7 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Life and Death from Nature

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Excerpt: These seven quotes look deeper at how we can live our best life & how we can become less afraid of death using simple analogies found in nature.

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Introduction: Using nature to explain our nature

Some of life’s most important questions can draw complicated, and many times, confusing answers.

Questions like, “How can I live a fulfilled life?” or “What will happen to me when I die?”  When we look deeply into nature, however, Thich Nhat Hanh exemplifies how we can find comforting and concise answers to many of these important questions.

In his book, No Death, No Fear, Nhat Hanh takes a closer look at how we can live our best life, what death is, and how we can become less afraid of the inevitable using simple analogies found in nature.

When we can learn to look deeply into nature, as Nhat Hanh does, as though we are seeing its various elements for the first time (or seeing them for the last time), we can start to truly appreciate and absorb all of the wisdom that they have to offer.

You will find Nhat Hanh reference everything from the clouds to flowers, from waves to fire, from trees to the sun—and everything in between to explain big ideas.

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Each of the analogies he uses are so powerful because they are elements that are derived from the very nature of which we were created.  And when we can use nature to explain our nature, the answers that may come have a deeper and more direct connection to our understanding.

Below, you’ll find some of Nhat Hanh’s observations from looking deeply into nature from his book No Death, No Fear.

Just as it takes patience and deep reflection to truly see the connections that nature has to offer, it will take patience and deep reflection to truly absorb the insight that Nhat Hanh has to offer in the words below.

A quick “once over” will only lead to a superficial understanding of what Nhat Hanh is trying to convey and will be as quickly forgotten as it was absorbed.  These are the types of ideas that need constant “watering” before they will truly flower.

After all, many of Nhat Hanh’s examinations are the same ones that have been studied and used by Buddhist monks and nuns for over twenty-five hundred years…  Good luck!

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The List:  Seven Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes on Life and Death from Nature

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“Look into a plum tree.  In each plum on the tree there is a pit.  That pit contains the plum tree and all previous generations of plum tree.  The plum pit contains an eternity of plum trees.  Inside the pit is an intelligence and wisdom that knows how to become a plum tree, how to produce branches, leaves, flowers and plums.  It cannot do this on its own.  It can only do this because it has received the experience and heritage of so many generations of ancestors.  You are the same.  You possess the wisdom and intelligence of how to become a full human being  because you inherited an eternity of wisdom not only from your blood ancestors but from your spiritual ancestors, too.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

“If you look at a friend with the eyes of a meditator, you will see in him or her all generations of their ancestors.  You will be very respectful to them and to your own body because you will see their body and your body as the sacred home of all our ancestors.  You will also see that our bodies are the source of all future generations.  We will not damage our bodies, because that wouldn’t be kind to our descendants.  We do not use drugs and we do not eat or drink things that have toxins or that will harm our bodies.  This is because our insight of manifestation helps us to live in a healthy way, with clarity and responsibility.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

“Looking deeply into the flower, we see that the flower is made of non-flower elements.  We describe the flower as being full of everything.  There is nothing that is not present in the flower.  We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.  A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements.  The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself.  The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

“When you look at the surface of the ocean, you can see waves coming up and going down.  You can describe these waves in terms of high or low, big or small, more vigorous or less vigorous, more beautiful or less beautiful.  You can describe a wave in terms of beginning and end, birth and death.  That can be compared to the historical dimension.  In the historical dimension, we are concerned with birth and death, more powerful, less powerful, more beautiful, less beautiful, beginning and end and so on.  Looking deeply, we can also see that the waves are at the same time water.  A wave may like to seek its own true nature.  The wave might suffer from fear, from complexes.  A wave may say, ‘I am not as big as the other waves,’ ‘I am oppressed,’ ‘I am not as beautiful as the other waves,’ ‘I have been born and I have to die.’  The wave may suffer from these things, these ideas.  But if the wave bends down and touches her true nature she will realize that she is water.  Then her fear and complexes will disappear.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

“A wave does not have to die in order to become water.  She is water right here and now.  We also do not have to die in order to enter the kingdom of God.  The kingdom of God is our very foundation here and now.  Our deepest practice is to see and touch the ultimate dimension in ourselves every day, the reality of no birth and no death.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

“Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me.  She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful!  Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me.  I knew this body was not mine alone but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents.  Of all my ancestors.  These feet that I saw as ‘my’ feet were actually ‘our’ feet.  Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

“You do not have to wait until the flame has gone out to be reborn.  I am reborn many times every day.  Every moment is a moment of rebirth.  My practice is to be reborn in such a way that my new forms of manifestation will bring light, freedom and happiness into the world.  My practice is not to allow wrong actions to be reborn.  If I have a cruel thought or if my words carry hatred in them, then those thoughts and words will be reborn.  It will be difficult to catch them and pull them back.  They are like a runaway horse.  We should try not to allow our actions of body, speech and mind to take us in the direction of wrong action, wrong speech and wrong thinking.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

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If you enjoyed these quotes on life and death from nature, you might also enjoy reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s whole book below:

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