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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.

-Nhat Hanh

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Nhat Hanh

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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.

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I Do Not Watch Television. But I'm In Touch With The World. If Anything Really Important Happens, Someone Will Tell Me.

Fear Keeps Us Focused On The Past Or Worried About The Future. If We Can Acknowledge Our Fear, We Can Realize That Right Now We Are Okay. Right Now, Today, We Are Still Alive, And Our Bodies Are Working Marvelously. Our Eyes Can Still See The Beautiful Sky. Our Ears Can Still Hear The Voices Of Our Loved Ones.

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 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.

Loving Ourselves Means Loving Our Community. When We Are Capable Of Loving Ourselves, Nourishing Ourselves Properly, Not Intoxicating Ourselves, We Are Already Protecting And Nourishing Society.

It Is Possible To Live Happily In The Here And 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.

Inspirational Life

You Who Are Journalists, Writers, Citizens, You Have The Right And Duty To Say To Those You Have Elected That They Must Practice Mindfulness, Calm And Deep Listening, And Loving Speech. This Is Universal Thing, Taught By All Religions.

Anger Is Like A Storm Rising Up From The Bottom Of Your Consciousness. When You Feel It Coming, Turn Your Focus To Your Breath.

When Our Beliefs Are Based On Our Own Direct Experience Of Reality And Not On Notions Offered By Others, No One Can Remove These Beliefs From Us.

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

The Necessary Condition For The Existence Of Peace And Joy Is The Awareness That Peace And Joy Are Available.

No Blame, No Reasoning, No Argument, Just Understanding. If You Understand, And You Show That You Understand, You Can Love, And The Situation Will Change.

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.

Every Morning, When We Wake Up, We Have Twenty-four Brand-new Hours To Live. What A Precious Gift!

We All Need A Place That Is Safe And Wholesome Enough For Us To Return For Refuge. In Buddhism, That Refuge Is Mindfulness.

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.

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.

Wisdom Is A Living Stream, Not An Icon To Be Preserved In A Museum. Only When A Practitioner Finds The Spring Of Wisdom In His Or Her Own Life Can It Flow To A Future Generation

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.

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 Are Here To Awaken From Our Illusion Of Separateness.

We May Think Of Peace As The Absence Of War, That If The Great Powers Would Reduce Their Weapons Arsenals, We Could Have Peace. But If We Look Deeply Into The Weapons, We Will See Our Own Minds - Our Own Prejudices, Fears, And Ignorance.

There Are So Many Things That Can Provide Us With Peace. Next Time You Take A Shower Or A Bath, I Suggest You Hold Your Big Toes In Mindfulness. We Pay Attention To Everything Except Our Toes. When We Hold Our Toes In Mindfulness And Smile At Them, We Will Find That Our Bodies Have Been Very Kind To Us. We Know That Any Cell In Our Toes Can Turn Cancerous, But Our Toes Have Been Behaving Very Well, Avoiding That Kind Of Problem. Yet, We Have Not Been Nice To Them At All. These Kinds Of Practices Can Bring Us Happiness.

When We Look Deeply Into The Heart Of A Flower, We See Clouds, Sunshine, Minerals, Time, The Earth, And Everything Else In The Cosmos In It. Without Clouds There Could Be No Rain, And Without Rain There Would Be No Flower.

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

Loving Yourself

If You Suffer And Make Your Loved Ones Suffer, There Is Nothing That Can Justify Your Desire.

Live Your Daily Life In A Way That You Never Lose Yourself

When You Look Deeply Into Your Anger, You Will See That The Person You Call Your Enemy Is Also Suffering. As Soon As You See That, The Capacity Of Accepting And Having Compassion For Them Is There.

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.

While Drinking, While Talking, While Writing, While Watering Our Garden, It's Always Possible To Practice Living In The Here And The Now.

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

No Single Tradition Monopolizes The Truth. We Must Glean The Best Values Of All Traditions And Work Together To Remove The Tensions Between Traditions In Order To Give Peace A Chance.

It Is Not A Matter Of Faith, It Is A Matter Of Practice

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.

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You Must Love In Such A Way That The Person You Love Feels Free.

Positive Thinking

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

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

Keeping Your Body Healthy Is An Expression Of Gratitude To The Whole Cosmos — The Trees, The Clouds, Everything.

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

Beloved Community

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.

Life Has Left Her Footprints On My Forehead. But I Have Become A Child Again This Morning. The Smile, Seen Through Leaves And Flowers, Is Back To Smooth Away The Wrinkles, As The Rains Wipe Away Footprints On The Beach. Again A Cycle Of Birth And Death Begins.

