Let us look at wealth and poverty. The affluent society and the deprived society inter-are. The wealth of one society is made of the poverty of the other. "This is like this, because that is like that." Wealth is made of non-wealth elements, and poverty is made by non-poverty elements. [...] so we must be careful not to imprison ourselves in concepts. The truth is that everything contains everything else. We cannot just be, we can only inter-be. We are responsible fo everything that happens around us.
Nhat HanhLet us fill our hearts with our own compassion - towards ourselves and towards all living beings.
Nhat HanhIf we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.
Nhat HanhThe heart of the matter is always our oneness with divine spirit, our union with all life.
Nhat HanhIn modern society most of us don't want to be in touch with ourselves; we want to be in touch with other things like religion, sports, politics, a book - we want to forget ourselves. Anytime we have leisure, we want to invite something else to enter us, opening ourselves to the television and telling the television to come and colonize us.
Nhat Hanh