The Art of Power

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Only when we are solid can we be our best and take good care of our loved ones.

it is important that we conduct our professional life with compassion, with kindness.

When you have faith, your eyes are bright and your steps are confident. This is power.

When you drink your tea, just drink your tea. Enjoy drinking your tea.

Practice looking deeply into the nature of what upsets you to see what the most mindful and compassionate response may be.

compassion is the ground of happiness.

Wisdom or insight is born from looking deeply.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.”

Power will be challenged by those with less power if it is seen as illegitimate.

seek the powers of faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

Misuse of power is the primary cause of suffering for many of us.

When you hug your partner, do the same. Forget everything else. Be totally present, totally alive in the act of hugging.

We once had this kind of wisdom, but now we have lost our capacity to rest.

because if your motivation is to punish someone else or to run after fame, glory, and power, you are going to suffer a lot.

The Buddha asked, “Who are these two strong men who try to bring you to the realm of hell? They are your volition, your desire to run after what you believe to be happiness, namely the objects of your craving: craving for fame, craving for power, craving for sex, craving for wealth.”

understanding is the foundation of love.

It’s important to look deeply into our deepest desire to see its true nature. If you suffer and make your loved ones suffer, there is nothing that can justify your desire.

Fame, sex, power, and wealth are the four kinds of bait that have a hook.

Happiness exists in many forms, but true happiness doesn’t come from the four objects of craving: sex, power, fame, and wealth.

Your purpose is to wake up to the reality of suffering and its causes, to wake up to the possibility of happiness.

If we are able to quiet the cravings within us, we see that our true desire is not wealth or fame but happiness. Because we want happiness, we search for power outside of ourselves. But as long as we seek power and happiness in fame, money, and sex, we will not find it. Only by coming back to ourselves and purifying our minds can we experience true, lasting happiness and the kind of power that can’t be corrupted.

True happiness is based on peace.

If you don’t have peace in yourself, you haven’t experienced true happiness.

Those of us who want to experience great happiness, to awaken the mind of great understanding and love, should not base our mind on any external thing, including form, sound, touch, and ideas. We should not rely on any object to give rise to the mind of enlightenment, the mind of love.

So you cannot say that the position or occupation you long for will make you happy. If you think you can base your decision and your happiness on this kind of outer form, you are wrong. You will be deceived.

Happiness can come to you in a thousand ways if you only allow it to. But if you’re committed to only one idea of happiness, you’re stuck.

Attachment to views, attachment to ideas, attachment to perceptions are the biggest obstacle to the truth.”

Ideas and perceptions should be abandoned all the time, to make room for better ideas and truer perceptions.

Your action, what you do, depends on who you are. The quality of your action depends on the quality of your being.

Look at the tree in the front yard: the tree doesn’t seem to do anything. It just stands there, vigorous, fresh, and beautiful, and everyone benefits from it. That is the miracle of being.

To feel that you are helpful, you are useful to society—this is happiness.

People asked the Buddha how to be happy, and he said that all buddhas teach the same thing: The bad things, don’t do them. The good things, try to do them. Try to purify, subdue your own mind. That is the teaching of all buddhas.

Our minds can be intoxicated by three kinds of poison: the first is craving, the second is hate or violence, and the third is delusion. To purify your mind is to neutralize and transform these poisons in you. You neutralize these poisons with the three wisdoms, the energies of mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

Cultivating true power is about waking up from your dream.

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

He saw that the good, the beautiful, and the true are to be found in everyone, but very few people know that.

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

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

But if you know who you are, you don’t have to suffer anymore. The practice of understanding yourself and training yourself to produce more and more beautiful thoughts, words, and actions gives you self-confidence, and that will transform everything else.

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? In Buddhism we are encouraged to love every living being as a mother loves her only child; this is called boundless love. It is a tremendous source of energy. With the power of mindfulness, of concentration and insight, we can transform our limited love into a source of boundless love.

four elements that constitute true love: the capacity to be kind and offer happiness, maitri in Sanskrit; compassion, the capacity to relieve suffering, karuna; the capacity to bring joy every day, mudita; and finally, the capacity of nondiscrimination, upeksha.

Ananda is like a cool breeze. If you want to possess it and lock it in a small box, you will lose this refreshing cool breeze.

Once you have seen the truth and beauty within yourself, then you can see it within your loved one. To love means being there for your beloved, recognizing his presence as important. To be there, to be fully present, to appreciate the preciousness of your beloved, this is the practice of true love.

Self-understanding and self-love provide the foundation for understanding and loving another person.

We should consider each other fellow travelers sitting in the same boat. If the boat sinks, we will all sink together.

So please don’t give yourself the idea that you’re irreplaceable. You must delegate your tasks to others, even if in the beginning you don’t think they’re as good as you are.

Mindfulness of the past is very different from getting carried away in sorrow and regret.

By taking care of nonflower elements, you take care of the flower.

Your well-being, your capacity to smile, rest, and breathe, as well as your capacity to care for the well-being of your family, are nonbusiness elements, but they are essential to the well-being of business.

Being happy where we are is a deep practice.