Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.

Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching.

I just refer to myself as being Spirit, Mind and Body like everybody else and working toward the mastery of my natural divinity and the healing of my emotional mind.

By 1968, both The Beatles and The Beach Boys had plenty of fame - we were looking for something deeper. The Maharishi taught us how to go beyond thinking and action in order to grow from within.

Meditation is not growth of the ego, it is death of the ego.

Yoga is the journey from just eating and sleeping to becoming an ecstatic being. This is the aspiration of life itself.

True progress comes not through action, but through awakening.

I'll take transformational change any way it comes. One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection. To call what happens 'the placebo effect' is just to give a name to something we don't understand.

The more I get connected to my own breath and my own yogic experience and my own prayer and my own idea, the ideas that have existed for so long - that we all belong to each other and we could live a deeper spiritual existence - the more I get connected to that, the more I shun this world.

The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.

The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self.

The great solution to all human problems is individual inner transformation.

The spiritual quest is a journey without distance. You travel from where you are right now To where you have always been. From ignorance to recognition.

Enlightenment is lightening up.

Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought.

Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.

You can enter yoga, or the path of yoga, only when you are totally frustrated with your own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, yoga is not for you.

I have come not to teach but to awaken.

Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally.

In the mere observation of yourself, you begin the process of healing and transformation.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Enlightenment is not a complete remedy.

Meditation is not your doing. You simply make the effort, but it is not your doing. Your effort is needed to prepare the ground. As the ground is ready, immediately you see you are no more; the whole cosmos is. You have entered a greater womb, an eternal womb of tremendous peace and ecstasy.

Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed - only courage to experience. And that's what's lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation.

The very way you breathe, sit, stand, eat, walk, work - everything can become yoga. You can use any process of life to transcend your limitations.