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The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala Pocket Classics)
1. Mindfulness
A Life of Miracles > Page 3
Around us, life bursts forth with miracles—a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.
Freedom > Page 10
Every one of us has the tendency to run. We have run all of our lives, and we continue to run into the future where we think that some happiness may be waiting. We have received the habit of running from our parents and ancestors. When we learn to recognize our habit of running, we can use mindful breathing, and simply smile at this habit and say, “Hello, my dear old friend, I know you are there.” And then you are free from this habit energy. You don’t have to fight it. There is no fighting in this practice. There is only recognition and awareness of what is going on. When the habit energy of running manifests itself, you just smile and come back to your mindful breathing.
Resting > Page 13
We do not sit in order to struggle to get enlightenment. No. Sitting first of all is for the pleasure of sitting. Walking first of all is for the pleasure of walking. And eating is for the pleasure of eating. And the art is to be there 100 percent.
Loving Presence > Page 14
Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses. If you look around yourself with mindfulness, you will see people going around like zombies. Have a great deal of compassion for the people around you who are living like this. They do not know that life is accessible only in the here and now.
Mindfulness of Breath > Page 16
As you breathe in, you can say to yourself, “Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.” When you do this, the energy of mindfulness embraces your in-breath, just like sunlight touching the leaves and branches of a tree. The light of mindfulness is content just to be there and embrace the breath, without doing it any violence, without intervening directly. As you breathe out, you can gently say, “Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
Touching the Earth > Page 22
In the Buddhist tradition I am part of, we do a practice called “Touching the Earth” every day. It helps us in many ways. You too could be helped by doing this practice. When you feel restless or lack confidence in yourself, or when you feel angry or unhappy, you can kneel down and touch the ground deeply with your hand. Touch the Earth as if it were your favorite thing or your best friend.
Mindful Living > Page 24
When I hold a piece of bread, I look at it, and sometimes I smile at it. The piece of bread is an ambassador of the cosmos offering nourishment and support. Looking deeply into the piece of bread, I see the sunshine, the clouds, the great earth. Without the sunshine, no wheat can grow. Without the clouds, there is no rain for the wheat to grow. Without the great earth, nothing can grow. That is why the piece of bread that I hold in my hand is a wonder of life. It is there for all of us. We have to be there for it.
Ruling the Five Skandhas > Page 27
Whenever we have fifteen “free” minutes, or an hour or two, we have the habit of using television, newspapers, music, conversation, or the telephone to forget and to run away from the reality of the elements that make up our being.
Ruling the Five Skandhas > Page 28
few days practicing like this can increase the energy of mindfulness in you, and that energy will help you, protect you, and give you courage to go back to yourself, to see and embrace what is there in your territory.
Habit Energy > Page 30
We have to learn the art of stopping—stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us. When an emotion rushes through us like a storm, we have no peace. We turn on the TV and then we turn it off. We pick up a book and then we put it down. How can we stop this state of agitation? How can we stop our fear, despair, anger, and craving? We can stop by practicing mindful breathing, mindful...
A Day of Mindfulness > Page 35
calm and relaxing way, each movement done in mindfulness. Follow your breath, take hold of it, and don’t let your thoughts scatter. Each movement should be done calmly. Measure your steps with quiet, long breaths. Maintain a half smile. Spend at least a half hour taking a bath. Bathe slowly and mindfully, so that by the time you have finished, you feel light and refreshed. Afterward, you might do household work such as washing dishes, dusting and wiping off tables, scrubbing the kitchen floor, or arranging books on their shelves. Whatever the tasks, ... Don’t do any task in order to get it over with. Resolve to do each job in a relaxed way, with all your attention. Enjoy and be one with your work. Without this, the day of mindfulness will be of no value at all. The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness. Take the example of the Zen masters. No matter what task or motion they undertake, they do it slowly and evenly, without reluctance.
A Day of Mindfulness > Page 36 ·
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves—slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life. Don’t be attached to the future. Don’t worry about things you have to do.
