Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.

Explore your web: the needs, the beliefs, and the emotions that are controlling you so there's more of you to give and so you can appreciate what's driving other people. It's the only way our world's going to change.

Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception - what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms - what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe.

Question every thought that causes suffering and test it against your own sense of truth.

We create our own unhappiness. The purpose of suffering is to help us understand we are the ones who cause it.

I really explored self-awareness and emotions through 'Green Lantern.' It might sound goofy, but I do believe that emotions have power. We're all driven by something, and most of that is emotional reaction. For me, it was about recognizing my self-awareness.

Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts. You can break this spell, but it takes training just like it takes training to defend yourself against a physical assault.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

I don't think we spend enough time in reflection and introspection. We don't know who we are as individuals in this culture anymore.

The mind is a funny thing in how it works. Sometimes you have to tell yourself what's really true. If you don't, your mind starts trying to tell you lies.

Until you solve problems like fear individually, resolve why individuals feel the need to believe in whatever, there's really no point in organizations, in things that turn the world into a concept rather than an individual fact.

There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

That's where the fear comes from-from your uninvestigated thoughts.

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

With growing awareness, you can see where you're caught or where you suffer or where you create suffering. You can then turn toward the difficulties that arise in your life with compassion, bow, and say, these too are part of human incarnation.

For a practitioner of love and compassion, an enemy is one of the most important teachers. Without an enemy you cannot practice tolerance, and without tolerance you cannot build a sound basis of compassion.

Be aware of the words that go into your mind, both conscious and unconscious, because words and ideas can be great tools for your mind to use in coming to appropriate decisions. Remember that a statement spoken in spiritual consciousness can contain great spiritual power. Speaking powerful words of love changes things and outer circumstances as well as consciousness itself.

Your ego is just an idea implanted in your mind. It is poisonous. Your ego keeps driving you madder and madder.

Rather than going after our walls and barriers with a sledgehammer, we pay attention to them. With gentleness and honesty, we move closer to those walls. We touch them and smell them and get to know them well. We begin a process of acknowledging our aversions and our cravings. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to build the walls: What are the stories I tell myself? What repels me and what attracts me? We start to get curious about what’s going on.

A mind that practices love cannot love.

Whenever there is negativity in you, if you can be aware in that moment that there is something in you that takes pleasure in it or believes it has a useful purpose, you are becoming aware of the ego directly. The moment this happens your identity has shifted from ego to awareness. This means the ego is shrinking and awareness is growing.

It's not what people do to us that hurts us. In the most fundamental sense, it is our chosen response to what they do to us that hurts us.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss other people. Life's too short to worry about what other people do or don't do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.

Learning to cultivate an awareness of the known and unknown within one's being often leads to a healthier and more realistic sense of self.

Do you want to be right more than you want to know the truth? It's the truth that set me free. Acceptance, peace, and less attachment to a world of suffering are all effects of doing The Work. They're not the goals. Do The Work for the love of freedom, for the love of truth.