No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Both suffering and happiness are of an organic nature, which means they are both transitory; they are always changing. The flower, when it wilts, becomes the compost. The compost can help grow a flower again. Happiness is also organic and impermanent by nature. It can become suffering and suffering can become happiness again.

The hardest thing to practice is not allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by despair. When you’re overwhelmed by despair, all you can see is suffering everywhere you look. You feel as if the worst thing is happening to you. But we must remember that suffering is a kind of mud that we need in order to generate joy and happiness. Without suffering, there’s no happiness. So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.

if we can recognize suffering, and if we embrace it and look deeply into its roots, then we’ll be able to let go of the habits that feed it and, at

the same time, find a way to happiness. Suffering has its beneficial aspects. It can be an excellent teacher.

We human beings used to have this kind of wisdom. But we have lost touch with it. We don’t know how to rest anymore. We don’t allow the body to rest, to release the tension, and heal.

The main affliction of our modern civilization is that we don’t know how to handle the suffering inside us and we try to cover it up with all kinds of consumption. Retailers peddle a plethora of classic and novel devices to help us cover up the suffering inside.

Mindfulness is the best way to be with our suffering without being overwhelmed by it. Mindfulness is the capacity to dwell in the present moment, to know what’s happening in the here and now.

unite body and mind and come back home to ourselves. We feel our bodies more fully. We are truly alive only when the mind is with the body.

If we take care of the suffering inside us, we have more clarity, energy, and strength to help address the suffering violence, poverty, and inequity of our loved ones as well as the suffering in our community and the world. If, however, we are preoccupied with the fear and despair in us, we can’t help remove the suffering of others. There is an art to suffering well. If we know how to take care of our suffering, we not only suffer much, much less, we also create more happiness around us and in the world.

When we are full of fear, we are often completely focused on preventing the event we dread, and we forget that joy is also possible even in an unpredictable world.

This is because we have forgotten or misplaced our deepest aspiration. Many of us slog through life without conscious awareness or intention. We set ourselves a course and we barrel ahead, without stopping to ask whether this path is fulfilling our most important goals.

These objects of desire are not real conditions of happiness. Looking deeply, we can recognize that habit energy of running and envision what things would be like if we didn’t let it push us to run anymore.

You see clearly that he has a lot of pain inside and doesn’t know how to handle it. That is why he suffers so much and makes the people around him suffer. What he needs is help, not punishment.

That is why we should not try to run away from one unpleasant thing after another. Holding our suffering, looking deeply into it, and transforming it into compassion, we find a way to happiness.

the wondrous, healing balm of understanding and compassion.

Our idea of happiness may itself be the main obstacle keeping us from true happiness.

Waking up this morning I smile.

When you love someone, you want to offer her something that can make her happy. According to this practice, the most precious thing that you can offer your beloved is your presence.

When you are truly there, you can go to the person you love, look into her eyes and say to her, “I am here for you.” The most precious thing you can offer the person you love is your presence.

You can live in such a way that shows compassion is possible in any situation.

Our tendency is to think that if we let go, we’ll lose the things that make us happy. But the opposite is true. The more we let go, the happier we become.

We don’t let go of reality. But we let go of our wrong ideas and wrong perceptions about reality.

When you love someone, you have to offer that person the best you have. The best thing we can offer another person is our true presence.

Before you can be there for someone else, you have to be there for yourself. So we practice this mantra first with ourselves. “I am here for you” also means that I am here for myself. The mind goes home to the body and we become aware that we have a body. This is something we forget, especially when we’re absorbed in our work.

The first definition of love is to be there. This is a practice. How can you love if you are not there? In order to love you have to be there, body and mind united. A true lover knows that the practice of mindfulness is the foundation of true love.

But we learn. In fact, when we suffer we do need the other person. That’s the commitment we made in the beginning of our relationship. You have to be true and faithful to that commitment. When you suffer, you should tell her that you suffer and that you need her help.

We shouldn’t wait until the strong emotion comes to begin learning. That may be too late; the emotion may carry you away. But you can learn now. Then, if the day after tomorrow you have a strong emotion, you’ll have confidence that you can handle the strong emotion.

To love is, first of all, to accept ourselves as we actually are. That is why in this love meditation, “Know thyself” is the first practice of love. When we practice this, we see the conditions that have caused us to be the way we are. This makes it easy for us to accept ourselves, including our suffering and our happiness at the same time.

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.

Our idea of happiness can prevent us from being happy. When we believe that happiness should take a particular form, we fail to see the opportunities for joy that are right in front of us.

What do you do to nourish yourself? It’s important to discuss this subject with dear friends to find concrete ways to nourish joy and happiness. When you succeed in doing this, your suffering, sorrow, and painful mental formations will begin to transform.

But mind and body are not separate, and suffering is not just an emotion. We hold suffering in our body. The practice of deep relaxation is a way to acknowledge and soothe the suffering in the body and the suffering in the mind.