Highlight(orange) - A Day of Mindfulness > Page 38 · Location 536
Such a day of mindfulness is crucial. Its effect on the other days of the week is immeasurable. After only three months of observing such a day of mindfulness once a week, I know that you will see a significant change in your life. The day of mindfulness will begin to penetrate the other days of the week,
2. Enlightenment
Highlight(orange) - Interbeing > Page 41 · Location 544
you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper “inter-are.” “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, “inter-be.” 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.
Highlight(orange) - Impermanence > Page 46 · Location 591
Buddha taught that everything is impermanent—flowers, tables, mountains, political regimes, bodies, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. We cannot find anything that is permanent. Flowers decompose, but knowing this does not prevent us from loving flowers. In fact, we are able to love them more because we know how to treasure them while they are still alive. If we learn to look at a flower in a way that impermanence is revealed to us, when it dies, we will not suffer. Impermanence is more than an idea. It is a practice to help us touch reality.
Highlight(orange) - Impermanence > Page 47 · Location 608
What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.
Highlight(orange) - Nothing to Attain > Page 52 · Location 647
There is nothing to do, nothing to realize, no program, no agenda. This is the Buddhist teaching about eschatology. Does the rose have to do something? No, the purpose of a rose it to be a rose. Your purpose is to be yourself. You don’t have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just as you are. This teaching of the Buddha allows us to enjoy ourselves, the blue sky, and everything
Highlight(orange) - Nothing to Attain > Page 52 · Location 654
Most people cannot believe that just walking as though you have nowhere to go is enough. They think that striving and competing are normal and necessary. Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes, and you will see how happy you are during those five minutes.
Highlight(orange) - Beyond Birth and Death > Page 54 · Location 667
The Buddha said, “When conditions are sufficient, the thing manifests, and when they are not sufficient, the thing remains hidden.”
Highlight(orange) - Beyond Birth and Death > Page 54 · Location 670
The word “suchness” describes reality as it is. Concepts and ideas are incapable of expressing reality as it is. Nirvana, the ultimate reality, cannot be described, because it is free of all concepts and ideas. Nirvana is the extinction of all concepts. It is total freedom. Most of our suffering arises from our ideas and concepts.
Highlight(orange) - Pure Land > Page 57 · Location 696
The fact is that the Pure Land is always available. The question remains: are we available to the Pure Land? To make ourselves available to the Pure Land is not difficult at all. Become mindful while you look, while you touch, while you touch the earth with your feet. It is possible for us to stay in the Pure Land twenty-four hours a day, with the condition that we keep mindfulness alive in us.
Highlight(orange) - Pure Land > Page 59 · Location 715
wonders of life are there, right in the present moment inside of us and around us. Our brain is a wonder. Our eyes are a wonder. Our heart is a wonder. Every cell of our body is a wonder. And around us everything is a wonder.
Highlight(orange) - No Fear > Page 65 · Location 760
NO FEAR When we look deeply into our fear, we see the desire for permanence.
Highlight(orange) - Three Doors of Liberation > Page 70 · Location 800
The first door is emptiness. Everything is empty. Empty of what? Empty of a separate self. A flower is full of everything in the cosmos—sunshine, clouds, air, and space. It is empty of only one thing, a separate existence. That is the meaning of emptiness. We can use this as a key to unlock the door to reality. The second door is signlessness. If you see a flower only as a flower and don’t see the sunshine, clouds, earth, time, and space in it, you are caught in the sign of the flower. But when you have touched the nature of interbeing of the flower, you truly see the flower. If you see a person and don’t also see his society, education, ancestors, culture, and environment,
Highlight(orange) - Three Doors of Liberation > Page 70 · Location 807
The third door is aimlessness. We already are what we want to become. We don’t have to become someone else. All we have to do is be ourselves, fully and authentically. We don’t have to run after anything. We already contain the whole cosmos. We simply return to ourselves through mindfulness and touch the peace and joy that are already present within us and all around us. I have arrived. I am already home. There is nothing to do. This is the third key for unlocking reality. Aimlessness, non-attainment, is a wonderful practice.
