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
May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize our true home.
Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things.
Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.
To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.
Each time you take a mindful step you are back in the arms of Mother Earth and are reminded of your true sweet home in the here and now.
Your true home is in the here and the now.
I have arrived. I am home. My destination is in each step.
The practice of Zen is to eat, breathe, cook, carry water, and scrub the toilet — to infuse every act of body, speech, and mind — with mindfulness, to illuminate every leaf and pebble, every heap of garbage, every path that leads to our mind's return home.
Meditation means to look deeply, to touch deeply, so we can realize we are already home.
Every one of us needs a home. The world needs a home. There are so many young people who are homeless. They may have a building to live in, but they are homeless in their hearts. That is why the most important practice of our time is to give each person a home.
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.
I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food.
To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.