“Mindfulness does not mean pushing oneself toward something or hanging on to something. It means allowing oneself to be there in the very moment of what is happening in the living process – and then letting go.”

I would like to say, ladies and gentlemen, that you shouldn’t be afraid of who you are. That’s the first key idea. You shouldn’t be afraid of who you are. You should NOT be afraid of who you are. It’s very important for you to realize that.

Enlightenment is ego’s ultimate disappointment.

Helping others is a question of being genuine and projecting that genuineness to others. This way of being doesn’t have to have a title or a name particularly. It is just being ultimately decent.

The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.

If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power.

Ego is constantly attempting to acquire and apply the teachings of spirituality for its own benefit.

When we talk about compassion we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative [enough] to wake a person up

Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle. You have renounced putting on a new suit of armor. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin. You are willing to expose naked flesh, bone and marrow to the world.

We have a fear of facing ourselves. That is the obstacle. Experiencing the innermost core of our existence is very embarrassing to a lot of people. A lot of people turn to something that they hope will liberate them without their having to face themselves. That is impossible.

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything.

Artistic vision comes from a mind clear enough to fall in love with what we see.

We could almost say that being willing to be a fool is one of the first wisdoms. So acknowledging foolishness is always a very important and powerful experience. The phenomenal world can be perceived and seen properly if we see it from the perspective of being a fool.

A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves.

Becoming “awake” involves seeing our confusion more clearly.

In the garden of gentle sanity, May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.

The ideal of helping is to make others independent of you. You help them to become more independent rather than making them addicted to you.

Mindfulness was experienced as not holding onto the past, the future, or ‘nowness:’ but relaxing into the immediacy of whatever was happening.

It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

No one teaches mindfulness better than Thich Nhat Hanh.

There’s no problem so great it can’t be solved. If it can’t be solved, it’s not a problem, it’s reality.

Sati is life. Whenever we don’t have sati, when we are heedless, it’s as if we are dead.

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.

If we practise like this and develop mindfulness continuously, wisdom arises quickly and this is a fast way of practice.

More than any previous time, people are drawn to meditation, to mindfulness, to yoga. These have become mainstream in the West because there is a hunger.