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First, Let Us Light The Torch Of Our Awareness And Learn Again How To Drink Tea, Eat, Wash Dishes, Walk, Sit, Drive, And Work In Awareness. We Do Not Have To Be Swept Along By Circumstances. We Are Not Just A Leaf Or A Log In A Rushing River. With Awareness, Each Of Our Daily Acts Takes On A New Meaning, And We Discover That We Are More Than Machines, That Our Activities Are Not Just Mindless Repetitions. We Find That Life Is A Miracle, The Universe Is A Miracle, And We Too Are A Miracle.

-Nhat Hanh

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First, Let Us Light

Nhat Hanh

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First, Let Us Light The Torch Of Our Awareness And Learn Again How To Drink Tea, Eat, Wash Dishes, Walk, Sit, Drive, And Work In Awareness. We Do Not Have To Be Swept Along By Circumstances. We Are Not Just A Leaf Or A Log In A Rushing River. With Awareness, Each Of Our Daily Acts Takes On A New Meaning, And We Discover That We Are More Than Machines, That Our Activities Are Not Just Mindless Repetitions. We Find That Life Is A Miracle, The Universe Is A Miracle, And We Too Are A Miracle.

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

The Seven Factors Of Awakening Are Mindfulness, Investigation Of Phenomena, Diligence, Joy, Ease, Concentration, And Letting Go.

Our Smile Affirms Our Awareness And Determination To Live In Peace And Joy.

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.

In The Moment When We Are Able To Smile, To Look At Ourselves With Compassion, Our World Begins To Change.

It Is Possible To Live Twenty-four Hours A Day In A State Of Love. Every Movement, Every Glance, Every Thought, And Every Word Can Be Infused With Love.

An Emotion Is Only An Emotion. It's Just A Small Part Of Your Whole Being. You Are Much More Than Your Emotion. An Emotion Comes, Stays For A While, And Goes Away, Just Like A Storm. If You're Aware Of That, You Won't Be Afraid Of Your Emotions.

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.

Eating Mindfully Is A Most Important Practice Of Meditation. We Can Eat In A Way That We Restore The Cookie Of Our Childhood. The Present Moment Is Filled With Joy And Happiness. If You Are Attentive, You Will See It.

If We Are Not Able To Smile, Then The World Will Not Have Peace.

Be Mindful 24 Hours A Day, Not Just During The One Hour You May Allot For Formal Meditation Or Reading Scripture And Reciting Prayers. Each Act Must Be Carried Out In Mindfulness.

The Situation The Earth Is In Today Has Been Created By Unmindful Production And Unmindful Consumption. We Consume To Forget Our Worries And Our Anxieties. Tranquilising Ourselves With Over-consumption Is Not The Way.

The Present Moment Is Filled With Joy And Happiness. If You Are Attentive, You Will See It. (21)

Science And Mindfulness Complement Each Other In Helping People To Eat Well And Maintain Their Health And Well-being.

The 7 Factors Of Enlightenment: Mindfullness, Investigation Of Mental Objects, Energy, Joy, Tranquility, Concentration And Equanimity.

Real Peace Is Not In Power, Money, Or Weapons, But In Deep Inner Peace.

Working For Peace In The Future Is To Work For Peace In The Present Moment.

Meditation Is, First Of All, A Tool For Surveying Our Territory So We Can Know What Is Going On. With The Energy Of Mindfulness, We Can Calm Things Down, Understand Them, And Bring Harmony Back To The Conflicting Elements Inside Us.

Wherever We Are We Have The Capacity To Enjoy The Sunshine, The Presence Of Each Other And The Wonder Of Our Breathing.

Just Listen Be Peace.

At First Glance, That Might Seem A Little Silly: Why Put So Much Stress On A Simple Thing? But That's Precisely The Point.

You Are Not An Observer, You Are A Participant.

There Is No Way To Happiness - Happiness Is The Way.

