The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh

1. Mindfulness

Your true home is the here and the now.
Be like the peeble reaching the bed of the river without making any effort.
Recognise the habit and it loses its energy, and it can’t push us anymore.
With mindfulness, we can spend time with difficult feelings without running away.
Don’t be in a hurry to find the source of bad feelings, to make them disappear; just illuminate them.
Awareness is a tolerant and lucid precense, never violent or discriminating.

The deeper we look into any thing, the more we see its interbeing.
To be is to inter-be.
Don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.
Embrace your suffering, and let it reveal to you the way of peace.
Impermanence is more than an idea. It’s a practice to help us touch reality.
From the point of view of time, we say impermanence. From the point of view of space, we say non-self.
What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.
Your purpose is to be yourself.
There is neither birth nor death. There is only manifestation, appearance.
Existence and non-existence are just concepts. There is only manifestation and nonmanifestation, which depend on our perception.
You cannot reduce being into nonbeing.
The Three Doors of Liberation: emptiness; signlessness (appearance); aimlessness. (we already are what we want to become).
Buddhist teachings don’t sit outside us; they’re medicine for our ills, they’re skillful means to cure our ignorance, craving, and anger.

Running away doesn’t end our suffering; it only prolongs it.
Our painful feelings are a part of us. To deny them is to deny our very selves.
You are much more than your emotions.
We do everything we can to avoid confronting our true selves.
We need the eyes of understanding, of wisdom, to be an effective instrument of compassion.
Deep understanding is the substance of which true love is made.
If we have not been able to embrace and transform our own hurt and anger, it will be difficult to listen to another’s suffering.
Our good intentions can evaporate when we’re unable to handle the pain welling up within ourselves.
“Even if you are sure, check again.”

Peace, stability, and freedom always seek a way to express themselves in action.
When we are armed with compassion and understanding we fight not against other people but the tendency to invade, dominate, and exploit.
People only speak or act out when they’re suffering.
When we look closely at the other side, we see that they are just like us.
We don’t need a special effort, we don’t need to practice, to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky.

Added 2024-03-15.