"We can only understand another person when we’re able to truly listen to them. When we can listen to others with deep compassion, we can understand their pain and difficulties. But when we’re angry, we can’t listen to others or hear their suffering." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Fight
"Mindfulness does not fight anger; it recognizes it and says hello. ... This is not an act of suppression or of fighting. It is an act of awareness. ... Any peace talks should begin with making peace with ourselves. First we need to recognize our anger, embrace it, and make peace with it. You don’t fight your anger, because your anger is you." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Fight
"If we can take care of our own anger instead of focusing on the other person, we will get immediate relief." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Fight
"Being able to pause is the greatest gift. It gives us the opportunity to bring more love and compassion into the world rather than more anger and suffering." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Fight
"When life seems like a turbulent ocean, we have to remember we have an island of peace inside." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"Walking meditation is a way of waking up to the wonderful moment we are living in. ... if we’re awake, then we’ll see this is a wonderful moment that life has given us, the only moment in which life is available." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"We know that we want to be more present, but very often we don’t do it. We need a friend or a teacher to remind us. The Earth can be that teacher. It is always there, greeting your feet, keeping you solid and grounded." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"To stop the incessant thinking in the mind, it helps to focus on the body. ... Stopping does not mean repressing; it means, first of all, calming. If we want the ocean to be calm, we don’t throw away its water. Without the water, nothing is left. When we notice the presence of anger, fear, and agitation in us, we don’t need to throw them away." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"The same is true when you drink a cup of tea: if you’re concentrated and you focus your attention on the cup of tea, then the cup of tea becomes a great joy. Mindfulness and concentration bring about pleasure and insight." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"We’re in such a rush, looking for happiness in one place and then another. We walk like sleepwalkers, without any enjoyment of what we are actually doing. We are walking, but in our minds we are already doing something else: planning, organizing, worrying. ... Every time we return our attention to our breath and our steps, it’s as if we wake up." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"Every time we take a step on this Earth, we can appreciate the solid ground underneath us." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"When you walk, arrive with every step. That is walking meditation. There’s nothing else to it." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"By taking off the pressure of having to excel at or master an activity, we allow ourselves to live in the moment. You might think this sounds simple enough, but living in the present is also something most of us suck at. Think about how focused you become when you’re presented with something totally new to accomplish. Now, what happens when that task is no longer new but still taps into intense focus because we haven’t yet mastered it? You’re a novice, an amateur, a kook. You suck at it. Some might think your persistence moronic. I like to think of it as meditative and full of promise. In the words of the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, 'In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.’ … By exposing ourselves to the experience of trying and failing we might develop more empathy. If we succeed in shifting from snap judgments to patience, maybe we could be a little more helpful to one another—and a whole lot more understanding. If we accept our failures and persevere nonetheless, we might provide a respite from the imperative to succeed and instead find acceptance in trying. Failing is O.K. Better still, isn’t it a relief?" — Karen Rinaldi New York Times, "(It’s Great to) Suck at Something"
"Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Suffering is ultimately created by a resistance to what is, by a sense that the universe owed you something different than what you got, that things were supposed to be a different way." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ... Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." — Viktor Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning
"Rational (or conscious) thought always lags behind the emotional reaction." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"There are still plenty of wild places where one can lose oneself as opposed to getting lost, and just be in a place that you feel perfect in at that moment." — John Hessler
"The journey you travel on your feet is less important than the distance you cover in your head." — Mishka Shubaly