Recently, One Friend Asked Me, "how Can I Force Myself To Smile When I Am Filled With Sorrow? It Isn't Natural." I Told Her She Must Be Able To Smile To Her Sorrow, Because We Are More Than Our Sorrow. A Human Being Is Like A Television Set With Millions Of Channels. If We Turn The Buddha On, We Are The Buddha. If We Turn Sorrow On Then We Are Sorrow. If We Turn A Smile On, We Really Are The Smile. We Can Not Let Just One Channel Dominate Us. We Have The Seed Of Everything In Us, And We Have To Seize The Situation In Our Hand, To Recover Our Own Sovereignty.

The War Is In Our Souls.

I Clean This Teapot With The Kind Of Attention I Would Have Were I Giving The Baby Buddha Or Jesus A Bath.

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.

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.

Walking Meditation

The Practice Of Zen Is To Eat, Breathe, Cook, Carry Water, And Scrub The Toilet — To Infuse Every Act Of Body, Speech, And Mind — With Mindfulness, To Illuminate Every Leaf And Pebble, Every Heap Of Garbage, Every Path That Leads To Our Mind's Return Home.

When You Plant Lettuce, If It Does Not Grow Well, You Don't Blame The Lettuce. You Look For Reasons It Is Not Doing Well. It May Need Fertilizer, Or More Water, Or Less Sun. You Never Blame The Lettuce. Yet If We Have Problems With Our Friends Or Family, We Blame The Other Person. But If We Know How To Take Care Of Them, They Will Grow Well, Like The Lettuce. Blaming Has No Positive Effect At All, Nor Does Trying To Persuade Using Reason And Arguments. That Is My Experience. No Blame, No Reasoning, No Argument, Just Understanding.

Positive Thinking

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.

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.

I Promise Myself That I Will Enjoy Every Minute Of The Day That Is Given Me To Live.

If We Know How To Create The Energy Of Love, Understanding, Compassion, And Beauty, Then We Can Contribute A Lot To The World.

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.

The Source Of Love Is Deep In Us And We Can Help Others Realize A Lot Of Happiness. One Word, One Action, One Thought Can Reduce Another Person’s Suffering And Bring That Person Joy.

If You Think That Peace And Happiness Are Somewhere Else And You Run After Them, You Will Never Arrive.

Enlightenment, Peace, And Joy Will Not Be Granted By Someone Else. The Well Is Within Us, And If We Dig Deeply In The Present Moment, The Water Will Spring Forth.

When We Walk Like (we Are Rushing), We Print Anxiety And Sorrow On The Earth. We Have To Walk In A Way That We Only Print Peace And Serenity On The Earth... Be Aware Of The Contact Between Your Feet And The Earth. Walk As If You Are Kissing The Earth With Your Feet.

We Are Here To Awaken From Our Illusion Of Separateness.

The Larger Your Beloved Community, The More You Can Accomplish In The World.

Beloved Community

Seeds Can Produce Seeds Seeds Can Produce Formations. Formations Can Produce Seeds. Formations Can Produce Formations.

To Think In Terms Of Either Pessimism Or Optimism Oversimplifies The Truth. The Problem Is To See Reality As It Is.

Changing Is Not Just Changing The Things Outside Of Us. First Of All We Need The Right View That Transcends All Notions Including Of Being And Non-being, Creator And Creature, Mind And Spirit. That Kind Of Insight Is Crucial For Transformation And Healing.

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.

To Be Beautiful Means To Be Yourself. You Don’t Need To Be Accepted By Others. You Need To Accept Yourself.

Suppose You Are Drinking A Cup Of Tea. When You Hold Your Cup, You May Like To Breathe In, To Bring Your Mind Back To Your Body, And You Become Fully Present. And When You Are Truly There, Something Else Is Also There - Life, Represented By The Cup Of Tea. In That Moment You Are Real, And The Cup Of Tea Is Real. You Are Not Lost In The Past, In The Future, In Your Projects, In Your Worries. You Are Free From All Of These Afflictions. And In That State Of Being Free, You Enjoy Your Tea. That Is The Moment Of Happiness, And Of Peace.

