You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.Collection: Communication
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.Collection: Smile
Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.Collection: Future
Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath.Collection: Anger
Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.Collection: Home
When we give ourselves the chance to let go of all our tension, the body's natural capacity to heal itself can begin to work.Collection: Chance
We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.
Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.
True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There's no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.
In order to rally people, governments need enemies... if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.
Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion - towards ourselves and towards all living beings.
In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.
With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.
If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.
Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive.
Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.
You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.
Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish.
The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way.
If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.
True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There's no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected.
The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest. But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don't know how to rest. We may even come back more tired than before we left.
Happiness is the cessation of suffering.
To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.
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.
You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.
When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.
If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.
Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.
Everything we touch in our daily lives, including our body, is a miracle. By putting the kingdom of god in the right place, it shows us it is possible to live happily right here, right now.
Mindfulness practices enhance the connection between our body, our mind and everything else that is around us. Mindful living is the key to understanding our struggles with weight and to empowering us to control our weight.
Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.
In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger.
People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.
Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.
If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.
Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.
Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.
Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.
Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive - then that is a kind of enlightenment.
When we have peace, then we have a chance to save the planet. But if we are not united in peace, if we do not practice mindful consumption, we cannot save our planet.
If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.
There are many, many Christians who practice Buddhism, and they become better and better Christians all the time.
Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.
One Buddha is not enough; we need to have many Buddhas.
We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.
You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.
Civilisations have been destroyed many times, and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.
I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice.