The Heart of Understanding Quotes

“If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that when the truth comes and knocks on our door, we won't want to let it in.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“So, while driving in the car with the person sitting right next to us, we think about other things. We aren't interested in him anymore. What arrogance! The person sitting there beside is really a mystery! We only have the impression that we know her, but we don't know anything yet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“I bowed my heard, and I knew that we have a lot to learn from the leaf because it was not afraid - it knew that nothing can be born and nothing can die.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“If you don't understand and you love, that is not love; it is something else.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“In the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“Imagine one atom of that speck of dust, with electrons traveling around its nucleus at 180,000 miles per second. It is very exciting. To return to a speck of dust with be quite an exciting adventure!”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“Views, knowledge, and even wisdom are solid, and can block the way of understanding.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“We cannot conceive of the birth of anything.There is only continuation. Please look back even further and you will see that you not only exist in your father and mother, but you also exist in your grandparents and your greatgrandparents. As I look more deeply, I can see that in a former life I was a cloud. This is not poetry; it is science. Why do I say that in a former life I was a cloud? Because I am still a cloud. Without the cloud, I cannot be here. I am the cloud, the river, and the air at this very moment, so I know that in the past I have been a cloud, a river, and the air. And I was a rock. I was the minerals in the water. This is not a question of belief in reincarnation. This is the history of life on Earth. We have been gas, sunshine, water, fungi, and plants. We have been single-celled beings. The Buddha said that in one of his former lives, he was a tree. He was a fish, he was a deer. These are not superstitious things. Every one of us has been a cloud, a deer, a bird, a fish, and we continue to be these things, not just in former lives.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“We practice so that each moment of our life becomes real life. And, therefore, when we meditate, we sit for sitting; we don't sit for something else.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“This is Buddhist meditation-to penetrate, to be one with, in order to really understand.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“Intimacy is at the heart of the teaching contained in this book. In the thirteenth century, Zen Master Eihei Dogen taught that enlightenment is just intimacy with all things.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“Any meaningful work for peace must follow the principle of nonduality, the principle of penetration.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“The Bodhisattva Avalokita, while moving in the deep
course of Perfect Understanding, shed light on the five
skandhas and found them equally empty. After this
penetration, he overcame all pain.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra

“sheet of paper.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra