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Quotes by Vietnamese Authors
"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."
"When feeling lonely or anxious, most of us have the habit of looking for distractions, which often leads to some form of unwholesome consumption -- whether eating a snack in the absence of hunger, mindlessly surfing the Internet, going on a drive, or reading. Conscious breathing is a good way to nourish body and mind with mindfulness."
"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."
"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."
"To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment."
"Suffering has its beneficial aspects. It can be an excellent teacher."
"When mindfulness is present, the Buddha and the Holy Spirit are already there."
"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."
"I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them go back to their own tradition and get re-rooted. If they succeed at at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition. ...When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted. If we find ways to cherish and develop our spiritual heritage, we will avoid the kind of alienation that is destroying society, and we will become whole again. ... Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions, and this will benefit everyone."
"When you hold the hand of a child, invest one hundred percent of yourself in the act of holding her hand. When you hug your partner, do the same. Forget everything else. Be totally present, totally alive in the act of hugging. This is the opposite of the way we've been trained to lead our lives and run our businesses. We've been taught to do many things at once. We answer an e-mail while we talk on the phone; while in a meeting for one project, we work on our notes for another project. Every new technology promises to help us do more things at once. Now we can send e-mail while listening to music, talking on the phone, and taking a picture, all with the same device. With your energy that dispersed, where is your power?"
"Impermanence means that everything changes and that nothing remains the same in any consecutive moments. And although things change every moment, they still cannot be accurately described as the same or as different from what they were a moment ago."
"The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it."
"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."
"We wanted peace. We did not care about anyone's victory or defeat. We just wanted the bombs to stop falling on us."
"In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, 'why don't I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,' and they abandon their values."
"Peace is based on respect for life, the spirit of reverence for life."
"If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us - to make some hardship lighter. When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here."
"Mindful consumption is the object of this precept. We are what we consume. If we look deeply into the items that we consume every day, we will come to know our own nature very well. We have to eat, drink, consume, but if we do it unmindfully, we may destroy our bodies and our consciousness, showing ingratitude toward our ancestors, our parents, and future generations (66)."
"If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love."
"When we talk about the theology of 'God is Dead,' this means that the notion of God must be dead in order for God to reveal himself as a reality. The theologians, if they only use concepts, and not direct experience, are not very helpful. The same goes for nirvana, which is something to be touched and lived and not discussed and described. We have notions that distort truth, reality. A Zen master said the following to a large assembly: 'My friends, every time I use the word Buddha, I suffer. I am allergic to it. Every time I do it, I have to go to the bathroom and rinse my mouth three times in succession.' He said this in order to help his disciples not to get caught up in the notion of Buddha. The Buddha is one thing, but the notion of Buddha is another."
"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."
"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."
"Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred."
"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."
"Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful."
"My joy is like Spring, so warmit makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.My pain is like a river of tears,so vast it fills the four oceans.Please call me by my true names,so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,so I can see that my joy and pain are one."
"You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope."
"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."
"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."
"Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment."
"It's very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems."
"Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action."
"If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it's not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. But before it produces a transformation in the other person, it has to produce a transformation within us. Some letters may take the whole of our lifetime to write."
"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."
"If you do not know how to take care of yourself, and the violence in you, then you will not be able to take care of others. You must have love and patience before you can truly listen to your partner or child. If you are irritated you cannot listen. You have to know how to breath mindfully, embrace your irritation and transform it. Offer ONLY understand and compassion to your partner or child - This is the true practice of love."
"Many of us live like dead people because we live without awareness. We carry our dead bodies with us and circulate throughout the world. We are pulled into the past or we are pulled forward into the future or we are caught by our projects or our despair and anger. We are not truly alive, we are not inhabited by awareness of the miracle of being alive."
"Emptiness is not the opposite of existence. It is not nothingness or annihilation."
"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."
"Things cannot stay the same because they are influenced by everything else, everything that is not itself."
"Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath."
"The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous."
"We all exist as part of a wonderful stream of life."
"To take good care of ourselves, we must go back and take care of the wounded child inside of us. You have to practice going back to your wounded child every day. You have to embrace him or her terderly, like a big brother or a big sister. You have to talk to him, talk to her. And you can write a letter to the Little child in you, of two or three pages, to that you recognize his or her presence, and will do everything you can to heal his or her wounds."
"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."
"All the methods in the search for truth should be looked on as means rather than as ends in themselves or as absolute truth."
"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."
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