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Mindful Consumption Is The Object Of This Precept. We Are What We Consume. If We Look Deeply Into The Items That We Consume Every Day, We Will Come To Know Our Own Nature Very Well. We Have To Eat, Drink, Consume, But If We Do It Unmindfully, We May Destroy Our Bodies And Our Consciousness, Showing Ingratitude Toward Our Ancestors, Our Parents, And Future Generations.

-Nhat Hanh

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Mindful Consumption Is The

Nhat Hanh

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Mindful Consumption Is The Object Of This Precept. We Are What We Consume. If We Look Deeply Into The Items That We Consume Every Day, We Will Come To Know Our Own Nature Very Well. We Have To Eat, Drink, Consume, But If We Do It Unmindfully, We May Destroy Our Bodies And Our Consciousness, Showing Ingratitude Toward Our Ancestors, Our Parents, And Future Generations.

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Mutual Understanding

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

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Mindfulness Is The Miracle By Which We Master And Restore Ourselves.

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Only The Present Moment Contains Life.

Peace Is Every Step

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

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

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.

Nirvana Is The Complete Silencing Of Concepts.

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

Just Listen Be Peace.

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Positive Thinking

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If You Touch One Thing With Deep Awareness, You Touch Everything.

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.

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

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Meditation Is Not Passive Sitting In Silence. It Is Sitting In Awareness, Free From Distraction, And Realizing The Clear Understanding That Arises From Concentration.

Meditation Practice

In Every One Of Us There Are Good Seeds And Bad. We Have The Seed Of Brotherhood, Love, Compassion, Insight. But We Have Also The Seed Of Anger, Hate, Dissent.

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

Walking Meditation

Let Us Fill Our Hearts With Our Own Compassion - Towards Ourselves And Towards All Living Beings.

Because Of Your Smile, You Make Life More Beautiful.

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

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.

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

We Are Here To Awaken From Our Illusion Of Separateness.

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.

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.

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.

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

As Long As We Think Our Lives Are Not Good Enough (materially), We Will Not Have Happiness. As Soon As We Realize Our Lives Are Good Enough, Happiness Immediately Appears. That Is The Practice Of Contentment.

The Way We Live Our Daily Lives Is What Most Effects The Situation Of The World. If We Can Change Our Daily Lives, Then We Can Change Our Governments And Can Change The World. Our President And Governments Are Us. They Reflect Our Lifestyle And Our Way Of Thinking. The Way We Hold A Cup Of Tea, Pick Up The Newspaper Or Even Use Toilet Paper Are Directly Related To Peace.

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.

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.

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

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.

Wrong Perceptions Cannot Be Removed By Guns And Bombs. They Should Be Removed By Deep Listening, Compassionate Listening, And Loving Space.

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.

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.

The First Thing I Learned Was That Even If You Have A Lot Of Money And Power And Fame, You Can Still Suffer Very Deeply.

To Be Beautiful Means To Be Yourself.you Don't Need To Be Accepted By Others. You Need To Accept Yourself. When You Are Born A Lotus Flower, Be A Beautiful Lotus Flower, Don't Try To Be A Magnolia Flower. If You Crave Acceptance And Recognition And Try To Change Yourself To Fit What Other People Want You To Be, You Will Suffer All Your Life. True Happiness And True Power Lie In Understanding Yourself, Accepting Yourself, Having Confidence In Yourself.

Before You Do Something To Help, Your Presence Already Can Bring Some Relief.

When You Produce Peace And Happiness In Yourself, You Begin To Realize Peace For The Whole World. With The Smile That You Produce In Yourself, With The Conscious Breathing You Establish Within Yourself, You Begin To Work For Peace In The World.

Life Is Available Only In The Present Moment.

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.

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

Loving Yourself

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

You Carry Mother Earth Within You. She Is Not Outside Of You. Mother Earth Is Not Just Your Environment. In That Insight Of Inter-being, It Is Possible To Have Real Communication With The Earth, Which Is The Highest Form Of Prayer.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

To Live In The Present Moment Is A Miracle. The Miracle Is Not To Walk On Water. The Miracle Is To Walk On The Green Earth In The Present Moment, To Appreciate The Peace And Beauty That Are Available Now.

Freedom From Suffering Is A Great Happiness.

Great Happiness

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

Today Is The Most Important Day Of Our Lives.

The Buddha Always Reminds Us That Our Afflictions, Including Our Fear And Our Desiring, Are Born From Our Ignorance. That Is Why In Order To Dissipate Fear, We Have To Remove Wrong Perception.

Our Notions About Happiness Entrap Us. We Forget That They Are Just Ideas. Our Idea Of Happiness Can Prevent Us From Actually Being Happy. We Fail To See The Opportunity For Joy That Is Right In Front Of Us When We Are Caught In A Belief That Happiness Should Take A Particular Form.

There Is A Story In Zen Circles About A Man And A Horse. The Horse Is Galloping Quickly, And It Appears That The Man On The Horse Is Going Somewhere Important. Another Man Standing Alongside The Road, Shouts, «where Are You Going?» And The First Man Replies, «i Don't Know! Ask The Horse!» This Is Also Our Story. We Are Riding A Horse, And We Don't Know Where We Are Going And We Can't Stop. The Horse Is Our Habit Energy Pulling Us Along, And We Are Powerless.

When We Respect Our Blood Ancestors And Our Spiritual Ancestors, We Feel Rooted. If We Find Ways To Cherish And Develop Our Spiritual Heritage, We Will Avoid The Kind Of Alienation That Is Destroying Society, And We Will Become Whole Again. ... Learning To Touch Deeply The Jewels Of Our Own Tradition Will Allow Us To Understand And Appreciate The Values Of Other Traditions, And This Will Benefit Everyone.

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

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

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

Your True Home Is In The Here And The Now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If The People Who Hurt Us Have Anger Or Desperation Within Them Then They Suffer. When You See That Someone Suffers, You Might Be Motivated By A Desire To Help Him Not To Suffer Anymore.

Forgiveness Will Not Be Possible Until Compassion Is Born In Your Heart.

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.

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.

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.

To Live In The Present Moment Is A Miracle.

Live In The Present

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.

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.

Anyone Who Is Practicing Understanding And Compassion Can Exemplify True Power. Anyone Can Be A Buddha.

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

‎we Have A Lamp Inside Us. The Oil Of That Lamp Is Our Breathing, Our Steps, And Our Peaceful Smile. Our Practice Is To Light Up The Lamp.

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.

If You Have The Chance To Be Exposed To A Loving, Understanding Environment Where The Seed Of Compassion, Loving Kindness, Can Be Watered Every Day, Then You Become A More Loving Person.

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.

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."

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.

When You Love Someone, You Want To Share Everything With Him Or Her. So It Is Your Duty To Say, "i Suffer And I Want You To Know" - And He Will, She Will, Appreciate It.

When You Love Someone

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.

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