If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.
It is said that God has created man in his own image. But it may be that humankind has created God in the image of humankind.
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.
The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.
Those who are without compassion cannot see what is seen with the eyes of compassion.
Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.
Many people think excitement is happiness…. But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.
The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it. (21)
There is no distinction between means and ends. There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. There is no way to enlightenment, enlightenment is the way.
Without suffering there cannot be happiness. Without mud there cannot be any lotus flowers.
Without suffering, there’s no happiness. So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.
Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.
If you can be aware that you have a living body, and notice when there’s tension in your body, that’s already an important insight.
The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.
Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word “art”. If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don’t have to talk about it at all.
By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.
It is my conviction that there is no way to peace – peace is the way.
If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.
Ignorance is in each cell of our body and our consciousness. It’s like a drop of ink diffused in a glass of water.
New cells are born everyday and old cells die, but they have neither funerals nor birthdays.
When we see that some suffering or some pain is coming up, we don’t try to run away from it. In fact, we have to go back and take care of it.
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
The third element of love is mudita, joy. True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love.
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.
We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives.
Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.
Do everything in mindfulness so you can really be there, so you can love.
Letting go takes a lot of courage sometimes. But once you let go, happiness comes very quickly. You won’t have to go around search for it.
The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous.
In the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding.
If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive.
This is Buddhist meditation-to penetrate, to be one with, in order to really understand.
When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.
Understanding is the other name of love. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.
Compassion is born from understanding suffering. We all should learn to embrace our own suffering, to listen to it deeply, and to have a deep look into its nature.
So if we love someone, we should train in being able to listen. By listening with calm and understanding, we can ease the suffering of another person.
If a lotus is to grow, it needs to be rooted in the mind.
Once you can communicate with yourself, you’ll be able to communicate outwardly with more clarity. The way in is the way out.
If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire.
When we’re inspired by the desire to practice and transform our suffering, the mind of the moment is very beautiful. Sometimes we call it the mind of love. It’s because of love that we practice.
Suffering has many faces. If we discover the roots of one suffering, we are at the same time discovering the roots of others.
When you touch someone who authentically represents a tradition, you not only touch his or her tradition, you also touch your own.
No argument, no reasoning, no blame, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.
Understanding and love aren’t two separate things, they’re just one.
I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight… I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.
That is why I don’t believe much in what Mr. Descartes said: “I think, therefore I am.” I think, therefore I’m lost in my thinking. I’m not there.
May we eat only foods that nourish us and prevent illnes.. May we accept this food for the realization of the way of understanding and love.
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
The most basic precept of all is to be aware of what we do, what we are, each minute . Every other precept will follow from that.
…if the content of your speech is not authentic, talking or texting on a device doesn’t mean you’re communicating with another person.
If our minds are blocked, there is no device that will make up for our inability to communicate with ourselves or others.
If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. It’s so clear. Mindfulness is the energy and practice that helps you go back to the here and now so that you encounter life.
Suffering has its beneficial aspects. It can be an excellent teacher.
The roots of war are in the way we live our daily lives —the way we develop our industries, build up our society, and consume goods.
Peace is based on respect for life, the spirit of reverence for life.
If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of consuming, of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive.
Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge.
We wanted peace. We did not care about anyone’s victory or defeat. We just wanted the bombs to stop falling on us.
When you understand, you cannot help but love. You cannot get angry.
The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves “inside the skin” of the other.
The truth is that everything contains everything else. We cannot just be, we can only inter-be.
We need the vision of interbeing—we belong to each other; we cannot cut reality into pieces. The well-being of “this” is the well-being of “that,” so we have to do things together. Every side is “our side”; there is no evil side.
In the West, we are very goal oriented. We know where we want to go, and we are very directed in getting there. This may be useful, but often we forget to enjoy ourselves along the route.
Western civilization places so much emphasis on the idea of hope that we sacrifice the present moment. Hope is for the future. It cannot help us discover joy, peace, or enlightenment in the present moment.
We are too undemanding, too ready to watch whatever is on the screen, too lonely, lazy, or bored to create our own lives. We turn on the TV and leave it on, allowing someone else to guide us[.]