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

Suffering Is Not Enough. Life Is Both Dreadful And Wonderful...how Can I Smile When I Am Filled With So Much Sorrow? It Is Natural--you Need To Smile To Your Sorrow Because You Are More Than Your Sorrow.

We Need To Move Beyond The Idea Of 'environment' And Fall Back In Love With Mother Earth.

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Let Us Not Be Afraid Of Decreasing. It Is Like The Moon, We See The Moon Increasing And Decreasing, But It Is Always The Moon.

If You Abandon The Present Moment, You Cannot Live The Moments Of Your Daily Life Deeply.

Do Not Be Idolatrous About Or Bound To Any Doctrine, Theory, Or Ideology, Even Buddhist Ones. All Systems Of Thought Are Guiding Means; They Are Not Absolute Truth.

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

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Often We Tell Ourselves, "don't Just Sit There, Do Something!" But When We Practice Awareness, We Discover That The Opposite May Be More Helpful: "don't Just Do Something, Sit There!"

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Real Love Means Loving Kindness And Compassion, The Kind Of Love That Does Not Have Any Conditions.

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

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.

In Order To Be Loved, We Have To Love, Which Means We Have To Understand.

Breathe And You Dwell In The Here And Now, Breath And You See Impermanence Is Life.

Compassion Is Our Most Important Practice. Understanding Brings Compassion. Understanding The Suffering That Living Beings Undergo Helps Liberate The Energy Of Compassion. And With That Energy You Know What To Do.

We Do Not Have To Die To Enter The Kingdom Of Heaven, In Fact We Have To Be Fully Alive. When We Are Truly Alive We See That The Tree Is Part Of Heaven And We Are Also Part Of Heaven. The Whole Universe Is Conspiring To Reveal This To Us. Peace Is Available And When We Touch It Everything Becomes Real. We Become Ourselves, Fully Alive In The Present Moment.

In Order To Heal Others, We First Need To Heal Ourselves. And To Heal Ourselves, We Need To Know How To Deal With Ourselves.

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?

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.

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

You Have To Do It By Yourself. You Can Not Do It Alone.

Our Role As Gardeners Is To Choose, Plant And Tend The Best Seeds Within The Garden Of Our Consciousness. Learning To Look Deeply At Our Consciousness Is Our Greatest Gift And Our Greatest Need, For There Lie The Seeds Of Suffering And Of Love, The Very Roots Of Our Being, Of Who We Are. Mindfulness...is The Guide And The Practice By Which We Learn How To Use The Seeds Of Suffering To Nourish The Seeds Of Love.

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.

I Would Not Look Upon Anger As Something Foreign To Me That I Have To Fight... I Have To Deal With My Anger With Care, With Love, With Tenderness, With Nonviolence.

By Taking A Look At Your Anger It Can Be Transformed Into The Kind Of Energy That You Need - Understanding And Compassion.

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.

Feelings, Whether Of Compassion Or Irritation, Should Be Welcomed, Recognized, And Treated On An Absolutely Equal Basis; Because Both Are Ourselves. The Tangerine I Am Eating Is Me. The Mustard Greens I Am Planting Are Me. I Plant With All My Heart And Mind. I Clean This Teapot With The Kind Of Attention I Would Have Were I Giving The Baby Buddha Or Jesus A Bath. Nothing Should Be Treated More Carefully Than Anything Else. In Mindfulness, Compassion, Irritation, Mustard Green Plant, And Teapot Are All Sacred.

We May Think That Justice Is Everyone Being Equal, Having The Same Rights, Sharing The Same Kind Of Advantages, But Maybe We Have Not Had The Chance To Look At The Nature Of Justice In Terms Of No-self. That Kind Of Justice Is Based On The Idea Of Self, But It May Be Very Interesting To Explore Justice In Terms Of No-self.

The Fact That I Am Standing There And Washing Bowls Is A Wondrous Reality. I'm Being Completely Myself, Following My Breath, Conscious Of My Presence, And Conscious Of My Thoughts And Actions.

Freedom From Suffering Is A Great Happiness.

Great Happiness

Even If You Only Stop And Focus On Your Breathing For A Few Breaths, Or For A Minute Or Two, Its Very Valuable.

You Cannot Transmit Wisdom And Insight To Another Person. The Seed Is Already There. A Good Teacher Touches The Seed, Allowing It To Wake Up, To Sprout, And To Grow.

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

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

When We Recognise The Virtues, The Talent, The Beauty Of Mother Earth, Something Is Born In Us, Some Kind Of Connection; Love Is Born.