When We Shout At The Oak Tree, The Oak Tree Is Not Offended. When We Praise The Oak Tree, It Doesn't Raise Its Nose. We Can Learn The Dharma From The Oak Tree; Therefore, The Oak Tree Is Part Of Our Dharmakaya. We Can Learn From Everything That Is Around, That Is In Us.

We Humans Have Lost The Wisdom Of Genuinely Resting And Relaxing. We Worry Too Much. We Don't Allow Our Bodies To Heal, And We Don't Allow Our Minds And Hearts To Heal.

Everything Inside And Around Us Wants To Reflect Itself In Us. We Don't Have To Go Anywhere To Obtain The Truth. We Only Need To Be Still And Things Will Reveal Themselves In The Still Water Of Our Heart.

When You Say Something Really Unkind, When You Do Something In Retaliation Your Anger Increases. You Make The Other Person Suffer, And He Will Try Hard To Say Or To Do Something Back To Get Relief From His Suffering. That Is How Conflict Escalates.

If We Are Too Busy, If We Are Carried Away Every Day By Our Projects, Our Uncertainty, Our Craving, How Can We Have The Time To Stop And Look Deeply Into The Situation-our Own Situation, The Situation Of Our Beloved One, The Situation Of Our Family And Of Our Community, And The Situation Of Our Nation And Of The Other Nations?

The Electron Is First Of All Your Concept Of The Electron.

Peace Is Present Right Here And Now, In Ourselves And In Everything.

Peace And Serenity

Peace Is Every Step

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.

I Have Arrived. I Am Home. My Destination Is In Each Step.

Meditation Is Offering Your Genuine Presence To Yourself In Every Moment.

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

When We Change Our Daily Lives - The Way We Think, Speak And Act - We Change The World.

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.

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

Aware Of The Suffering Caused By The Destruction Of Life, I Am Committed To Cultivating Compassion And Learning Ways To Protect The Lives Of People, Animals, Plants, And Minerals. I Am Determined Not To Kill, Not To Let Others Kill, And Not To Support Any Act Of Killing In The World, In My Thinking, And In My Way Of Life.

Every Path, Every Street In The World Is Your Walking Meditation Path.

Walking Meditation

Every Breath We Take, Every Step We Make, Can Be Filled With Peace, Joy And Serenity.

Often, We Feel That We Need A Leader Outside Of Ourselves -a Buddha, A Gandhi, Or A Martin Luther King, Jr.- To Show The Way. But We Have The Buddha Inside Of Us. We Have Gandhi And King Inside Of Us As Well. We Are Interconnected. We Don't Need To Wait For Some Other Person To Be The Change We Want To See In The World

The Miracle Is To Walk On The Earth.

In Zen Buddhism, The Greater Your Doubt, The Greater Will Be Your Enlightenment. That Is Why Doubt Can Be A Good Thing. If You Are Too Sure, If You Always Have Conviction, Then You May Be Caught In Your Wrong Perception For A Long Time.

Each Moment You Are Alive Is A Gem. It Needs You To Breathe Gently For The Miracles To Be Displayed.

Inspirational Life

Most Of Your Suffering Comes From The Lack Of Understanding Of Yourself And Others.

Lack Of Understanding

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.

Every One Of Us Needs A Home. The World Needs A Home. There Are So Many Young People Who Are Homeless. They May Have A Building To Live In, But They Are Homeless In Their Hearts. That Is Why The Most Important Practice Of Our Time Is To Give Each Person A Home.

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.

If We Are Free From Attachment, We Can Easily Recognize Ourselves In Other People, In Different Forms Of Manifestation, And Then We Don't Have To Suffer.

It Is My Conviction That There Is No Way To Peace - Peace Is The Way.