Whether we are in the city, the countryside, or the wilderness, we need to sustain ourselves by choosing our surroundings carefully and nourishing our awareness in each moment.
Practicing mindfulness enables us to become a real person. When we are a real person, we see real people around us, and life is present in all its richness.
We all exist as part of a wonderful stream of life.
Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment
A wave has a right to live her life as a wave, but she must also learn to live her life as water because she is not only a wave. She is also water. And water lives without the fear carried by the wave.
The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
I am a continuation like the rain is the continuation of the cloud.
Things cannot stay the same because they are influenced by everything else, everything that is not itself.
Just because we do not perceive something, it is not correct to say it does not exist.
Emptiness is not the opposite of existence. It is not nothingness or annihilation.
Nourish yourself every day with the wonderful things that life has to offer you. Nourish yourself in the present moment. Walk in the kingdom of God.
We can only accept teachings that we have put into practice with our own awakened understanding and that we can see with our own experience to be true.
Don’t chase after your thoughts as a shadow follows its object. Don’t run after your thoughts. Find joy and peace in this very moment .
The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you,
While practicing mindfulness, don’t be dominated by the distinction between good and evil, thus creating a battle within oneself.
A person who looks at the table and can see the universe is a person who can see the way.
Whatever the tasks, do them slowly and with ease, in mindfulness. Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention.
To take hold of your mind, you must practice mindfulness of the mind. You must know how to observe and recognize the presence of every feeling and thought which arises in you.
Now I see that if one doesn’t know how to die, one can hardly know how to live – because deathis a part of life.
[A]ll the methods in the search for truth should be looked on as means rather than as ends in themselves or as absolute truth.
Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life.
When mindfulness is present, the Buddha and the Holy Spirit are already there,
Our feelings are formations, impermanent and without substance. We learn not to identify with ourselves with our feelings, not to consider them as a self, not to seek refuge in them, not to die because of them.
Do not lose yourself in the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. Do not get caught in your anger, worries, or fears. Come back to the present moment, and touch life deeply. This is mindfulness.
The energy of mindfulness has the element of friendship and loving kindness in it.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
Meditation is to be aware of what is going on: in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world.
If you have mindfulness, if you feel safe, you recognize that you have plenty of conditions to be happy already, and that you don’t need to run into the future in order to get a few more conditions.
Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves.
If I don’t understand you, I may be angry at you, all the time. We are not capable of understanding each other, and that is the main source of human suffering.
The son needs the father to have access to his source, and the father needs the son to have access to the future and the infinite.
The teachings of the Buddha could be summarized in four short sentences. … [The Buddha] said …The bad things, don’t do them.The good things, try to do them.Try to purify, subdue your own mind.That is the teaching of all buddhas.
Mindfulness is like that—it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.
Treat your anger with the utmost respect and tenderness, for it is no other than yourself.
I have lost my smile,but don’t worry.The dandelion has it.
The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.
If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that when the truth comes and knocks on our door, we won’t want to let it in.
The present moment is the substance with which the future is made. Therefore, the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. What else can you do?
Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.
In the Buddhist tradition, we speak of the oneness of the body and mind. Whate very happens to the body also happens to the mind….This is a very important encounter (engaging in sex) , not to be done in a casual manner.
There is nowhere to arrive except the present moment.
Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses.
We can’t wait to be happy until we remove one hundred percent of suffering. That moment will never exist.
drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it as the axis on which the world revolves
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment.
The bad things, don’t do them.The good things, try to do them.Try to purify, subdue your own mind.That is the teaching of all buddhas.
Dear friends, do you know that you are lucky people? You don’t have any cows to lose.
Our inner space and our peace of mind are affected by our outer space.
True love always brings joy to ourself and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us it is not true love.
You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.
You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.
If you’re a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.
Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.
There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.
You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.
Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.
It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available – more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don’t have to run into the future in order to get more.
If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.
We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?
When we have peace, then we have a chance to save the planet. But if we are not united in peace, if we do not practice mindful consumption, we cannot save our planet.
When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.
We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.
Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy.
Fearlessness is not only possible, it is the ultimate joy. When you touch nonfear, you are free.
Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.
When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born.
We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.
Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.
Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.
Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath.
To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.
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.
People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.
We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.