Nhat Quotes & Sayings

If we take the time to look deeply, we see that understanding and compassion arise from suffering. Understanding is the understanding of suffering, and compassion is the kind of energy that can transform suffering. If suffering is not there, we have no means to cultivate our understanding and our compassion. This is something quite simple to see — Nhat Hanh

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. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. — Thich Nhat Hanh

In order to be loved, we have to love, which means we have to understand. — Nhat Hanh

When we recognize that we have a habit of replaying old events and reacting to new events as if they were the old ones, we can begin to notice when that habit energy comes up. We can then gently remind ourselves that we have another choice. We can look at the moment as it is, a fresh moment, and leave the past for a time when we can look at it compassionately. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The commentaries usually mention nine kinds of internal formations: desire, hatred, pride, ignorance, stubborn views, attachment, doubt, jealousy, and selfishness. Among these, the fundamental internal formation is ignorance, the lack of clear seeing. Ignorance is the raw material out of which the other internal formations are made. Although there are nine internal formations, because "desire" is always listed first, it is often used to represent all the internal formations. — Thich Nhat Hanh

In the moment when we are able to smile, to look at ourselves with compassion, our world begins to change. — Nhat Hanh

Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch nonfear, you are free. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Mother Earth is very talented. — Nhat Hanh

Precepts in Buddhism and commandments in Judiasm and Christianity are important jewels that we need to study and practice. They provide guidelines that can help us transform our suffering. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Each of us is a product of our family, environment, friends, education, culture, and society. These conditions lead to a certain way of seeing things and a certain way of responding to things. When we see this, we have compassion for everyone, including ourselves. We see that if we want something to change, we also have to help change his or her family, environment, friends, education, culture, and society. We are responsible, directly or indirectly, for each person's consciousness attitudes. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You are me, and I am you. Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"? You cultivate the flower in yourself, so that I will be beautiful. I transform the garbage in myself, so that you will not have to suffer. — Nhat Hanh

The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering and then to take care of the suffering. The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgement.
So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the child. Even if the mother doesn't understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her acto f taking the child into her arms with tenderness can alreadby bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We tend to think of nourishment only as what we take in through our mouths, but what we consume with our eyes, our ears, our noses, our tongues, and our bodies is also food. The conversations going on around us, and those we participate in, are also food. Are we consuming and creating the kind of food that is healthy for us and helps us grow? — Thich Nhat Hanh

Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Buddha taught, "Breathing in, I recognize my feeling. Breathing out, I calm my feeling." If you practice this, not only will your feeling be calmed down but the energy of mindfulness will also help you see into the nature and roots of your anger. Mindfulness helps you be concentrated and look deeply. This is true meditation. The insight will come after some time of practice. You will see the truth about yourself and the truth about the person who you thought to be the cause of your suffering. This insight will release you from your anger and transform the roots of anger in you. The transformation in you will also help transform the other person. Mindful speaking can bring real happiness, and unmindful speech can kill. When someone tells us something that makes us happy, that is a wonderful gift. But sometimes someone says something to us that is so cruel and distressing that we feel like committing suicide. We lose our joie de vivre. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You only need to breathe mindfully and smile to your habit energy: "Oh, I got pulled away by that again." When you can recognize habit energies this way, they lose their hold on you, and you're free once again to live peacefully and happily in the present. — Thich Nhat Hanh

If you walk with true awareness of every step, without having a goal to get anywhere, happiness will arise naturally. You don't need to look for happiness. — 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

The practice of concentration is like acquiring a lampshade to help us concentrate our mind on something. While doing sitting or walking meditation, cutting the future, cutting the past, dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration. With that power of concentration, we can look deeply into the problem. This is insight meditation.
First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature [ ... ]. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Your true home is in the here and the now. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Peace is all around us and within us. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Fools do not praise generosity, the wise rejoice in generosity. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Humor is a wonderful way to deal with our suffering because if we can laugh at our troubles, we can feel better. Thich Nhat Hanh is a special man who has helped millions with their suffering with incredible technique. But he doesn't know real suffering, because he has not dated as much as I have. — Garry Shandling