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

Every Feeling Is A Field Of Energy. A Pleasant Feeling Is An Energy Which Can Nourish. Irritation Is A Feeling Which Can Destroy. Under The Light Of Awareness, The Energy Of Irritation Can Be Transformed Into And Energy Which Nourishes.

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.

May We Awaken From The Dream That We Are Different.

We Try Many Ways To Be Awake, But Our Society Still Keeps Us Forgetful. Meditation Is To Help Us Remember.

The Source Of A True Smile Is An Awakened Mind. Smiling Helps You Approach The Day With Gentleness And Understanding.

Today Is The Most Important Day Of Our Lives.

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

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.

Each Breath We Take, Each Step We Make, Each Smile We Realize, Is A Positive Contribution To Peace... A Necessary Step In The Direction Of Peace For The World.

With Understanding, Those We Love Will Certainly Flower.

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

Peace Is Every Step

To Be Or Not To Be Is Not The Question. The Question Is Whether You Can Transcend These Notions.

Be Or Not To Be

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.

I Still Arrive, In Order To Laugh And To Cry, To Fear And To Hope. The Rhythm Of My Heart Is The Birth And Death Of All That Is Alive.

Each Moment Is A Chance For Us To Make Peace With The World, To Make Peace Possible For The World, To Make Happiness Possible For The World.

Love Is The Capacity To Take Care, To Protect, To Nourish.

Human Beings Are Innately Loving Beings. When We Fail To Love, It Is Because An Element Of Ignorance Has Intruded Into Our Experience, Submerging Our Natural Impulse To Love.

If You Are A Poet, You Will See Clearly That There Is A Cloud Floating In This Sheet Of Paper? ?to Be? Is To Inter-be. We Cannot Just Be By Ourselves Alone. We Have To Inter-be With Every Other Thing. This Sheet Of Paper Is, Because Everything Else Is.

Meditation Means To Look Deeply, To Touch Deeply, So We Can Realize We Are Already Home.

Each Second Of Life Is A Miracle

Each Thought, Each Action In The Sunlight Of Awareness Becomes Sacred.

We Can Smile, Breathe, Walk, And Eat Our Meals In A Way That Allows Us To Be In Touch With The Abundance Of Happiness That Is Available. We Are Very Good At Preparing To Live, But Not Very Good At Living. We Know How To Sacrifice Ten Years For A Diploma, And We Are Willing To Work Very 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. Every Breath We Take, Every Step We Make, Can Be Filled With Peace, Joy, And Serenity. We Need Only To Be Awake, Alive In The Present Moment.

Our Own Lives Are The Instruments With Which We Experiment With Truth.

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.

Live In The Moment

We Will Not Just Say, "i Love Him Very Much," But Instead, "i Will Do Something So That He Will Suffer Less." The Mind Of Compassion Is Truly Present When It Is Effective In Removing Another Person's Suffering.

The Joy Of Life Is Born Of Concentration. When You Are Having A Cup Of Tea, The Value Of That Experience Depends On Your Concentration. You Have To Drink The Tea With 100 Percent Of Your Concentration.

We Should Be Able To Bring The Practice Of Meditation Hall Into Our Daily Lives. We Need To Discuss Among Ourselves How To Do It. Do You Practice Breathing Between Phone Calls? Do You Practice Smiling While Cutting Carrots? Do You Practice Relaxation After Hard Hours Of Work? These Are Practical Questions. If You Know How To Apply Meditation To Dinner Time, Leisure Time, Sleeping Time, It Will Penetrate Your Daily Life, And It Will Also Have A Tremendous Effect On Social Concerns.

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.

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.

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.

If We Have Fear And Despair In Us, We Cannot Remove The Suffering In Society.

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.

I Know That We Do Not Know Enough. 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.

Because Of Your Smile, You Make Life More Beautiful.

What Happens In The Present Moment? In The Present Moment, You Are Producing Thought, Speech, And Action. And They Continue In The World.

