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Usually when we hear or read something new, we just compare it to our own ideas. If it is the same, we accept it and say that it is correct. If it is not, we say it is incorrect. In either case, we learn nothing.

Nhat Hanh

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Nhat Hanh
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More quotes by Nhat Hanh

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As children, Siddhartha and Jesus both realized that life is filled with suffering. The Buddha became aware at an early age that suffering is pervasive. Jesus must have had the same kind of insight, because they both made every effort to offer a way out. We, too, must learn to live in ways that reduce the world's suffering.
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My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
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Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift!
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In the mountains of wisdom no climbing is in vain.
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To condemn someone to death is to surrender it proves that you failed. You are not able to change him, to change her you have to kill him or her. You surrender. ... You only demonstrate your lack of capacity, your helplessness. This is failure.
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We will not just say, I love him very much, but instead, I will do something so that he will suffer less. The mind of compassion is truly present when it is effective in removing another person's suffering.
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The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
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The nectar of compassion is so wonderful. If you are committed to keeping it alive, then you are protected. What the other person says will not touch off the anger and irritation in you, because compassion is the real antidote to anger. Nothing can heal anger except compassion. That is why the practice of compassion is a very wonderful practice.
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If we can not smile, we cannot help other people to smile.
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There are many, many Christians who practice Buddhism, and they become better and better Christians all the time.
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We have to learn to die in every moment in order to be fully alive.
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We need to move beyond the idea of 'environment' and fall back in love with Mother Earth.
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You have to do it by yourself. You can not do it alone.
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Often, we feel that we need a leader outside of ourselves -a Buddha, a Gandhi, or a Martin Luther King, Jr.- to show the way. But we have the Buddha inside of us. We have Gandhi and King inside of us as well. We are interconnected. We don't need to wait for some other person to be the change we want to see in the world
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When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With the smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world.
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The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.
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Life is a miracle, and being aware of simply this can already make us very happy.
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We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible... If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest.
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There is no birth, there is no death there is no coming, there is no going there is no same, there is no different there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is.
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Happiness is not an individual matter.
Nhat Hanh