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
Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time—that is the basic message. – Pema Chodron
Life is fragile, like the dew hanging delicately on the grass, crystal drops that will be carried away on the first morning breeze. – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality. – Pema Chodron
Like a robe wears out over time and turns to rags, life wears out from day to day, from second to second. – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
The basic root of happiness lies in our minds; outer circumstances are nothing more than adverse or favourable. – Matthieu Ricard
In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. – Thich Nhat Hanh
The mind in its natural state can be compared to the sky, covered by layers of cloud which hide its true nature. – Kalu Rinpoche
Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. – Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not encumber your mind with useless thoughts. What good does it do to brood on the past or anticipate the future? Remain in the simplicity of the present moment. – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
We must make good use of this life for the time that we have left, This brief flash of light, like the sun appearing through the clouds. – Kalu Rinpoche
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. – The 14th Dalai Lama
Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful. – Thich Nhat Hanh
We can bring our spiritual practice into the streets, into our communities, when we see each realm as a temple, as a place to discover that which is sacred. – Jack Kornfield
Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life. – Thich Nhat Hanh
We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves. – The 14th Dalai Lama
If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion. – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Knowledge does not mean mastering a great quantity of different information, but understanding the nature of mind. This knowledge can penetrate each one of our thoughts and illuminate each one of our perceptions. – Matthieu Ricard
When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love. – Thich Nhat Hanh
Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things. – Pema Chodron
Life is expressed in a perpetual sequence of changes. The birth of the child is the death of the baby, just as the birth of the adolescent is the death of the child. – Arnaud Desjardins
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. – Thich Nhat Hanh
We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value? – Jack Kornfield
Happiness is the main object of our aspirations, whatever name we give to it: fulfilment, deep satisfaction, serenity, accomplishment, wisdom, fortune, joy or inner peace, and however we try to seek it: creativity, justice, altruism, striving, completion of a plan or a piece of work. – Matthieu Ricard
Modern civilization is largely devoted to the pursuit of the cult of delusion. There is no general information about the nature of mind. It is hardly ever written about by writers or intellectuals; modern philosophers do not speak of it directly; the majority of scientists deny it could possibly be there at all. It plays no part in popular culture: no one sings about it, no one talks about it in plays, and it’s not on TV. We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses. – Sogyal Rinpoche
If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. – Thich Nhat Hanh
In Buddhism, ignorance as the root cause of suffering refers to a fundamental misperception of the true nature of the self and all phenomena. – The 14th Dalai Lama
What counts is not the enormity of the task, but the size of the courage. – Matthieu Ricard
Great spiritual traditions are used as a means to ripen us, to bring us face to face with our life, and to help us to see in a new way by developing a stillness of mind and a strength of heart. – Jack Kornfield
Smile, breathe and go slowly. – Thich Nhat Hanh
My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. – The 14th Dalai Lama
Underneath our ordinary lives, underneath all the talking we do, all the moving we do, all the thoughts in our minds, there’s a fundamental groundlessness. It’s there bubbling along all the time. We experience it as restlessness and edginess. We experience it as fear. It motivates passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride, but we never get down to the essence of it. – Pema Chodron
Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. – Pema Chodron
Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide. – Pema Chodron
We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything. – Jack Kornfield
You cannot live sheltered forever without being exposed, and at the same time be a spiritual adventurer. Be audacious. Be crazy in your own way, with that madness in the eyes of man that is wisdom in the eyes of God. Take risks, search and search again, search everywhere, in every way, do not let a single opportunity or chance that life offers pass you by, and do not be petty and mean, trying to drive a hard bargain. – Arnaud Desjardins
We need a repeated discipline, a genuine training, in order to let go of our old habits of mind and to find and sustain a new way of seeing. – Jack Kornfield
Nothing goes right on the outside when nothing is going right on the inside. – Matthieu Ricard
We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life. – Jack Kornfield
It is right mindfulness and attention that allow us to change our behaviour. – Kalu Rinpoche
Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear. – Pema Chodron
You menace others with your deadly fangs. But in tormenting them, you are only tormenting yourselves. – Milarepa
To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain. – Howard Cutler
When the mind is full of memories and preoccupied by the future, it misses the freshness of the present moment. In this way, we fail to recognize the luminous simplicity of mind that is always present behind the veils of thought. – Matthieu Ricard
We can always begin again. – Jack Kornfield
On days when the sky is grey, the sun has not disappeared forever. – Arnaud Desjardins
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. – Pema Chodron
When repeated difficulties do arise, our first spiritual approach is to acknowledge what is present, naming, softly saying ‘sadness, sadness’, or ‘remembering, remembering’, or whatever. – Jack Kornfield
Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don’t we begin to ask ourselves seriously: Where does our real future lie? – Sogyal Rinpoche
On the day that you were born, you began to die. Do not waste a single moment more! – Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else’s happiness or success – Matthieu Ricard
One interesting thing about greed is that although the underlying motive is to seek satisfaction, the irony is that even after obtaining the object of your desire you are still not satisfied. The true antidote of greed is contentment. – The Dalai Lama
Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily and heartily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little. In renunciation lies a delicious taste of simplicity and deep peace. – Matthieu Ricard
Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts. – Jack Kornfield
True freedom means freeing oneself from the dictates of the ego and its accompanying emotions. – Mathieu Ricard
We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. – Pema Chodron
By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness. – Matthieu Ricard
Humility does not mean believing oneself to be inferior, but to be freed from self-importance. It is a state of natural simplicity which is in harmony with our true nature and allows us to taste the freshness of the present moment. – Matthieu Ricard
Ours is a society of denial that conditions us to protect ourselves from any direct difficulty and discomfort. We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death and loss and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature. – Jack Kornfield
In opening we can see how many times we have mistaken small identities and fearful beliefs for our true nature and how limiting this is. We can touch with great compassion the pain from the contracted identities that we and others have created in the world. – Jack Kornfield
When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. – Jack Kornfield
Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations. – Sogyal Rinpoche
Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues. – Sogyal Rinpoche
Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities. – Matthieu Ricard
Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive. – Arnaud Desjardins
We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night. – Jack Kornfield
We each need to make our lion’s roar – to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears – to declare our right to awaken. – Jack Kornfield
Mindful and creative, a child who has neither a past, nor examples to follow, nor value judgments, simply lives, speaks and plays in freedom. – Arnaud Desjardins
Purity and impurity depend on oneself; no one can purify another. – Buddha
If you use your mind to study reality, you won’t understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you’ll understand both. – Bodhidharma