When We Say, "i Take Refuge In The Buddha," We Should Also Understand That "the Buddha Takes Refuge In Me," Because Without The Second Part The First Part Is Not Complete. The Buddha Needs Us For Awakening, Understanding, And Love To Be Real Things And Not Just Concepts. They Must Be Real Things That Have Real Effects On Life. Whenever I Say, "i Take Refuge In The Buddha," I Hear "the Buddha Takes Refuge In Me."

You Have To Learn How To Help A Wounded Child While Still Practicing Mindful Breathing. You Should Not Allow Yourself To Get Lost In Action. Action Should Be Meditation At The Same Time.

May Our Heart's Garden Of Awakening Bloom With Hundreds Of Flowers.

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

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.

Love Doesn't Have Any Color. Other People May Discriminate Against Us, But What Is More Important Is Whether We Discriminate Against Them. If We Don't Do That, We Are A Happier Person, And As A Happier Person, We Are In A Position To Help. And Anger, This Is Not A Help.

In Our Consciousness, There Are Many Negative Seeds And Also Many Positive Seeds. The Practice Is To Avoid Watering The Negative Seeds, And To Identify And Water The Positive Seeds Every Day.

Many Of Us Worry About The Situation Of The World . . . We Need To Remain Calm, To See Clearly. Meditation Is A Means To Be Aware, And To Try To Help.

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?

Thinking Negative

Without Understanding, Your Love Is Not True Love. You Must Look Deeply In Order To See And Understand The Needs, Aspirations, And Suffering Of The One You Love.

We Have The Statue Of Liberty On The East Coast. But In The Name Of Freedom, People Have Done A Lot Of Damage. I Think We Have To Build A Statue Of Responsibility On The West Coast In Order To Counterbalance. Because Liberty Without Responsibility Is Not True Liberty. We Are Not Free To Destroy.

It Is Possible That The Next Buddha Will Not Take The Form Of An Individual. The Next Buddha May Take The Form Of A Community -a Community Practicing Understanding And Loving Kindness, A Community Practicing Mindful Living. This May Be The Most Important Thing We Can Do For The Survival Of The Earth.

The Other Person Has Wrong Perceptions About Himself And About Us. And We Have Wrong Perceptions About Ourselves And The Other Person. And That Is The Foundation For Violence And Conflict And War.

If You Really Know How To Live, What Better Way To Start The Day Than With A Smile?

Peace Is Every Step

To Meditate With Mindful Breathing Is To Bring Body And Mind Back To The Present Moment So That You Do Not Miss Your Appointment With Life.

To Take Care Of The Environment, We Must First Take Care Of The Environmentalist.

Letting Go Gives Us Freedom And Freedom Is The Only Condition For Happiness

Transformations Is The Word. We Can Do The Work Of Transformation Only In The Present Moment

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.

To Condemn Someone To Death Is To Surrender; It Proves That You Failed. You Are Not Able To Change Him, To Change Her; You Have To Kill Him Or Her. You Surrender. ... You Only Demonstrate Your Lack Of Capacity, Your Helplessness. This Is Failure.

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.

We Have More Possibilities Available In Each Moment Than We Realize.

The Raft Is Used To Cross The River. It Isn't To Be Carried Around On Your Shoulders. The Finger Which Points At The Moon Isn't The Moon Itself.

In Each Of Us Is A Seed Of Understanding. The Seed Is God.

To Educate People For Peace, We Can Use Words Or We Can Speak With Our Lives.

One Included All, And All Were Contained In One.

Impermanence Is Very Important, Crucial For Life. That Is Why Instead Of Complaining About Impermanence You Have To Say "long Live Impermanence!"

Looking Deeply Into The Wrong Perceptions, Ideas, And Notions That Are At The Base Of Our Suffering Is The Most Important Practice In Buddhist Meditation.

