Quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh

Men cannot be our enemies--even men called Vietcong! If we kill men, what brothers will we have left? With whom shall we live then?

We can learn many practices to lessen our sadness and our suffering, but the cream of enlightened wisdom is the insight of no birth, no death.

Once a seed has been burnt, it cannot sprout anymore. If we are able to burn up the seeds of grief, sexual desire, and hatred, they will not sprout again.

Avalokiteshvara means "the one who listens deeply to the sounds of the world.

Ignorance is in each cell of our body and our consciousness. It's like a drop of ink diffused in a glass of water. That ignorance stops us from seeing reality; it pushes us to do foolish things that make us suffer even more

Concentration, samadhi in Sanskrit, is a powerful force that you can generate to make a breakthrough, to see clearly what is there and understand its true nature.

The mind tends to dart from one thing to another, like a monkey swinging from branch to branch without stopping to rest.

Before you do the work of reconciliation with another, you need to restore communication with yourself.

When we're sitting, we're truly there in the present moment; we have come home, we have arrived. We are present in that time and place; we're not pulled away by the past, the future, or by anger or jealousy in the present.

Walk slowly, but not so slowly that you draw too much attention to yourself. This is a kind of invisible practice. Enjoy nature and your own serenity without making others uncomfortable or making a show of it.

When we're first learning sitting meditation, it can be useful to count our breaths. Count one for the first in- and out-breath. Count two for the second, and so on. If your mind wanders and you lose count, go back to one and begin again. This exercise helps develop concentration. You may think counting to ten is easy, but counting to ten while breathing mindfully takes a lot of focus.

You don't need to be perfect. What's important is that you have a path to follow, a path of love. If we get lost in a forest and we don't have a compass at night, we can look at the North Star in order to go north, to get out. Your purpose is to get out of the forest, it's not to arrive at the North Star.