Highlight(orange) - The Businessless Person > Page 72 · Location 820
“businessless person,”
Highlight(orange) - The Businessless Person > Page 72 · Location 825
This is the essential teaching of Master Linji. When we learn to stop and be truly alive in the present moment, we are in touch with what’s going on within and around us. We aren’t carried away by the past, the future, our thinking, ideas, emotions, and projects.
Highlight(orange) - The Businessless Person > Page 73 · Location 833
medicine for our ills. Buddhist teachings are skillful means to cure our ignorance, craving, and anger, as well as our habit of seeking things outside and not having confidence in ourselves.
Highlight(orange) - Smile of the Bodhisattva > Page 75 · Location 852
Non-fear is the greatest gift we can offer to those we love. Nothing is more precious. But we cannot offer that gift unless we ourselves have it. If we have practiced and have touched the ultimate dimension of reality, we too can smile the bodhisattvas’ smile of non-fear. Like them, we don’t need to run away from our afflictions. We don’t need to go somewhere else to attain enlightenment.
Highlight(orange) - Right Path > Page 78 · Location 870
RIGHT PATH Happiness means feeling you are on the right path every moment. You don’t need to arrive at the end of the path in order to be happy. The right path refers to the very concrete ways you live your life in every moment. In
Highlight(orange) - Right Path > Page 80 · Location 886
You don’t need to be someone else; you’re already a wonder of life.
3. Emotions and Relationships
Highlight(orange) - The Wounded Child Inside > Page 84 · Location 902
The first function of mindfulness is to recognize and not to fight.
Highlight(orange) - Seeds > Page 91 · Location 964
Once we become aware of our actions, we can decide whether or not something is beneficial; if it’s not, we can decide not to repeat that action. If we’re aware of the habit energies in us and can become more intentional in our thoughts, speech, and actions, then we can transform not only
Highlight(orange) - Blocks and Knots > Page 93 · Location 976
Every time we acknowledge a feeling of pain and make its acquaintance, we come in close contact with ourselves. Bit by bit we look deeply into the substance and the roots of that pain. Fear, insecurity, anger, sadness, jealousy, and attachment form blocks of feelings and thoughts within us (Sanskrit: samyojana, “internal formation”), and we need time and opportunity to acknowledge them and to look into them. The mindfulness of breathing does the work of making painful feelings bearable. Mindfulness recognizes the presence of the feelings, acknowledges them, soothes them, and enables the work of observation to continue until the substance of the block is seen. Mindfulness is the only way to transform it.
Highlight(orange) - Blocks and Knots > Page 94 · Location 983
“knots” of suffering deep in our consciousness. The knots are created when we react emotionally to what others say and do, and also when we repeatedly suppress our awareness of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings and thoughts. The fetters that bind us can be identified as any painful feeling or addictive pleasant feeling, such as anger, hatred, pride, doubt, sorrow, or attachment. They are forged by confusion and a lack of understanding, by our misperceptions regarding our selves and our reality. By practicing mindfulness, we are able to recognize and transform unpleasant feelings and emotions when they first arise, so they do not become fetters.
Highlight(orange) - Mindfulness of Consumption > Page 99 · Location 1026
In order to forget that we have blocks of pain,
Highlight(orange) - Mindfulness of Consumption > Page 99 · Location 1026
sorrow, fear, and violence, we lose ourselves in the practice of consumption. Why do we turn on the television? Why do we continue to watch, even if the programs are not interesting at all? We watch because we want something to cover up
Highlight(orange) - Mindfulness of Consumption > Page 99 · Location 1028
our pain, sorrow, fear, and anger. We don’t want those feelings to come up, so we suppress them by consuming. There is some feeling of loneliness, fear, or depression inside that we don’t want, so we pick up the newspaper, we turn on the radio, we turn on the television, we pick up the phone, we go for a drive. We do everything we can to avoid confronting our true selves. This kind of consumption is a practice of running away, and the items we consume continue to bring the toxins of violence, fear, and anger into us. By practicing an embargo on our negative feelings, we create a situation of bad circulation in our psyche, suppressing our unwanted thought patterns and not allowing them to circulate. When we create a situation of bad circulation in our consciousness, it causes symptoms of depression and mental illness. When the blood in our body does not circulate well, we experience physical pain—we have a headache, a backache, sometimes there is pain everywhere.