Whenever Anger Comes Up, Take Out A Mirror And Look At Yourself. When You Are Angry, You Are Not Very Beautiful.

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.

Enlightenment Is Always There. Small Enlightenment Will Bring Great Enlightenment. If You Breathe In And Are Aware That You Are Alive - That You Can Touch The Miracle Of Being Alive - Then That Is A Kind Of Enlightenment.

Though We All Have The Fear And The Seeds Of Anger Within Us, We Must Learn Not To Water Those Seeds And Instead Nourish Our Positive Qualities - Those Of Compassion, Understanding, And Loving Kindness.

You Are Like A Candle. Imagine You Are Sending Light Out All Around You. All Your Words, Thoughts And Actions Are Going In Many Directions. If You Say Something Kind, Your Kind Words Go In Many Directions, And You Yourself Go With Them. We Are ...transforming And Continuing In A Different Form At Every Moment.

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.

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.

If Love Is In Our Hearts, Every Thought, Word, And Deed Can Bring About A Miracle. Because Understanding Is The Very Foundation Of Love, Words And Actions That Emerge From Our Love Are Always Helpful.

Before Practicing Meditation, We See That Mountains Are Mountains. When We Start To Practice, We See That Mountains Are No Longer Mountains. After Practicing A While, We See That Mountains Are Again Mountains. Now The Mountains Are Very Free. Our Mind Is Still With The Mountains, But It Is No Longer Bound To Anything.

Without Full Awareness Of Breathing, There Can Be No Development Of Meditative Stability And Understanding.

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

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.

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

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.

Action Is Called Karma. And That's Your Continuation. When This Body Disintegrates, You Continue On With Your Actions. It's Like The Cloud In The Sky. When The Cloud Is No Longer In The Sky, It Hasn't Died. The Cloud Is Continued In Other Forms Like Rain Or Snow Or Ice.

You Are A Buddha, And So Is Everyone Else. I Didn't Make That Up. It Was The Buddha Himself Who Said So. He Said That All Beings Had The Potential To Become Awakened. To Practice Walking Meditation Is To Practice Living In Mindfulness. Mindfulness And Enlightenment Are One. Enlightenment Leads To Mindfulness And Mindfulness Leads To Enlightenment.

Walking Meditation

Breathing In, I Know I Am Breathing In. Breathing Out, I Know I Am Breathing Out.

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

Listening Is A Very Deep Practice. You Have To Empty Yourself. You Have To Leave Space In Order To Listen Especially To People We Think Are Our Enemies - The Ones We Believe Are Making Our Situation Worse. When You Have Shown Your Capacity For Listening And Understanding, The Other Person Will Begin To Listen To You, And You Have A Change To Tell Him Or Her Of Your Pain, And It's Your Turn To Be Healed. This Is The Practice Of Peace.

When You Love Someone, The Best Thing You Can Offer Is Your Presence. How Can You Love If You Are Not There?

The Problem That Faces Us Is The Problem Of Awakening. What We Lack Is Not An Ideology Or Doctrine That Will Save The World. What We Lack Is Mindfulness Of What We Are, Of What Our Situation Really Is. We Need To Wake Up In Order To Rediscover Our Human Sovereignty. We Are Riding A Horse That Is Running Out Of Control. The Way Of Salvation Is A New Culture In Which Human Beings Are Encouraged To Rediscover Their Deepest Nature.

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.

If I Succeed In Loving You, I Will Be Able To Love Everyone And All Species On Earth... This Is The Real Message Of Love

My Love For You

Root Out The Violence In Your Life, And Learn To Live Compassionately And Mindfully. Seek Peace. When You Have Peace Within, Real Peace With Others Is Possible.

We Really Have To Understand The Person We Want To Love. If Our Love Is Only A Will To Possess, It Is Not Love. If We Only Think Of Ourselves, If We Know Only Our Own Needs And Ignore The Needs Of The Other Person, We Cannot Love.

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.

I Do Many Kinds Of Work, And If You Forbid Me From Binding Books, From Gardening, From Writing Poetry, From Practicing Walking Meditation, From Teaching Children, I Will Be Very Unhappy. To Me, Work Is Pleasant. Pleasant Or Unpleaseant Depends On Our Way Of Looking.

The Roots Of War Are In The Way We Live Our Daily Lives -- The Way We Develop Our Industries, Build Up Our Society, And Consume Goods.

Sometimes It Is Better Not To Talk About Art By Using The Word "art". If We Just Act With Awareness And Integrity, Our Art Will Flower, And We Don't Have To Talk About It At All.

