Nhat Hanh
Nhat Hanh
Thích Nhất Hạnh; born as Nguyen Xuan Bao on October 11, 1926) is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist. He lives in Plum Village in the Dordogne region in the south of France, travelling internationally to give retreats and talks. He coined the term "Engaged Buddhism" in his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. A long-term exile, he was given permission to make his first return trip to Vietnam in 2005...
NationalityVietnamese
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth11 October 1926
CountryVietnam
We do not have to die to enter the kingdom of Heaven, In fact we have to be fully alive. When we are truly alive we see that the tree is part of Heaven and we are also part of Heaven. The whole universe is conspiring to reveal this to us. Peace is available and when we touch it everything becomes real. We become ourselves, fully alive in the present moment.
Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made.
Meditation is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a reentery into society.
In each of us is a seed of understanding. The seed is God.
There may be a time when a country will have to wake up from a vision of happiness, when they have to realize that theirs is not the perfect idea, that there are many aspects that do not correspond to the reality of what is there, the real need and aspirations of the people.
Freedom is the real foundation of happiness.
Without full awareness of breathing, there can be no development of meditative stability and understanding.
There are always some people who are ready to embrace a doctrine, a notion, a dogma, and they miss the real teaching.
Don't think you have to be solemn to meditate. To meditate, well, you have to smile a lot.
Our appointment with life is in the present moment. If we do not have peace and joy right now, when will we have peace and joy?
Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.
We must look deeply. When we buy something or consume something, we may be participating in an act of killing. This precept [non-killing] reflects our determination not to kill, either directly or indirectly, and also to prevent others from killing.
In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings.
The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.