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Quotes by Vietnamese Authors
"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."
"There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way."
"Without suffering there cannot be happiness. Without mud there cannot be any lotus flowers."
"There is nowhere to arrive except the present moment."
"When you are a young person, you are like a young creek, and you meet many rocks, many obstacles and difficulties on your way. You hurry to get past these obstacles and get to the ocean. But as the creek moves down through the fields, it becomes larges and calmer and it can enjoy the reflection of the sky. It's wonderful. You will arrive at the sea anyway so enjoy the journey. Enjoy the sunshine, the sunset, the moon, the birds, the trees, and the many beauties along the way. Taste every moment of your daily life."
"Many people think excitement is happiness.... But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace."
"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."
"But work is life only when done in mindfulness. otherwise, one becomes life the person "who lives as though dead." We need to light our own torch in order to carry on. But the life of each one of us is connected with the life of those around us. If we know how to live in mindfulness, if we know how to preserve and care for our own mind and heart then thanks to that our brothers and sisters will also know how to live in mindfulness."
"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."
"We wanted peace. We did not care about anyone's victory or defeat. We just wanted the bombs to stop falling on us."
"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."
"Look deeply at your anger, as you would look at your own child. Don't reject it or hate it. The point of meditation is not to turn yourself into a battlefield, one side opposing the other. Conscious breathing soothes and calms the anger, and mindfulness penetrates it. Anger is just an energy, and all energies can be transformed. Meditation is the art of using one kind of energy to transform another."
"In the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding."
"Suffering has many faces. If we discover the roots of one suffering, we are at the same time discovering the roots of others."
"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."
"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."
"When you lose a loved one, you suffer. But if you know how to look deeply, you have a chance to realize that his or her nature is truly the nature of no birth, no death. There is manifestation and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation. You have to be very keen and very alert in order to recognize the new manifestations of just one person."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Things cannot stay the same because they are influenced by everything else, everything that is not itself."
"The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Mindfulness is the awareness of what is going on in us and around us in the present moment. It requires stopping, looking deeply, and recognizing both the uniqueness of the moment and its connection to everything that has gone on before and will go on in the future."
"All the methods in the search for truth should be looked on as means rather than as ends in themselves or as absolute truth."
"If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire."
"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."
"Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind."
"When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight."
"Direct experience is the only way."
"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."
"We can't wait to be happy until we remove one hundred percent of suffering. That moment will never exist."
"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."
"The meditation on interdependence is to help one penetrate reality in order to be one with it, not to become caught up in philosophical opinion or meditation methods. The raft is used to cross the river. It isn't to be carried around on your shoulders. The finger which points at the moon isn't the moon itself."
"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."
"You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also... your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy."
"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."
"Dear friends, do you know that you are lucky people? You don't have any cows to lose."
"Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful."
"When you feel overwhelmed, you're trying too hard. That kind of energy does not help the other person and it does not help you. You should not be too eager to help right away. There are two things: to be and to do. Don't think too much about to do-to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. To be happiness. And then to do joy, to do happiness-on the basis of being. So first you have to focus on the practice of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being attentive. Being generous. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It's like if the other person is sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person."
"Your body belongs to the earth. In modern life, people tend to think their bodies belong to them, that they can do anything they want to themselves. But your body is not only yours. Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents, and future generations. It also belongs to society and to all the other living beings. The trees, the clouds, the soil, and every living thing brought about the presence of your body. We can eat with care, knowing we are caretakers of our bodies, rather than their owners."
"Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge."
"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."
"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."
"We fear that this moment will end, that we won't get what we need, that we will lose what we love, or that we will not be safe. Often, our biggest fear is the knowledge that one day our bodies will cease functioning. So even when we are surrounded by all the conditions for happiness, our joy is not complete."
"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."
"If our minds are blocked, there is no device that will make up for our inability to communicate with ourselves or others."
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