Our Joy, Peace And Happiness Depend Very Much On Our Practice Of Recognizing And Transforming Habit Energies. There Are Positive Habit Energies That We Have To Cultivate, And Negative Habit Energies That We Have To Recognize, Embrace And Transform. The Energy With Which We Do These Things Is Mindfulness.

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.

Mutual Understanding

We Will Be More Successful In All Our Endeavors If We Can Let Go Of The Habit Of Running All The Time, And Take Little Pauses To Relax And Re-center Ourselves. And We'll Also Have A Lot More Joy In Living.

The Essence Of Nonviolence Is Love. Out Of Love And The Willingness To Act Selflessly, Strategies, Tactics, And Techniques For A Nonviolent Struggle Arise Naturally. Nonviolence Is Not A Dogma; It Is A Process.

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

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.

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.

You Are A Miracle, And Everything You Touch Could Be A Miracle.

Walk And Touch Peace Every Moment. Walk And Touch Happiness Every Moment. Each Step Brings A Fresh Breeze. Each Step Makes A Flower Bloom. Kiss The Earth With Your Feet. Bring The Earth Your Love And Happiness. The Earth Will Be Safe When We Feel Safe In Ourselves.

To Dwell In The Here And Now Does Not Mean You Never Think About The Past Or Responsibly Plan For The Future. The Idea Is Simply Not To Allow Yourself To Get Lost In Regrets About The Past Or Worries About The Future. If You Are Firmly Grounded In The Present Moment, The Past Can Be An Object Of Inquiry, The Object Of Your Mindfulness And Concentration. You Can Attain Many Insights By Looking Into The Past. But You Are Still Grounded In The Present Moment.

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

If You Love Someone But Rarely Make Yourself Available To Him Or Her, That Is Not True Love.

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.

Our Own Life Has To Be Our Message.

To Take Good Care Of Yourself And To Take Good Care Of Living Beings And Of The Environment Is The Best Way To Love God.

Around Us, Life Bursts With Miracles--a Glass Of Water, A Ray Of Sunshine, A Leaf, A Caterpillar, A Flower, Laughter, Raindrops. If You Live In Awareness, It Is Easy To See Miracles Everywhere. Each Human Being Is A Multiplicity Of Miracles. Eyes That See Thousands Of Colors, Shapes, And Forms; Ears That Hear A Bee Flying Or A Thunderclap; A Brain That Ponders A Speck Of Dust As Easily As The Entire Cosmos; A Heart That Beats In Rhythm With The Heartbeat Of All Beings. When We Are Tired And Feel Discouraged By Life's Daily Struggles, We May Not Notice These Miracles, But They Are Always There.

Mindful Time Spent With The Person We Love Is The Fullest Expression Of True Love And Real Generosity.

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

If Our Love Is Only A Will To Possess, It Is Not Love.

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.

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. Once You Are Aware Of That You Are No Longer Caught In The Idea That You Are A Separate Entity.

If We Face Our Unpleasant Feelings With Care, Affection, And Nonviolence, We Can Transform Them Into A Kind Of Energy That Is Healthy And Has The Capacity To Nourish Us. By The Work Of Mindful Observation, Our Unpleasant Feelings Can Illuminate So Much For Us, Offering Us Insight And Understanding Into Ourselves And Society.

If We Can Not Smile, We Cannot Help Other People To Smile.

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.

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.

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

The Only Answer To Fear Is More Understanding. And There Is No Understanding If There Is No Effort To Look More Deeply To See What Is There In Our Heart And In The Heart Of The Other Person.

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.

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

Listening To And Understanding Our Inner Sufferings Will Resolve Most Of The Problems We Encounter.

You Carry Mother Earth Within You. She Is Not Outside Of You. Mother Earth Is Not Just Your Environment.

If You Establish Serenity And Happiness Inside Yourself, You Provide The World With A Solid Base Of Peace. If You Do Not Give Yourself Peace, How Can You Share It With Others? If You Do Not Begin Your Peace Work With Yourself, Where Will You Go To Begin It?

I Am Committed To Cultivating Loving Speech And Deep Listening In Order To Bring Joy And Happiness To Others And Relieve Others Of Their Suffering.

The Quality Of Our Life Depends On The Quality Of The Seeds That Lie Deep In Our Consciousness.

Until There Is Peace Between Religions, There Can Be No Peace In The World.

