The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

by Thich Nhat Hanh

“I teach only suffering and the transformation of suffering.”

Once the door of awareness has been opened, you cannot close it. The wounds of war in me are still not all healed. There are nights I lie awake and embrace my people, my country, and the whole planet with my mindful breathing.

If you let the words enter you, the soil and the seeds will do the rest of the work.

Sarvastivada (“the School that Proclaims Everything Is”) and Vibhajyavada (“the School that Discriminates”).

some of the Buddha’s teachings were distorted even before they were written down.

From this sprouted the Mahayana way of thinking. It was a movement aimed at developing the deep sources of Buddhist thought and reviving the tremendous energy of bodhicitta (the mind of love) and bringing Buddhism back into contact with life. This was the Mahayanizing movement of Buddhism.

We have to learn the art of stopping — stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us.

Practice in a way that does not tire you out, but gives your body, emotions, and consciousness a chance to rest. Our body and mind have the capacity to heal themselves if we allow them to rest.

If we cannot stop, the course of our destruction will just continue. The world needs healing. Individuals, communities, and nations need healing.

We stop running from our pain. With all our courage and tenderness, we recognize, acknowledge, and identify it.

In the collective consciousness there are many toxic foods such as anger and despair. If we allow ourselves to consume that kind of food, we shall be poisoned.

Practice does not mean using only your own mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. You also have to benefit from the mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom of friends on the path and your teacher.

If you want to garden, you have to bend down and touch the soil. Gardening is a practice, not an idea. To practice the Four Noble Truths, you yourself have to touch deeply the things that bring you peace and joy. When you do, you realize that walking on the Earth is a miracle, washing the dishes is a miracle, and practicing with a community of friends is a miracle.

Don’t run away from things that are unpleasant in order to embrace things that are pleasant. Put your hands in the earth. Face the difficulties and grow new happiness.

Don’t throw away your suffering. Touch your suffering. Face it directly, and your joy will become deeper.

the ability to distinguish wholesome roots (kushala mula) from unwholesome roots (akushala mula).

To love means to nourish the other with appropriate attention.

When observing dharmas, five kinds of meditation can help us calm our minds: (1) counting the breath, (2) observing interdependent arising, (3) observing impurity, (4) observing with love and compassion,7 and (5) observing the different realms.

Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.

Just as vegetation is sensitive to sunlight, mental formations are sensitive to mindfulness.

Without understanding, our actions might cause others to suffer. We may be motivated by the desire to make others happy, but if we do not have understanding, the more we do, the more trouble we may create.

sexual responsibility: “Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society.

Sexual misbehavior creates so much suffering.

if it takes us farther from reality or from those we love, it is wrong diligence.

The four practices usually associated with Right Diligence are: (1) preventing unwholesome seeds in our store consciousness that have not yet arisen from arising, (2) helping the unwholesome seeds that have already arisen to return to our store consciousness, (3) finding ways to water the wholesome seeds in our store consciousness that have not yet arisen and asking our friends to do the same, and (4) nourishing the wholesome seeds that have already arisen so that they will stay present in our mind consciousness and grow stronger.

“Unwholesome” means not conducive to liberation or the Path. In our store consciousness there are many seeds that are not beneficial for our transformation, and if those seeds are watered, they will grow stronger.

cultivate a mind that is one-pointed.

To practice samadhi is to live deeply each moment that is given us to live. Samadhi means concentration.

The insight into impermanence keeps you from getting caught in the suffering of craving, attachment, and despair.

To practice the Concentration on Nonself, touch the nature of interbeing in everything you contact.

To practice Right Livelihood (samyag ajiva), you have to find a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion.

Five Mindfulness Trainings: not dealing in arms, in the slave trade, the meat trade, the sale of alcohol, drugs, or poisons; or making prophecies or telling fortunes.

sexual misconduct,

Any work of art is, to a large extent, a product of the collective consciousness.

We cannot succeed at having a Right Livelihood one hundred percent, but we can resolve to go in the direction of compassion and reducing suffering.

Many people get rich by means of wrong livelihood. Then they go to their temple or church and make donations. These donations come from feelings of fear and guilt rather than the wish to bring happiness to others and relieve others of suffering.

The Buddha recommends that we recite the “Five Remembrances” every day: (1) I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old. (2) I am of the nature to have ill-health. There is no way to escape having ill-health. (3) I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death. (4) All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. (5) My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

Liberation is the ability to go from the world of signs to the world of true nature.

Within us, we carry the world of no birth and no death. But we never touch it, because we live only with our notions.

Your toothache is impermanent, but your non-toothache is also impermanent.

The Three Dharma Seals (Dharma mudra) are impermanence (anitya), nonself (anatman), and nirvana.

I learned that to make peanut butter cookies, you mix the ingredients to prepare the batter, and then you put each cookie onto a cookie sheet using a spoon. I imagined that the moment each cookie leaves the bowl of dough and is placed onto the tray, it begins to think of itself as separate. You, the creator of the cookies, know better, and you have a lot of compassion for them. You know that they are originally all one, and that even now, the happiness of each cookie is still the happiness of all the other cookies. But they have developed “discriminative perception” (vikalpa), and suddenly they set up barriers between themselves.