Being Peace (Thich Nhat Hanh Classics)

by Thich Nhat Hanh

We don’t need to go to China to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to travel into the future to enjoy our breathing. We can be in touch with these things right now. It would be a pity if we were only aware of suffering.

Please do not think we must be solemn in order to meditate. In fact, to meditate well, we have to smile a lot.

We have the seeds of everything in us, and we have to take the situation in hand to recover our own sovereignty.

We need people who can sit still and be able to smile, who can walk peacefully.

When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.

Anything that can help you wake up has Buddha nature. When I am alone and a bird calls me, I return to myself. I breathe, and I smile, and sometimes it calls me once more. I smile and I say to the bird, “I hear already.”

Reality, ultimate reality, is free from all adjectives, either pure or impure. So his response was to shake up the monk’s mind, so he could cleanse himself of all these adjectives in order to see into the nature of the Dharmakaya.

Dharmakaya is not just expressed in words, in sounds. It can express itself in just being. Sometimes if we don’t do anything, we help more than if we do a lot. We call that non-action.

Every day we have many feelings. Sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are sorrowful, sometimes angry, irritated or afraid; and these feelings fill our mind and heart. One feeling lasts for a while, and then another comes, and another, as if there is a stream of feelings for us to deal with. Practicing meditation is to be aware of each feeling.

Pleasant or unpleasant depends on our way of looking.

If you are happy, all of us will profit from it. Society will profit from it. All living beings will profit from it.

During our daily lives we have many misperceptions. If I don’t understand you, I may be angry at you all the time. We are not capable of understanding each other, and that is the main source of human suffering.

The repetition, “body in the body,” is not just to underline the importance of it. Contemplating body in the body means that you do not stand outside of something to contemplate it.

The message is clear. ”Nonduality” is the key word for Buddhist meditation.

In Buddhism we do not consider anger, hatred, greed as enemies we have to fight, to destroy, to annihilate. If we annihilate anger, we annihilate ourselves.

Irritation is a destructive energy. We cannot destroy the energy; we can only convert it into a more constructive energy. Forgiveness is a constructive energy. Understanding is a constructive energy.

Meditation on your anger is first of all to produce awareness of anger, “I am the anger,” and then to look deeply into the nature of anger. Anger is born from ignorance, and is a strong ally of ignorance.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

“Sometime, somewhere you take something to be the truth. If you cling to it so much, when the truth comes in person and knocks at your door, you will not open it.”

Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge.

Knowledge is solid; it blocks the way of understanding. Water can flow, it can penetrate anything.

MEDITATION is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a reentry into society.

We don’t deal with our perceptions and our feelings only during sitting practice. We have to deal with them all the time.

There is a Zen story about a man riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Another man, standing alongside the road, yells at him, “Where are you going?” and the man on the horse yells back, “I don’t know. Ask the horse.” I think that is our situation. We are riding many horses that we cannot control.

Eating a bowl of rice may be reconciling more with the suffering of the world than eating a piece of meat.

If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of consuming, of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive, the present moment.

Anywhere we go, we will have our self with us; we cannot escape ourselves. Sometimes it is better to turn the engine off and go out for a walking meditation.

“Before starting the car, I know where I am going,” is a very deep question. “Where shall I go? To my own destruction?” If the trees die, humans are going to die also. If trees and animals are not alive, how can we be alive?

Reconciliation is to understand both sides, to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then to go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.

love you

*Forever Man, Eric Clapton

To transform our minds is also to transform our situation, because the situation is mind, and mind is situation.

I hope we can bring a new dimension to the peace movement. The peace movement is filled with anger and hatred.

Buddhism, in order to be Buddhism, must be suitable, appropriate to the psychology and the culture of the society that it serves.

We do not practice for the sake of the future, to be reborn in a paradise, but to be peace, to be compassion, to be joy right now.

the Buddha’s teaching is only a raft to help you cross the river, a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t mistake the finger for the moon. The raft is not the shore.

If you have a gun, you can shoot one, two, three, five people; but if you have an ideology and stick to it, thinking it is the absolute truth, you can kill millions.

Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our views on others, we are committed not to force others, even our children, by any means whatsoever—such as authority, threat, money, propaganda, or indoctrination—to adopt our views.

If we don’t encounter pain, ills, we won’t look for the causes of pain and ills to find a remedy, a way out of the situation.

If we get in touch with the suffering in the world and are moved by that suffering, we may come forward to help the people who are suffering, and our own suffering may just vanish.

In the context of our modern society, simple living also means to remain as free as possible from the destructive social and economic machine, and to avoid stress, depression, high blood pressure, and other modern diseases.

Once we are able to live simply and happily, we are better able to help others.

The words we speak can create love, trust, and happiness around us, or create a hell.

dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration.

Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love; love is another name for understanding.

If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

If we cannot hear the sound of the bell, then we cannot hear other sounds which also come from the Buddha, like the sound of the wind, the sound of the bird, even the sounds of cars or a baby crying. They are all a call from the Buddha to return to ourselves.

If you do not have enough concentration, you cannot be strong enough to break through, to have a breakthrough into a subject of your meditation.

Sitting without being is not sitting.

We walk all the time, but usually it is more like running. When we walk like that, we print anxiety and sorrow on the Earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on Earth.

If you want to have a statue or a painting of a Buddha, please be choosy. Many times I see Buddhas who are not relaxed and peaceful. The artists who make them do not practice breathing, smiling. Be choosy if you ask a Buddha to come home. A Buddha should be smiling, happy, beautiful, for the sake of our children. If they look at the Buddha and don’t feel refreshed and happy, then it is not a good statue. If you don’t find a beautiful Buddha, wait, and have a flower instead. A flower is a Buddha. A flower has Buddha nature.