Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

According to Buddhist psychology most of our troubles stem from attachment to things that we mistakenly see as permanent.

I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.

Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don't cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life.

Once we're able to see this world as an illusion and a phantasm, then we can see everything that happens to us as a dream, as something that pretended to exist while we were sleeping. And we will become subtly and profoundly indifferent towards all of life's setbacks and calamities. Those who die turned a corner, which is why we've stopped seeing them; those who suffer pass before us like a nightmare, if we feel, or like an unpleasant daydream, if we think. And even our own suffering won't be more than this nothingness.

It is easy to take away the world that we think is so permanent and reliable.

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

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last.

To remember non-attachment is to remember what freedom is all about. If we get attached, even to a beautiful state of being, we are caught, and ultimately we will suffer. We work to observe anything that comes our way, experience it while it is here, and be able to let go of it.

The foolish man conceives the idea of 'self.' The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of 'self;' thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.

At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.

That which comes and goes, rises and sets, is born and dies is the ego. That which always abides, never changes, and is devoid of qualities is the Self.

If I change car, I change car. I don't get very fond of things.

If you acquire things, you have to let them go.

It's our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure.

So we're in this process of letting go of our own attachments to our physical forms and to the people we love, and... basically everything. Life is like this one big process of letting go.

It was becoming clear to me that I shouldn't bother to get too attached to anything. Turn your back and you lose it. Just like that.

We look at mountains and call them eternal, and they seem... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, starts fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

There is no tragedy, only the unavoidable. Everything has its reason for being: you only need to distinguish what is temporary from what is lasting.

That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom. (116)

Once we see that everything is impermanent and ungraspable and that we create a huge amount of suffering if we are attached to things staying the same, we realize that relaxing and letting go is a wiser way to live. Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.