Nhat Hanh
Nhat Hanh
Thích Nhất Hạnh; born as Nguyen Xuan Bao on October 11, 1926) is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist. He lives in Plum Village in the Dordogne region in the south of France, travelling internationally to give retreats and talks. He coined the term "Engaged Buddhism" in his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. A long-term exile, he was given permission to make his first return trip to Vietnam in 2005...
NationalityVietnamese
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth11 October 1926
CountryVietnam
Be peace, don't just talk about it.
Once you develop the practice of smiling, you may not need a reminder. You will smile as soon as you hear a bird singing or see the sunlight streaming through the window.
To take good care of yourself and to take good care of living beings and of the environment is the best way to love God.
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.
'Emptiness' means empty of a separate self. It is full of everything, full of life. The word emptiness should not scare us. It is a wonderful word. To be empty does not mean non-existent. Emptiness is the ground of everything. Thanks to emptiness, everything is possible.
Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.
If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that when the truth comes and knocks on our door, we won't want to let it in.
Life is only available in the present moment.
Real love means loving kindness and compassion, the kind of love that does not have any conditions.
It is often said that the Buddha's teaching is only a raft to help you cross the river, a finger pointing to the moon. Don't maistake the finger for the moon. The raft is not the shore. If we cling to the raft, if we cling to the finger, we miss everything. We cannot, in the name of the finger or the raft kill each other. Human life is more precious than any ideology, any doctrine.
Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.
A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.
If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.
People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.