Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Consciously be sensitive to others, and try to elevate their level of consciousness. Don't do this by being preachy and telling them that they 'should' do this or that. Do it by raising your own level of energy and recognizing what's best in others.

I'm doing my best to be mindful about how I'm living: to be kind and patient, and not to impose a bad mood on somebody else. Being mindful is as good a way to be spiritual as anything else.

Love grounds you. It orients you. Love brings your awareness to others and yourself. Love opens your mind and heart to others and yourself. Love settles you and gives you balance.

I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion.

We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on.

What you learn about pain in formal meditation can help you relate to it in your daily life.

Cruelty towards others is always also cruelty towards ourselves.

A spiritual person is also in touch with his or her own reality, feelings and thoughts, and the reality of the people around him or her, not projecting on them.

Stay in your heart.

As I get older, the more I stay focused on the acceptance of myself and others, and choose compassion over judgment and curiosity over fear.

You need not search for the compassionate mind from outside. To know yourself, to know your nature, your mind will automatically be the compassionate one.

This idea of bringing awareness to our lives seems like a good idea, right? We'll gain a productive, enjoyable, reflective life and be able to extend compassion, empathy, and joy to others. That seems like a pretty good deal.

Self-compassion encourages mindfulness, or noticing your feelings without judgment; self-kindness, or talking to yourself in a soothing way; and common humanity, or thinking about how others might be suffering similarly.

Mindfulness needs to not be judgmental to really be mindfulness, which means it needs a basis of loving kindness.

We may have forgotten how to feel. Nobody is teaching us how to live happily ever after, as we've heard in fairy tales.

I've learned to take care of myself. You know, I try to stay conscious of whatever my energy is at all times, really. I mean, I come home from work, and, depending on the day or depending on what was going on, if I needed to adjust, I'd just meditate, or play guitar, or watch some 'Monty Python.'

We come to meditation to learn how not to act out the habitual tendencies we generally live by - those actions that create suffering for ourselves and others, and get us into so much trouble.

I feel beautiful when I'm at peace with myself. When I'm serene, when I'm a good person, when I've been considerate of others.

Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.

Compassion is the key to living outside the confines of your lower self.

Mindfulness helps us freeze the frame so that we can become aware of our sensations and experiences as they are, without the distorting coloration of socially conditioned responses or habitual reactions.

Yoga is about compassion and generosity towards others. It means being mindful of the world around us.

Quite simply, if you're feeling anxious, angry, a sense of shame, whatever it is, breathe in and agree to touch or feel it. Breathing out, offer space and care to whatever's there. If there's blocking to touching it, emphasize the in-breath and stay embodied.

If you are happy, you can give happiness. If you don't love yourself and if you are unhappy with yourself, you can't give anything else but that.

When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.