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.
When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.
When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With the smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world.
When we live in the spirit of gratitude, there will be much happiness in our life. The one who is grateful is the one who has much happiness while the one who is ungrateful will not be able to have happiness.
There are always some people who are ready to embrace a doctrine, a notion, a dogma, and they miss the real teaching.
It’s like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud you cannot have lotus flowers. Without suffering, you have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate.
Go slowly, breathe and smile.
A smile can change the situation of the world.
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.
In all the practice centers in the tradition of Plum Village whenever the phone rings or the clock chimes in the dining hall, people stop everything they are doing and breathe consciously, releasing all thinking and any tension.
Don’t think you have to be solemn to meditate. To meditate, well, you have to smile a lot.
You can practice deep listening in order to relieve the suffering in us, and in the other person. That kind of listening is described as compassionate listening. You listen only for the purpose of relieving suffering in the other person.
Happiness reveals itself when we are at peace with ourselves.
Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful.
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?
If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.
The joy of life is born of concentration. When you are having a cup of tea, the value of that experience depends on your concentration. You have to drink the tea with 100 percent of your concentration.
To educate people for peace, we can use words or we can speak with our lives.
Mother Earth is very talented.
When you drop bombs on the enemy, you drop those same bombs on yourself, your own country.