Breathing in, there is only the present moment.
Breathing out, it is a wonderful moment. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We can recognize happiness only when we remember the times of suffering! — Thich Nhat Hanh

You do not suffer because things are impermanent. You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent. — Nhat Hanh

When we change our daily lives - the way we think, speak and act - we change the world. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute. Where do you seek the spiritual? You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there. With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual. — 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

Whoever is not tied to possessions, clinging neither to body nor mind, is never in bondage. — Thich Nhat Hanh

To make hell into paradise, we only need to change the mind on which it is based.
[...] With your deluded mind, you make hell for yourself. With your true mind, you make paradise. — Thich Nhat Hanh

If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others. When we get angry, we have to produce awareness: "I am angry. Anger is in me. I am anger." That is the first thing to do. — Thich Nhat Hanh

People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one's perception of reality, a barrier which Buddhism calls the attachment to the false view of self.
Attachment to the false view of self means belief in the presence of unchanging entities which exist on their own. — Thich Nhat Hanh

People ask me, "Why do you do walking meditation?" The best answer I can give is, "Because I like it. — 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. — Nhat Hanh

We must practice living deeply, loving, and acting with charity if we wish to truly honor Jesus. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Every one of us is trying to find our true home. Some of us are still searching. Our true home is inside, but it's also in our loved ones around us. When you're in a loving relationship, you and the other person can be a true home for each other. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I don't have to hate any person because I can always start anew, I can always reconcile. — Nhat Hanh

We humans think we are smart, but an orchid, for example,
knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers,
and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell.
Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all.
We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail
and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree.
The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hanh — Thich Nhat Hanh

In the process of meditation, fetters are undone; internal blocks of suffering such as resentment, fear, anger, despair, and hatred are transformed; relationships with humans and nature become easier; freedom and joy can penetrate us. We become aware of what is inside and around us; — Thich Nhat Hanh

Working for peace in the future is to work for peace in the present moment. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

Mother Earth is very talented. She has produced Buddhas, bodhisattvas, great beings. — Nhat Hanh

dwell deeply in the present moment. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Without being peace, we cannot do anything for peace. If we cannot smile, we cannot help other people to smile. If we are not peaceful, then we cannot contribute to the peace movement. — Nhat Hanh

Wise men mold their own character. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

In everyone there's a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day! — Thich Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

The heart of the matter is always our oneness with divine spirit, our union with all life. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

Anger is like a howling baby, suffering and crying. The baby needs his mother to embrace him. You are the mother for your baby, your anger. The moment you begin to practice breathing mindfully in and out, you have the energy of a mother, to cradle and embrace the baby. Just embracing your anger, just breathing in and breathing out, that is good enough. The baby will feel relief right away. All — Thich Nhat Hanh

Let one embrace his own truth and devote himself to its fulfillment. — Thich Nhat Hanh

[T]he flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.
A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.
The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self, — Thich Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

Don't do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work. — Thich Nhat Hanh

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it. — Thich Nhat Hanh

That's why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I inherit the results of my acts of body, speech, and mind. My actions are my continuation. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world. — Nhat Hanh

By living deeply in the present moment we can understand the past better & prepare for a better future. — Nhat Hanh

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. — Thich Nhat Hanh

It is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of practice — Nhat Hanh

Just by breathing deeply on your anger, you will calm it. You are being mindful of your anger, not suppressing it ... touching it with the energy of mindfulness. You are not denying it at all. When I speak about this to psychotherapists, I have some difficulty. When I say that anger makes us suffer, they take it to mean that anger is something negative to be removed. But I always say that anger is an organic thing, like love. Anger can become love. Our compost can become a rose. If we know how to take care of our compost ... Anger is the same. It can be negative when we do not know how to handle it, but if we know how to handle our anger, it can be very positive. We do not need to throw anything away, (50). — Thich Nhat Hanh