One Day I Saw A Picture Of The Buddha On A Buddhist Magazine And He Was Sitting On The Grass, And He Was Sitting On The Grass, Very Peaceful, Smiling, And I Was Impressed. Around Me People Were Not Like That, So I Had The Desire To Be Someone Like Him. I Nourished That Kind Of Desire Until The Age Of Sixteen, When I Had The Permission From My Parents To Go And Ordain As A Buddhist Monk.

Breathing In, There Is Only The Present Moment. Breathing Out, It Is A Wonderful Moment.

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.

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.

If I Am Incapable Of Washing Dishes Joyfully, If I Want To Finish Them Quickly So I Can Go And Have Dessert, I Will Be Equally Incapable Of Enjoying My Dessert. With The Fork In My Hand, I Will Be Thinking About What To Do Next, And The Texture And Flavor Of The Dessert, Together With The Pleasure Of Eating It, Will Be Lost. I Will Always Be Dragged Into The Future, Never Able To Live In The Present Moment.

Every Moment Is A Moment Of Happiness.

Moments Of Happiness

When You Drop Bombs On The Enemy, You Drop Those Same Bombs On Yourself, Your Own Country.

Attachment To Views Is The Greatest Impediment To The Spiritual Path.

The Moment You Understand The Importance Of Loving Yourself, You Will Stop Hurting Others.

Loving Yourself

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.

Unconditional Love

In True Dialogue, Both Sides Are Willing To Change.

To Develop Understanding, You Have To Practice Looking At All Living Things With The Eyes Of Compassion.

Peace Is Present Right Here And Now, In Ourselves And In Everything We Do And See. Every Breath We Take, Every Step We Take, Can Be Filled With Peace, Joy, And Serenity. The Question Is Whether Or Not We Are In Touch With It. We Need Only To Be Awake, Alive In The Present Moment.

To Reconcile Conflicting Parties, We Must Have The Ability To Understand The Suffering Of Both Sides.

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.

Silence Is Essential. We Need Silence Just As Much As We Need Air, Just As Much As Plants Need Light. If Our Minds Are Crowded With Words And Thoughts, There Is No Space For Us.

If We Believe That Tomorrow Will Be Better, We Can Bear A Hardship Today

I Am Determined Not To Kill, Not To Let Others Kill, And Not To Condone Any Act Of Killing In The World, In My Thinking, And In My Way Of Life. We Cannot Support Any Act Of Killing; No Killing Can Be Justified. But Not To Kill Is Not Enough ... If In Your Thinking You Allow The Killing To Go On, You Also Break This Precept. We Must Be Determined Not To Condone Killing, Even In Our Minds.

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?

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.

Due To Attachment, Anger, And Foolishness, I Have Committed Numberless Mistakes In Speech, Deed And Thought. I Bow My Head And Repent. I Vow From Today To Begin Anew, To Live Day And Night In Mindfulness, And Not To Repeat My Previous Mistakes.

Meditation Can Help Us Embrace Our Worries, Our Fear, Our Anger; And That Is Very Healing. We Let Our Own Natural Capacity Of Healing Do The Work.

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.

Our Capacity To Make Peace With Another Person And With The World Depends Very Much On Our Capacity To Make Peace With Ourselves.

Smile, Breathe And Go Slowly.

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.

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.

You Must Be Completely Awake In The Present To Enjoy The Tea.

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.

At The Moment Of Waking Up, Before Getting Out Of Bed, Get In Touch With Your Breath

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.

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.

If You Are Capable Of Brushing Your Teeth In Mindfulness, Then You Will Be Able To Enjoy The Time When You Take A Shower, Cook Your Breakfast, Sip Your Tea.

As Long As You Find Something Beautiful, Good, And True To Believe In And Abide By, You Have The Equivalent Of God In Your Life.

Sometimes You Have A Flash Of Insight, But It's Not Strong Enough To Survive. Therefore In The Practice Of Buddhism, Samadhi Is The Power To Maintain Insight Alive In Every Moment, So That Every Speech, Every Word, Every Act Will Bear The Nature Of That Insight. It Is A Question Of Cleaning. And You Clean Better If You Are Surrounded By Those Who Are Practicing Exactly The Same.

