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A bodhisattva doesn't have to be perfect. Anyone who is aware of what is happening and who tries to wake up other people is a bodhisattva. We are all bodhisattvas, doing our best.

Nhat Hanh

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Nhat Hanh
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More quotes by Nhat Hanh

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If you find yourself in some difficulty, step aside, and allow Buddha to take your place. The Buddha is in you.
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I do many kinds of work, and if you forbid me from binding books, from gardening, from writing poetry, from practicing walking meditation, from teaching children, I will be very unhappy. To me, work is pleasant. Pleasant or unpleaseant depends on our way of looking.
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Wisdom and joy arise when you learn to exist now rather than in the nonexistent past or future.
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There are two ways to wash the dishes. One way is to wash them to get them clean. The other way is to wash them in order to wash the dishes.
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Sometimes we believe that happiness is not possible in the here and now, that we need a few more conditions to be happy. So we run toward the future to get the conditions we think are missing. But by doing so we sacrifice the present moment we sacrifice true life.
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You can only recognize your happiness against the background of suffering.
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The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.
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Are we treating our body kindly by the way we eat, by the way we drink, by the way we work? Are we treating ourselves with enough joy and tenderness and peace? Or are we feeding ourselves with toxins that we get from the market - the spiritual, intellectual, entertainment market?
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When someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, one allows it to spill all over the people around him or her. When you suffer, you make people around you suffer. That's very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won't spread it everywhere.
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Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.
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In Zen Buddhism, the greater your doubt, the greater will be your enlightenment. That is why doubt can be a good thing. If you are too sure, if you always have conviction, then you may be caught in your wrong perception for a long time.
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Life has left her footprints on my forehead. But I have become a child again this morning. The smile, seen through leaves and flowers, is back to smooth away the wrinkles, as the rains wipe away footprints on the beach. Again a cycle of birth and death begins.
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We all need a place that is safe and wholesome enough for us to return for refuge. In Buddhism, that refuge is mindfulness.
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The electron is first of all your concept of the electron.
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To be free, first of all, is to be free from wrong views that are the foundation of all kinds of suffering and fear and violence.
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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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Choose to be in touch with what is wonderful, refreshing, and healing within yourself and around you.
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Freedom is not given to us by anyone we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice... No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.
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The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.
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People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.
Nhat Hanh