Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Feelings come and feelings go. There is no need to fear them and no need to crave them. Be open to your feelings and experience them while they are here. Then be open to the feelings that will come next. Your feelings are a part of your experience. Yet no mere feeling, however intense it may seem, is your permanent reality.

Buddhist mindfulness is about the present, but I also think it's about being real. Being awake to everything. Feeling like nothing can hurt you if you can look it straight on.

Zen teaches that once we can open up to the inevitability of our demise, we can begin to transform that situation and lighten up about it.

If we can remain present and deal with the moment in front of us, no matter what our battle, then if we lose, we'll know that ultimately we weren't supposed to win that battle in the first place.

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind.

Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.

Meditation is a tool for helping us accept the profound fact that everything changes all the time.

We can't control what thoughts and emotions arise within us, nor can we control the universal truth that everything changes. But we can learn to step back and rest in the awareness of what's happening. That awareness can be our refuge.

Get low; grace will meet you there.

To live moment to moment is the life of meditation. Then life becomes spontaneous without any effort; then nobody can make you miserable, nobody can disappoint you, nobody can make you a failure because in the first place you were not trying to be a success; you were not asking the future to be in a certain way. So whatever happens, the next moment you can rejoice. It is always your victory.

Buddhism teaches you to embrace change.

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.

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.

Fear is natural. Be with it.

The Buddha taught that we're not actually in control, which is a pretty scary idea. But when you let things be as they are, you will be a much happier, more balanced, compassionate person.

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.

One must know the so-called 'lesson of a downpour.' A man, caught in a sudden rain en route, dashes along the road not to get wet or drenched. Once one takes it for granted that in rain he naturally gets wet, he can be in a tranquil frame of mind even when soaked to the skin. This lesson applies to everything.

My life is every moment of my life. It is not a culmination of the past.

Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains.

The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.

Ultimately spiritual awareness unfolds when you're flexible, when you're spontaneous, when you're detached, when you're easy on yourself and easy on others.

I have developed a Zen-like approach to the operating systems that people use: 'When you're ready, the right operating system will appear in your life.'

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not 'yours,' not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

You learn to not take things personally and to just let it roll off of you.