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Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

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Famous Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

“Sometimes things occur beneath the surface that will eventually explode, and by then it is too late to deal with them, so the only recourse is to divorce or fight or even kill each other. To meditate is to be aware of what is going on in yourself, your feelings, your body, your perceptions, your family. The second technique is to recall, and the more details which the community has, the easier it is to help.”

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“TRUE LOVE MAKES US HAPPY. If love doesn’t make us happy, it’s not love; it’s something else. Love is a wonderful thing. It gives us the ability to offer joy and happiness, relieve suffering, and transcend all kinds of separation and barriers.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“Understanding another person isn’t possible until we have practiced looking deeply at ourselves. Then, when we look at the other person, we’ll begin to understand their suffering, because we’ve already seen and transformed our own. Once we can understand our loved one’s suffering, we can help him or her. We will no longer reproach or blame the other person, because we’ll have understanding in our hearts. Our way of looking at the other person will contain compassion. And the other person will be able to tell. Even if we haven’t done or said anything, our way of looking already begins the process of healing.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“Often our perceptions are incorrect. We get in touch with an object and think that it embodies love, happiness, a self, or purity. We tend to think that love is something sentimental that will fill the emptiness inside us. We blame our suffering on another person or group, or on bad luck, but outside conditions are not the reason it appears. Our suffering was already there.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“Understanding is a gift. The other person may feel understood for the first time. Understanding is the other name of love. If you don’t understand, you can’t love. If you don’t understand your son, you can’t love him. If you don’t understand your mother, you can’t love her. To offer understanding means to offer love. Without understanding, the more we love, the more we make ourselves and others suffer.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“The most precious inheritance parents can leave their children is their own happiness. Parents’ happiness is the most valuable gift they can give their children. Your children can use those lessons the whole of their lives. You may not be able to leave them money, houses, and land, but you can help them be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“Everybody makes mistakes, but you can’t keep asking people to forgive you again and again. True repentance makes you happy and makes the other person happy. Without it, trust will disappear and both of you will be less happy. The other person will know by the way you act that you’re truly beginning anew. Even if the other person doesn’t see it right away, don’t quarrel or be afraid. Just practice well and steadily, and slowly the truth will be revealed and the relationship will improve.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“If a couple doesn’t practice mindfulness and does not try to understand their own and each other’s suffering, they won’t go far. They may continue to live together for a long time even when they’re not happy. They may stay together for the sake of the children, or because they don’t want to complicate their lives. There are many couples like that—they’re together but they’re not happy. There are other couples who can’t support being in such a situation and so they separate or divorce.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“Even if two people have a baby together, they are still separate. Each of us remains in isolation. It’s not by living together, or by having sexual relations, or even by having children together that we can dispel this feeling of isolation. We can only dispel our mutual isolation when we practice mindfulness and are able to truly come home to ourselves and each other.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“Many parents love their children. Yet they make them suffer a lot in the name of love. They’re often not capable of understanding their children’s suffering, difficulties, hopes, and aspirations. We have to ask ourselves, “Am I really loving the other person by understanding them or am I just projecting my own needs?”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“The person you love has all kinds of seeds in her: joy, suffering, and anger. If you water her anger, then in just five minutes you can bring the anger out in her. If you know how to water the seeds of her compassion, joy, and understanding, then these seeds will blossom. If you recognize the good seeds in her, you are watering her self-confidence and she will become the source of her own happiness as well as yours.”

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Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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