Personal Growth

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Deep Listening Is The Kind Of Listening That Can Help Relieve The Suffering Of Another Person. You Can Call It Compassionate Listening. You Listen With Only One Purpose: To Help Him Or Her To Empty His Heart. Even If He Says Things That Are Full Of Wrong Perceptions, Full Of Bitterness, You Are Still Capable Of Continuing To Listen With Compassion. Because You Know That Listening Like That, You Give That Person A Chance To Suffer Less.

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.

The Present Moment Contains Past And Future. The Secret Of Transformation, Is In The Way We Handle This Very Moment.

The Three Kinds Of Pride Are: (1) Thinking I Am Better Than The Other(s); (2) Thinking I Am Worse Than The Other(s); And (3) Thinking I Am Just As Good As The Other(s).

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.

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.

Leaves Are Usually Looked Upon As The Children Of The Tree. Yes, They Are Children Of The Tree, Born From The Tree, But They Are Also Mothers Of The Tree. The Leaves Combine Raw Sap, Water, And Minerals, With Sunshine And Gas, And Convert It Into A Variegated Sap That Can Nourish The Tree. In This Way, The Leaves Become The Mother Of The Tree. We Are All Children Of Society, But We Are Also Mothers. We Have To Nourish Society. If We Are Uprooted From Society, We Can Not Trasform It Into A More Liveable Place For Us And Our Children.

When We Come To The Table, We Shouldn't Negotiate Right Away. We Should Spend Time Walking Together, Eating Together, Making Acquaintance, Telling Each Other About Our Own Suffering, Without Blame Or Condemnation. It Takes Maybe One, Two, Three Weeks To Do That. And If Communication And Understanding Are Possible, Negotiation Will Be Easier. So If I Am To Organize A Peace Negotiation, I Will Organize It In That Way.

Eating Together

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.

When You Climb A Ladder And Arrive On The Sixth Step And You Think That Is The Highest, Then You Cannot Come To The Seventh. So The Technique Is To Abandon The Sixth In Order For The Seventh Step To Be Possible. And This Is Our Practice, To Release Our Views. The Practice Of Nonattachment To Views Is At The Heart Of The Buddhist Practice Of Meditation.

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.

To Be Spiritual Means To Be Solid, Calm, And Peaceful And To Be Able To Look Deeply Inside And Around Us.

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

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.

Meditation Is Not An Escape From Life... But Preparation For Really Being In Life.

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

Usually When We Hear Or Read Something New, We Just Compare It To Our Own Ideas. If It Is The Same, We Accept It And Say That It Is Correct. If It Is Not, We Say It Is Incorrect. In Either Case, We Learn Nothing.

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.

One Included All, And All Were Contained In One.

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.

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

When Practiced To Its Fullest, Mindful Eating Turns A Simple Meal Into A Spiritual Experience, Giving Us A Deep Appreciation Of All That Went Into The Meal's Creation As Well A Deep Understanding Of The Relationship Between The Food On Our Table, Our Own Health, And Our Planet's Health.

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

Happiness Is The Cessation Of Suffering.

The Therapist Does Not Treat Patients By Simply Giving Them Another Set Of Beliefs. He Or She Tries To Help Them See Which Kinds Of Ideas And Beliefs Have Led To Their Suffering. Many Patients Want To Get Rid Of Their Painful Feelings, But They Do Not Want To Get Rid Of Their Beliefs, The Viewpoints That Are The Very Roots Of Their Feelings.

Painful Feelings

May We Awaken From Forgetfulness And Realize Our True Home.

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

What We Most Need To Do Is To Hear Within Us The Sound Of The Earth Crying.

Enlightenment Is Always There. Small Enlightenment Will Bring Great Enlightenment.

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.

Words And Thoughts Concerning Compassionate Action That Are Not Put Into Practice Are Like Beautiful Flowers That Are Colorful But Have No Fragrance.

The Most Important Thing Is That We Need To Be Understood. We Need Someone To Be Able To Listen To Us And To Understand Us. Then We Will Suffer Less.

If We Do Not Know How To Take Care Of Ourselves And To Love Ourselves, We Cannot Take Care Of The People We Love. Loving Oneself Is The Foundation For Loving Another Person.

Buddhism Has To Do With Your Daily Life, With Your Suffering And With The Suffering Of The People Around You.

Know That Life Can Only Be Found In The Present Moment.

Peace Is Every Step

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

There Are Two Ways To Wash The Dishes. One Way Is To Wash Them To Get Them Clean. The Other Way Is To Wash Them In Order To Wash The Dishes.

Wisdom And Joy Arise When You Learn To Exist Now Rather Than In The Nonexistent Past Or Future.

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

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.

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