Thích Nhất Hạnh:
(born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo) (Huế (Union of Indochina), 11 October 1926 – Huế (Vietnam), 22 January 2022) was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, poet and writer who lived in France as an exile for much of his life.
Throughout his life, he campaigned for peace, non-violence and the alleviation of suffering. Newspapers called him the most influential Buddhist of the past century, after the Dalai Lama.
In the 1970s, he introduced the Western world to the concept of mindfulness, about which he published the book The Miracle of Mindfulness in 1975. He has more than a hundred books to his name.
When you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.
You are not walking towards a goal. Walking is also not a means. Walking isn’t even a goal anymore. Enjoy every step, because you have already arrived.
We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.
You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.
Our beliefs and thoughts are an extension of ourselves. They are our children and they are born every moment.
Your smile proves that you are not a slave, but master of yourself and that you are, doing your best.
When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch nature of interbeing. And at that moment you can have real communication with the Earth. That is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship, you will have the love, strength, and awakening you need to chgange your life.
Anxiety keeps us focused on the past or makes us worry about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realise that we are okay now. Today, we are still alive, and our bodies work wonders. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.
Solitude is not about being alone high up in the mountains, or in a hut deep in the forest. It’s not about hiding ourselves away from civilization. Real solitude comes from a stable heart that does not get carried away by the crowd or our sorrows about the past, our worries about the future or our excitement about the present. We do not lose ourselves; we do not lose our mindfulness. To take refuge in our mindful breathing, to come back to the present moment, is to take refuge in the beautiful, serene island within each of us.
We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.
If you want to make it far and realise your dreams, the first thing you have to do is learn how to take care of yourself.
Spirituality is not about escaping the world; it is about fully embracing it with awareness.
