Quotes by Thich Nhat Hanh

We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment[.]

Practicing mindfulness enables us to become a real person. When we are a real person, we see real people around us, and life is present in all its richness.

We all exist as part of a wonderful stream of life.

Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment

A wave has a right to live her life as a wave, but she must also learn to live her life as water because she is not only a wave. She is also water. And water lives without the fear carried by the wave.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

In us, there is a river of feelings, in which every drop of water is a different feeling, and each feeling relies on all the others for its existence. To observe it, we just sit on the bank of the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows by, and disappears.

[T]he flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self,

I am a continuation like the rain is the continuation of the cloud.

Things cannot stay the same because they are influenced by everything else, everything that is not itself.

Just because we do not perceive something, it is not correct to say it does not exist.

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.

Impermanence means that everything changes and that nothing remains the same in any consecutive moments. And although things change every moment, they still cannot be accurately described as the same or as different from what they were a moment ago.

Emptiness is not the opposite of existence. It is not nothingness or annihilation.

Direct experience is the only way.

When you lose a loved one, you suffer. But if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no birth, no death. There is manifestation and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation. You have to be very keen and very alert in order to recognize the new manifestations of just one person.

Nourish yourself every day with the wonderful things that life has to offer you. Nourish yourself in the present moment. Walk in the kingdom of God.

We can only accept teachings that we have put into practice with our own awakened understanding and that we can see with our own experience to be true.

Dont chase after your thoughts as a shadow follows its object. Dont run after your thoughts. Find joy and peace in this very moment .

The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you,