If We Are Peaceful, If We Are Happy, We Can Smile, And Everyone In Our Family, Our Entire Society, Will Benefit From Our Peace.

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.

Happiness Is Not An Individual Matter. When You Are Able To Bring Relief, Or Bring Back The Smile To One Person, Not Only That Person Profits, But You Also Profit.

When You Enter Deeply Into This Moment, You See The Nature Of Reality, And This Insight Liberates You From Suffering And Confusion. Peace Is Already There To Some Extent: The Problem Is Whether We Know How To Touch It.

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.

You Have Two Gardens: Your Own Garden And That Of Your Beloved. First, You Have To Take Care Of Your Own Garden And Master The Art Of Gardening. In Each One Of Us There Are Flowers And There Is Also Garbage. The Garbage Is The Anger, Fear, Discrimination, And Jealousy Within Us. If You Water The Garbage, You Will Strengthen The Negative Seeds. If You Water The Flowers Of Compassion, Understanding, And Love, You Will Strengthen The Positive Seeds. What You Grow Is Up To You.

The Wave Does Not Need To Die To Become Water. She Is Already Water.

Guarding Knowledge Is Not A Good Way To Understand. Understanding Means To Throw Away Your Knowledge.

The Present Moment Is The Only Moment Available To Us And It Is The Door To All Other Moments.

My Actions Are My Only True Belongings. I Cannot Escape The Consequences Of My Actions. My Actions Are The Ground On Which I Stand.

What You Are Looking For Is Already In You...you Already Are Everything You Are Seeking.

I Don't Have To Hate Any Person Because I Can Always Start Anew, I Can Always Reconcile.

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.

When We Hug, Our Hearts Connect And We Know That We Are Not Separate Beings. Hugging With Mindfulness And Concentration Can Bring Reconciliation, Healing, Understanding, And Much Happiness.

Peace In Every Step. The Shining Red Sun Is My Heart. Each Flower Smiles With Me. How Green, How Fresh All That Grows. How Cool The Wind Blows. Peace Is Every Step. It Turns The Endless Path To Joy.

In All The Practice Centers In The Tradition Of Plum Village Whenever The Phone Rings Or The Clock Chimes In The Dining Hall, People Stop Everything They Are Doing And Breathe Consciously, Releasing All Thinking And Any Tension.

Happiness And Suffering Support Each Other. To Be Is To Inter-be. It's Like The Left And The Right. If The Left Is Not There, The Right Cannot Be There. The Same Is True With Suffering And Happiness, Good And Evil.

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

A Human Being Is Like A Television Set With Millions Of Channels.... We Cannot Let Just One Channel Dominate Us. We Have The Seed Of Everything In Us, And We Have To Recover Our Own Sovereignty.

Let Us Look At Wealth And Poverty. The Affluent Society And The Deprived Society Inter-are. The Wealth Of One Society Is Made Of The Poverty Of The Other. "this Is Like This, Because That Is Like That." Wealth Is Made Of Non-wealth Elements, And Poverty Is Made By Non-poverty Elements. [...] So We Must Be Careful Not To Imprison Ourselves In Concepts. The Truth Is That Everything Contains Everything Else. We Cannot Just Be, We Can Only Inter-be. We Are Responsible Fo Everything That Happens Around Us.

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.

It Is Possible To Live Happily In The Here And The Now. So Many Conditions Of Happiness Are Available - More Than Enough For You To Be Happy Right Now. You Don't Have To Run Into The Future In Order To Get More.

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.

With Mindfulness, You Can Establish Yourself In The Present In Order To Touch The Wonders Of Life That Are Available In That Moment.

When You Feel Anger Arising, Remember To Return To Your Breathing And Follow It. The Other Person May See That You Are Practicing, And She May Even Apologize.

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.

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