Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Every practice at some point will become a hindrance. No practice can ever take you there, to freedom, to liberation. That's important to realize.

Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.

The deeper you get into Yoga you realize it is a spiritual practice. It's a journey I'm making. I'm heading that way.

Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage.

By constantly keep one's attention on the Source, the ego is dissolved in that Source like a salt-doll in the sea.

To be conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual journey.

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments.

The mind is the world and the no-mind is freedom from the world. The mind is misery and no-mind is the end of misery and the beginning of ecstasy.

The spiritual quest is a journey without distance. You travel from where you are right now To where you have always been. From ignorance to recognition.

A practice can be helpful, but didn't the Buddha compare it to a raft, suggesting it be abandoned when you reach the other shore?

Sannyas is only a declaration. The work is meditation. In one single word, my religion is complete, and that is meditation.

Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally.

Through practice comes Yoga, through Yoga comes knowledge, through knowledge love, and through love bliss.

Still the bubbling mind; herein lies freedom and bliss eternal.

Create inner freedom through witnessing. Sannyas is only for the inner freedom. And live out of inner freedom.

You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body-mind of itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.

People say that practicing Zen is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross- legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense.

The Buddha is not a person but a (state of) realization to which anyone can attain.

Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space.

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.

The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress.

Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way.

One has to go beyond the mind to experience the spiritual bliss of desirelessness.

I haven't had a single thought for 26 years. I have only understanding. It's somewhat complicated to understand that. I've hardly ever spoken about it. You're in a state of total peace of mind. A kind of nirvana.