminating. If We Practice Mindfulness, We Will Know How To Look Deeply Into The Nature Of War And, With Our Insight, Wake People Up So That Together We Can Avoid Repeating The Same Horrors Again And Again.

Together We Can

When You Begin To See That Your Enemy Is Suffering, That Is The Beginning Of Insight.

When You Have A Stomach Ache You Don't Tell Your Stomach To Go Away.

True Love Always Brings Joy To Ourself And The One We Love. If Our Love Does Not Bring Joy To Both Of Us, It Is Not True Love.

When We Are Present, Life Is Also Present.

Being Vegetarian Here Also Means That We Do Not Consume Dairy And Egg Products, Because They Are Products Of The Meat Industry. If We Stop Consuming, They Will Stop Producing. Only Collective Awakening Can Create Enough Determination For Action.

Just Breathing And Smiling Can Make Us Very Happy, Because When We Breathe Consciously We Recover Ourselves Completely And Encounter Life In The Present Moment.

By Living Deeply In The Present Moment We Can Understand The Past Better & Prepare For A Better Future.

Look Deeply; I Arrive In Every Second To Be A Bud On A Spring Branch ... To Be A Jewel Hiding Itself In A Stone.

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.

In The Past There Were People Who Were Not Rich But Contented With Their Living Style, Laughing And Happy All Day. But When The New Rich People Appear, People Look At Them And Ask Why Don't I Have A Life Like That Too, A Beautiful House, Car And Garden And They Abandon Their Values.

If You Find Yourself In Some Difficulty, Step Aside, And Allow Buddha To Take Your Place. The Buddha Is In You.

Finding Yourself

We Fear That This Moment Will End, That We Won't Get What We Need, That We Will Lose What We Love, Or That We Will Not Be Safe. Often, Our Biggest Fear Is The Knowledge That One Day Our Bodies Will Cease Functioning. So Even When We Are Surrounded By All The Conditions For Happiness, Our Joy Is Not Complete.

When You Sit In A Café, With A Lot Of Music In The Background And A Lot Of Projects In Your Head, You're Not Really Drinking Your Coffee Or Your Tea. You're Drinking Your Projects, You're Drinking Your Worries. You Are Not Real, And The Coffee Is Not Real Either. Your Coffee Can Only Reveal Itself To You As A Reality When You Go Back To Your Self And Produce Your True Presence, Freeing Yourself From The Past, The Future, And From Your Worries. When You Are Real, The Tea Also Becomes Real And The Encounter Between You And The Tea Is Real. This Is Genuine Tea Drinking.

Because You Are Alive, Everything Is Possible.

Go Back And Take Care Of Yourself. Your Body Needs You, Your Feelings Need You, Your Perceptions Need You. Your Suffering Needs You To Acknowledge It. Go Home And Be There For All These Things.

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.

Walking Meditation

The War Is In Our Souls.

In Modern Society Most Of Us Don't Want To Be In Touch With Ourselves; We Want To Be In Touch With Other Things Like Religion, Sports, Politics, A Book - We Want To Forget Ourselves. Anytime We Have Leisure, We Want To Invite Something Else To Enter Us, Opening Ourselves To The Television And Telling The Television To Come And Colonize Us.

There's No Way I Can Be Tossed Around Like A Bottle Slapped Here And There On The Waves.

Freedom Is The Real Foundation Of Happiness.

When We Come Into Contact With The Other Person, Our Thoughts And Actions Should Express Our Mind Of Compassion, Even If That Person Says And Does Things That Are Not Easy To Accept. We Practice In This Way Until We See Clearly That Our Love Is Not Contingent Upon The Other Person Being Lovable.

Love Is The Capacity To Take Care, To Protect, To Nourish. If You Are Not Capable Of Generatng That Kind Of Energy Toward Yourself - If You Are Not Capable Of Taking Care Of Yourself, Of Nourishing Yourself, Of Protecting Yourself - It Is Very Difficult To Take Care Of Another Person. In The Buddhist Teaching, It's Clear That To Love Oneself Is The Foundation Of The Love Of Other People. Love Is A Practice. Love Is Truly A Practice.

One Included All, And All Were Contained In One.

In One Sheet Of Paper, We See Everything Else, The Cloud, The Forest, The Logger. I Am, Therefore You Are. You Are, Therefore I Am. That Is The Meaning Of The Word "interbeing." We Interare.

The True Miracle Is Not Walking On Water Or Walking In Air, But Simply Walking On This Earth.

If We Are At War With Our Parents, Our Family, Our Society, Or Our Church, There Is Probably A War Going On Inside Us Also, So The Most Basic Work For Peace Is To Return To Ourselves And Create Harmony Among The Elements Within Us - Our Feelings, Our Perceptions, And Our Mental States. That Is Why The Practice Of Meditation, Looking Deeply, Is So Important.

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