The Art of Power

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Your mindful steps are not for you alone; they are for your partner and friends too, because the moment you stop suffering, others benefit.

All these thoughts can be easily transformed once you have touched the nature of no-self.

With the insight of no-self, you no longer seek the kind of happiness that will make other people suffer. This kind of insight can liberate you and liberate the world.

You want true life, true happiness, true power.

The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said that to love another doesn’t mean we sit and look at each other; it means we both look in the same direction.

We all start looking for the beautiful, the true, and the good in other people.

When we find these qualities in another person, we may fall in love with him

We say that the person has deceived us, and we suffer.

In the beginning, each of us feels that we lack something, that we are only half a person. And we wander around looking for our other half.

We have a perception that we are not worthy.

People think that the true, the beautiful, and the good exist somewhere else, in someone else. They don’t know that they are true, beautiful, and good at their core.

When we recognize that in us there is the essence of goodness, beauty, and truth, we will stop going in search of something.

We will stop wandering around feeling that we lack something.

We are like an ocean wave that believes it is fragile and ugly and that the other waves are more beautiful, more powerful. The wave has an inferiority complex.

a small wave, half a wave or a third of a wave, it is still made out of water.

A wave is really only water, and as far as water is concerned, all waves are equal because all waves are water.

Don’t go looking outside yourself anymore, because the thing you are looking for is already there within you. All living beings have the pure, clear, complete nature within themselves.

Many of us believe our workplace is not a safe place. Often at work, we are afraid of disapproval.

We are afraid to be ourselves, and we change who we are to be accepted.

when you are not recognized by others as beautiful and worthy, you suffer.

A flower doesn’t have this kind of fear.

But a flower never tries to imitate another flower. Don’t try to be someone else.

The cosmos has come together and helped you manifest in this way, and you are beautiful just as you are.

To be beautiful means to b...

You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be beautiful as a lotus flowe...

True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.

His energy of demanding recognition dominated the environment and made it difficult for others to be joyful around him.

“Your seeking recognition is causing you suffering. You may want to experiment with being yourself

and coming to others without the need to ...

We imagine things, we construct things in our mind, and we suffer because of it.

We are afraid people are judging us, and it is this fear, rather than the actual judgment, that upsets us.

The practice of love as taught by the Buddha is very clear. It involves cultivating the equanimity that comes from the insight of no-self.

every thing is made of everything else, we stop searching for the perfect partner or for individual recognition.

Everything that manifests itself in this wor...

You know what is going on inside you. You know how your mind is.

“You have what you are looking for within yourself.”

Then you become friends on the spiritual path, a path that leads us not on an outer search but on an inner one.

When we love someone, we feel strong, we feel powerful.

We feel happy because we have found a companion who can understand us. That energ...

When understanding is there, we know what to do and what not to do to bring happiness and peace to the other person. This is true love.

if you have mindfulness and concentration, you know how to handle your love, and the love will not create suffering in you and your beloved. Love is an energy.

Is it giving rise to more craving, to more anxiety and fear? Or does it give us the energy of peace, of compassion and liberation?

we are encouraged to love every living being as a mother loves her only child; this ...

we can transform our limited love into a source of boundless love.

True love is characterized by attentiveness, respect.

To make our love meaningful, we need to nourish our bodhicitta, our mind of boundless love and compassion.

Ananda could never be happy with one or two people, because that happiness is so small.

He wants to be able to help many, many people. He has a mind of great equality. He wants to love but not just one person. He wants to love thousands and thousands of people.

We can become someone who loves all beings, not just one person. We become someone who serves others.

A true teacher will always encourage us to be in touch with the teacher within us.