Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/28/2010

Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/27/2010

So if we love someone, we should train in being able to listen. By listening with calm and understanding, we can ease the suffering of another person.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/26/2010

Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice DEEP LOOKING directed toward the other person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love. That is the message of the Buddha.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/25/2010

In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/24/2010

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/23/2010

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/22/2010

When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/21/2010

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air,but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/20/2010

You who are journalists, writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving speech. This is a universal thing, taught by all religions.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/19/2010

We must not be attached to a view or a doctrine, even a Buddhist one. .. . The Buddha said that if in a certain moment or place you adopt something as the absolute truth, and you attach to that, then you will no longer have any chance to reach the truth. Even when the truth comes and knocks on your door, and asks you to open the door, you won't recognize it. So you must not be too attached to dogma--to what you believe, and to what you perceive.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/18/2009

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/17/2010

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace.It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/16/2010

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/15/2010

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/14/2010

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/13/2010

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos - the trees, the clouds, everything.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/12/2010

Everyday we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life..., our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/11/2010

You're the only one who knows when you're using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you're opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is - working with it rather than struggling against it. You're the only one who knows."

~Pema Chodron

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/10/2010

"Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh."

~Pema Chodron

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/9/2010

"When we start out on a spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are - heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck."

~Pema Chodron

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/8/2010

"There's a reason you can learn from everything: you have basic wisdom, basic intelligence, and basic goodness."

~Pema Chodron

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/7/2010

"Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live."

~Pema Chodron

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/6/2010

"We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground."

~Pema Chodron

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/5/2010

"When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space."

~Pema Chodron

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/4/2010

"A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us."

~Pema Chodron

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