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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.
Thich Nhat Hanh
It's very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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?
Thich Nhat Hanh
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
Thich Nhat Hanh
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
Thich Nhat Hanh
People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?
Thich Nhat Hanh
Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.
Thich Nhat Hanh
In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
In order to rally people, governments need enemies... if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch nonfear, you are free.
Thich Nhat Hanh
You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also... your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice... No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.
Thich Nhat Hanh
You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.
Thich Nhat Hanh
To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.
Thich Nhat Hanh
With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.
Thich Nhat Hanh
When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.
Thich Nhat Hanh
We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion - towards ourselves and towards all living beings.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Civilisations have been destroyed many times, and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If you're a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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.
Thich Nhat Hanh