Highlight(orange) - Four Mantras > Page 107 · Location 1098
The first mantra is “Dear one, I am here for you.” Perhaps this evening you will try for a few minutes to practice mindful breathing in order to bring your body and mind together. You will approach the person you love and with this mindfulness, with this concentration, you will look into his or her eyes, and you will begin to utter this formula: “Dear one, I am really here for you.” You must say that with your body and with your mind at the same time, and then you will see the transformation. To be there is the first step, and recognizing the presence of the other is the second step. To love is to recognize; to be loved is to be recognized by the other. If you love someone and you continue to ignore his or her presence, this is not true love. Perhaps your intention is not to ignore this person, but the way you act, look, and speak does not manifest
Highlight(orange) - Four Mantras > Page 108 · Location 1108
second mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are here, and it makes me very happy.” If you practice in this way, with a lot of concentration and mindfulness, you will see that this person will open immediately, like a flower blossoming.
Highlight(orange) - Mindful Communication > Page 112 · Location 1147
The same is true about our ability to listen deeply. If we have not been able to embrace and transform our own hurt and anger, it will be difficult to listen to another person’s suffering, especially if the other person’s speech is full of negative judgments, misperceptions, and blaming.
Highlight(orange) - Your True Person > Page 115 · Location 1167
The true person doesn’t go looking for an outside master. We are in charge of our own destiny and we have to be responsible for each of our words, thoughts, and actions. Mindfulness will help. Then we realize, “I’m thinking like this, I’m responsible for these thoughts. I’ve spoken like that, I’m responsible for my words. I’m doing this, and I’m responsible for this action.” We have to know that each word, each thought, each of our actions carries our signature. We are responsible for it and that is called being in charge of ourselves. Wherever we stand, wherever we sit, we are the true person. We are masters of ourselves and wherever we are, we are ourselves.
Highlight(orange) - Letting Go > Page 118 · Location 1203
Say you have a notion of happiness, an idea about what will make you happy. That idea has its roots in you and your environment. The idea tells you what conditions you need in order to be happy. You’ve entertained the idea for ten or twenty years, and now you realize that your idea of happiness is making you suffer. There may be an element of delusion, anger, or craving in it. These elements are the substance of suffering. On the other hand, you know that you have other kinds of experiences: moments of joy, release, or true love. You recognize these as moments of real happiness. When you have had a moment of real happiness, it becomes easier to release the objects of your craving, because you are developing the insight that these objects will not make you happy. Many people have the desire to let go, but they’re not able to do so because they don’t yet have enough insight; they haven’t seen other alternatives, other doorways to peace and happiness. Fear
Highlight(orange) - Letting Go > Page 119 · Location 1210
an element that prevents us from letting go. We’re fearful that if we let go we’ll have nothing else to cling to. Letting go is a practice; it’s an art. One day, when you’re strong enough and determined enough, you’ll let go of the afflictions that make you suffer.
4. Peace
Highlight(orange) - The Thousand Arms of the Bodhisattva > Page 138 · Location 1358
In many Asian Buddhist temples, there is a statue of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva with a thousand arms. Each arm holds an instrument or object that represents a different sphere of activity in which the bodhisattva can manifest compassion and understanding. In one hand he holds a book—it might be a sutra text or a book on political science. Another hand holds a ritual instrument, such as a bell. Another holds a musical instrument. A modern version of the thousand-armed bodhisattva might hold a computer in one hand.
Highlight(orange) - Inclusiveness > Page 145 · Location 1435
We know that if the other side does not have peace and safety, then it will not be possible for us to have peace and safety. That is the nature of interbeing. With this insight we’ll be able to open our heart and embrace the other side.
Highlight(orange) - Peace Work > Page 153 · Location 1506
We are so busy we hardly have time to look at the people we love, even in our own household, and to look at ourselves. Society is organized in a way that even when we have some leisure time, we don’t know how to use it to get back in touch with ourselves.
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