When we feel anger toward someone, we can consider that they are a being just like us, who has faced much suffering in life.

I used to think that to become free you had to practice like a samurai warrior, but now I understand that you have to practice like a devoted mother of a newborn child. It takes the same energy but has a completely different quality. It's compassion and presence rather than having to defeat the enemy in battle.

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.

Part of spiritual and emotional maturity is recognizing that it's not like you're going to try to fix yourself and become a different person. You remain the same person, but you become awakened.

Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts.

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?

Thich Nhat Hanh has the ability to express some of the most profound teachings of interdependence and emptiness I've ever heard. With the eloquence of a poet, he holds up a sheet of paper and teaches us that the rain cloud and the tree and the logger who cut the tree down are all there in the paper. He's been one of the most significant carriers of the lamp of the dharma to the West that we have had.