If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything. When a child presents himself to you with his smile, if you are not really there - thinking about the future or the past, or preoccupied with other problems - then the child is not really there for you. The technique of being alive is to go back to yourself in order for the child to appear like a marvellous reality. Then you can see him smile and you can embrace him in your arms.

If you come to Plum Village in the summertime, you see many lotus flowers. Without the mud the lotus flowers cannot grow. You cannot separate lotus flowers from the mud. It is the same with understanding and love. These are two kinds of flowers that grow on the ground of suffering

We have to look deeply at things in order to see. When a swimmer enjoys the clear water of the river, he or she should also be able to be the river.

Meditation is offering your genuine presence to yourself in every moment.

Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk. We will enjoy our walk without thinking of arriving anywhere.

In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings.

Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.