Thích Nhất Hạnh: The Source of Love is Deep Within Us

The Beautiful Wisdom of

Thích Nhất Hạnh

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.

We are all the leaves of one tree. We are all the waves of one sea.

Look at flowers, butterflies, trees, and children with the eyes of compassion. Compassion will change your life and make it wonderful.

The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person’s suffering and bring that person joy.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

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. 
 

Everything we think, feel, and do has an effect on our ancestors and all future generations and reverberates throughout the Universe. Therefore, our smile helps everyone.

Your purpose is to be yourself. You don’t have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just as you are.

We have to learn to live our life as a human being deeply. We need to live each breath deeply so that we have peace, joy and freedom as we breathe.

Our own life has to be our message.

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What do we most need to do to save our world? What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.

The Earth is so beautiful. We are beautiful also. We can allow ourselves to walk mindfully, touching the Earth, our wonderful mother, with each step. We don’t need to wish our friends, "Peace be with you." Peace is already with them. We only need to help them cultivate the habit of touching peace in each moment.

We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds — our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come.

When a person’s speech is full of anger, it is because he or she suffers deeply. 

When you look deeply into your anger, you will see that the person you call your enemy is also suffering. As soon as you see that, the capacity of accepting and having compassion for them is there.

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity.

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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.

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.

Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.

Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful…How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural — you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.

We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness, and strength so we can help transform the situation.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.

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.

There are thousands of channels in our consciousness; it is up to us to choose the channel. 

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Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

Because you are alive, everything is possible.

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.

Every one of us already has the seed of mindfulness. The practice is to cultivate it. 

Enlightenment is growing all the time. It is not something that happens once and is then complete.

The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. 

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.

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.