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Meditation is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a reentery into society.

Nhat Hanh

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Nhat Hanh
Escape
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More quotes by Nhat Hanh

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To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem. To meditate means to observe. Your smile proves it. It proves that you are being gentle with yourself, that the sun of awareness is shining in you, that you have control of your situation. You are yourself, and you have acquired some peace.
Nhat Hanh
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We have to look deeply at things in order to see. When a swimmer enjoys the clear water of the river, he or she should also be able to be the river.
Nhat Hanh
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The root-word buddha means to wake up, to know, to understand and he or she who wakes up and understands is call a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature.
Nhat Hanh
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Your anxiety is your baby. You have to take care of it. You have to go back to yourself, recognize the suffering in you, embrace the suffering, and you get relief. And if you continue with your practice of mindfulness, you understand the roots, the nature of the suffering, and you know the way to transform it.
Nhat Hanh
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Every one of us needs a home. The world needs a home. There are so many young people who are homeless. They may have a building to live in, but they are homeless in their hearts. That is why the most important practice of our time is to give each person a home.
Nhat Hanh
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Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made.
Nhat Hanh
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There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.
Nhat Hanh
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The problem is whether we are determined to go in the direction of compassion or not. If we are, then can we reduce the suffering to a minimum? If I lose my direction, I have to look for the North Star, and I go to the north. That does not mean I expect to arrive at the North Star. I just want to go in that direction.
Nhat Hanh
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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.
Nhat Hanh
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Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.
Nhat Hanh
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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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An oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do. If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, then we are all in trouble.
Nhat Hanh
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The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.
Nhat Hanh
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Buddhism is in your heart. Even if you don't have any temple or any monks, you can still be a Buddhist in your heart and life.
Nhat Hanh
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Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.
Nhat Hanh
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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.
Nhat Hanh
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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.
Nhat Hanh
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Anyone can practice some nonviolence, even soldiers. Some army generals, for example, conduct their operations in ways that avoid killing innocent people this is a kind of nonviolence.
Nhat Hanh
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When you have a stomach ache you don't tell your stomach to go away.
Nhat Hanh
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Action is called karma. And that's your continuation. When this body disintegrates, you continue on with your actions. It's like the cloud in the sky. When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it hasn't died. The cloud is continued in other forms like rain or snow or ice.
Nhat Hanh