Quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh

True love is made of four elements: loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

If we lose the present moment, we lose life.

I am a continuation like the rain is the continuation of the cloud.

Our idea of happiness may be the very thing that's preventing us from being happy.

The leaf has the appearance of being born and dying, but it is not caught in either. The leaf falls to the earth without any idea of dying, and is born again by decomposing at the foot of the tree and nourishing the tree. The cloud has the appearance of dying in becoming rain, but it feels no sorrow or pain. [...] When we have awakened understanding, birth is a continuation and death is a continuation[.]

What is happening in the present moment is life.

For true love to be there, you need to feel complete in yourself, not needing something from outside.

We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon.

My dear friend, I may be the victim of wrong perceptions, and what I write here may not reflect the truth. However, this is my experience of the situation. This is what I really feel in my heart. If there is anything wrong in what I write, let us sit down and look into it together

We can walk in such a way that we arrive with each step—not walking just to get somewhere else.

Instead, we must learn how to make friends with our hardships and challenges. They are there to help us; they are natural opportunities for deeper understanding and transformation, bringing us more joy and peace as we learn to work with them.

If we continue to hold on to a dream for something in the future, we lose the present moment. And if we lose the present, we lose everything.

Each of us is like the waves and also like the water. Sometimes we're excited, noisy, and agitated like the waves. Sometimes we're tranquil like still water. When water is calm, it reflects the blue sky, the clouds, and the trees. Sometimes, whether we're at home, work, or school, we become tired, agitated, or unhappy and we need to transform into calm water. We already have calmness in us; we just need to know how to make it manifest.

You should have a chance to observe him when he sleeps. Look deeply, and see the tenderness that is revealed, the suffering, the hope, the despair that can be expressed during sleep. Sit there for fifteen minutes or half an hour, and just look. Understanding and compassion will arise in you, and you will know how to be there for your partner.

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.

Find space in your day when you can practice mindful breathing and letting go of tensions.

Even if we have time, we don't come home to ourselves. We try to keep ourselves constantly entertained - watching television, socialising, or using alcohol or drugs - because we don't want to experience that suffering all over again.

To be truly present we have to stop our thinking. This is the secret of success.

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[.]

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.

Everyone wants to be happy, and there is a strong energy in us pushing us toward what we think will make us happy. But we may suffer a lot because of this. We need the insight that position, revenge, wealth, fame, or possessions are, more often than not, obstacles to our happiness. We need to cultivate the wish to be free of these things so we can enjoy the wonders of life that are always available — the blue sky, the trees, our beautiful children.

If we want to reconcile with our family or with friends who have hurt us, we have to take care of ourselves first. If we're not capable of listening to ourselves, how can we listen to another person? If we don't know how to recognise our own suffering, it won't be possible to bring peace and harmony into our relationships.

We can feel lonely even when we're surrounded by many people. We are lonely together. There is a vacuum inside us. We don't feel comfortable with that vacuum, so we try to fill it up or make it go away. Technology supplies us with many devices that allow us to "stay connected." These days, we are always "connected," but we continue to feel lonely.

There are four kinds of food that every person consumes every day. In Buddhism, we call these kinds of food the Four Nutriments. They are edible food; sense impressions; volition; and consciousness, both individual and collective.