When we walk with solidity and freedom, and when mindfulness of our breathing brings us solidity, freedom, peace, and joy, then the Pure Land is there right away. — Thich Nhat Hanh

That is why those who are not capable of being there in the present moment, they don't really live their life - they live like dead people. — Nhat Hanh

You can sit down with that fearful child inside and be gentle with him or her. You might say something like this: Dear little child, I am your adult self. I would like to tell you that we are no longer a baby, helpless and vulnerable. We have strong hands and strong feet; we can very well defend ourselves. So there is no reason why we have to continue to be fearful anymore. — Thich Nhat Hanh

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.
To meditate means to observe.
Your smile proves it.
It proves that you are being gentle with yourself,
that the sun of awareness is shining in you,
that you have control of your situation.
You are yourself,
and you have acquired some peace. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

The more compassionate you are, the more generous you can be. The more generous you are, the move loving friendliness you cultivate to help the world. — Nhat Hanh

Then meditate on your perceptions. The Buddha observed, "The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous." You see a snake in the dark and you panic, but when your friend shines a light on it, you see that it is only a rope. You have to know which wrong perceptions cause you to suffer. Please write beautifully the sentence, "Are you sure?" on a piece of paper and tape it to your wall. Love meditation helps you learn to look with clarity and serenity in order to improve the way you perceive. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy, in your daily life to stay rich. — Thich Nhat Hanh

By taking a look at your anger it can be transformed into the kind of energy that you need - understanding and compassion. — Nhat Hanh

We do not have to look for God, we do not have to look for our ultimate dimension or nirvana, because we are nirvana, we are God. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The organic gardener does not think of throwing away the garbage. She knows that she needs the garbage. She is capable of transforming the garbage into compost, so that the compost can turn into lettuce, cucumber, radishes, and flowers again ... With the energy of mindfulness, you can look into the garbage and say: I am not afraid. I am capable of transforming the garbage back into love. — Nhat Hanh

When our mind is calm, it reflects reality accurately, without distortion. Breathing, sitting, and walking with mindfulness calms disturbing mental formations such as anger, fear, and despair, allowing us to see reality more clearly. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

A look filled with understanding, an accepting smile, a loving word, a meal shared in warmth and awareness are the things which create happiness in the present moment. By nourishing awareness in the present moment, you can avoid causing suffering to yourself and those around you. The way you look at others, your smile, and your small acts of caring can create happiness. True happiness does not depend on wealth or fame. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

Breath is aligned with both body and mind and it alone can bring them together. — Nhat Hanh

Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature. Do not invest in companies that deprive others of their chance to live. Select a vocation that helps realise your ideal of compassion. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Nhat Hanh

To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. — Thich Nhat Hanh

While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Tomorrow, I will continue to be. But you will have to be very attentive to see me. I will be a flower, or a leaf. I will be in these forms and I will say hello to you. If you are attentive enough, you will recognize me, and you may greet me. I will be very happy. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We try to live every moment like that, dwelling peacefully in the present moment, and respond to events with compassion. — Nhat Hanh

Meditation is not an escape. It is the courage to look at reality with mindfulness and concentration. Meditation is essential for our survival. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The wave can live the life of a wave, but it can also do better. It can live every moment of its life deeply touching its nature of no-birth and no-death, that is, its nature as water. — Thich Nhat Hanh

This is Buddhist meditation-to penetrate, to be one with, in order to really understand. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made. — Nhat Hanh

Be angry, it's okay. To be angry, that is very human. And to learn how to smile at your anger and make peace with your anger is very nice. — Nhat Hanh

To love our enemy is impossible. The moment we understand our enemy, we feel compassion towards him/her, and he/she is no longer our enemy. — 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? — Nhat Hanh

If you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time. Some — Thich Nhat Hanh