Hate poisons your life.

Human beings are such social animals. We're very connected with the feelings of those we're close to, so we can't really be happy when the ones we are close to are unhappy.

In Buddhism, we say reincarnation is the conscious taking of rebirth by a Bodhisattva, or by a high being, whereas rebirth, is what most people do. Rebirth is an involuntary process where they seek traction by finding a new body after their subtle mind loses the old one. There are two things commonly said about this. One- there is no evidence for it and two- if there is evidence, what's the mechanism which carries the consciousness from one life to another.

All the things you need in the death transition, you need now in the life transition, because life is a transition, it is a between state. Therefore, every night when you fall asleep, it's like you die. And every time you do, you should be using the process of falling asleep as giving up your attention to sense objects, your discursive ruminating thoughts and so on. You should use that as a process of giving up and giving yourself completely to the universe and becoming completely obliterated.

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the greatest teachers of our time. He reaches from the heights of insight down to the deepest places of the absolutely ordinary.

Enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith. It is an evolutionary goal, something we want to become.

In the practice of exchanging self & other, paradoxes abound.