Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Book Overview: In the rush of modern life, we tend to lose touch with the peace that is available in each moment. World-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and author Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the very situations that usually pressure and antagonize us. For him a ringing telephone can be a signal to call us back to our true selves. Dirty dishes, red lights, and traffic jams are spiritual friends on the path to “mindfulness”—the process of keeping our consciousness alive to our present experience and reality. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next aware breath and the smile we can form right now.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
- How To Live More Mindfully – The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing
- How to Handle Your Anger – A Mindfulness Exercise from Thich Nhat Hanh
- Pillow Punching – Good or Bad for Anger Management?
- Thich Nhat Hanh Quote on the Present Moment and Appreciating the Flower When It’s Shown To You (Beyond the Quote 238/365)
“If we become angry at our anger, we will have two angers at the same time. We only have to observe it with love and attention. If we take care of our anger in this way, without trying to run away from it, it will transform itself. This is peacemaking. If we are peaceful in ourselves, we can make peace with our anger. We can deal with depression, anxiety, fear, or any unpleasant feeling in the same way.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
“The foundation of happiness is mindfulness. The basic condition for being happy is our consciousness of being happy. If we are not aware that we are happy, we are not really happy. When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. But when we do not have a toothache, we are still not happy. A non-toothache is very pleasant. There are so many things that are enjoyable, but when we don’t practice mindfulness, we don’t appreciate them. When we practice mindfulness, we come to cherish these things and we learn how to protect them. By taking good care of the present moment, we take good care of the future. Working for peace in the future is to work for peace in the present moment.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
“In our daily lives, we may see the people around us, but if we lack mindfulness, they are just phantoms, not real people, and we ourselves are also ghosts. Practicing mindfulness enables us to become a real person. When we are a real person, we see real people around us, and life is present in all its richness.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
“We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step
QUESTION: Is Social Media Bad?
Excerpt: Is social media bad? It seems to have developed a stigma, especially with certain folks, that it’s purely distractive and a waste of time…
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“What is the secret to the art of life? The secret is this – live in full awareness. Don’t grope in the darkness; don’t walk in sleep; walk in awareness. Whatsoever you do, no matter what it is – even if it is as insignificant as opening and closing your eyes – do it thoughtfully, do it with awareness. Who knows, everything may depend on that tiny action, on opening and closing your eyes. You may be walking along the road and see a woman, and you may spend your whole life with her! Even opening and closing your eyes, stay alert.” ~ Osho, The Art of Living and Dying
Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life [Book]
Book Overview: Common sense tells us that to lose weight, we must eat less and exercise more. But somehow we get stalled. We start on a weight-loss program with good intentions but cannot stay on track. Neither the countless fad diets, nor the annual spending of $50 billion on weight loss helps us feel better or lose weight. Savor teaches us how to easily adopt the practice of mindfulness and integrate it into eating, exercise, and all facets of our daily life, so that being conscious and present becomes a core part of our being.
Buy from Amazon! Listen on Audible!
Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
10 Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes from Savor on Mindfulness and Healthy Eating
Excerpt: Read our 10 quotes from Savor by Thich Nhat Hanh and learn how to eat more mindfully in a world full of rush and distraction.
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How To Eat Mindfully — An Excerpt from Savor by Thich Nhat Hanh
Excerpt: The following is an excerpt from Savor by Thich Nhat Hanh and invites you to join Chef Sati at his house for dinner and a lesson in mindful eating. Enjoy!
Read More »How To Eat Mindfully — An Excerpt from Savor by Thich Nhat Hanh
“Being mindful does not mean that we just sit for hours on our meditation cushion in a retreat or monastery. There are many ways to practice mindfulness that can be fully integrated into our daily living. Besides conscious breathing, we can do walking meditation, sitting meditation, smiling, mindful listening, mindful speaking, and mindful working. We can practice concentration and looking deeply in all the activities of our daily life. Even while walking, we can practice stopping. We can walk in such a way that we arrive with each step – not walking just to get somewhere else. We can walk to enjoy each step. If we practice stopping while attending to e-mails, surfing the web, attending meetings or appointments, folding the laundry, washing the dishes, or taking a shower, we are living deeply. If we do not practice this way, the days and months will fly by without our awareness, and we will lose many precious moments of our life. Stopping helps us live fully in the present.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Savor
How To Savor The Food We Eat — An Apple Meditation from Thich Nhat Hanh
Excerpt: Before you go chowing down into your next meal take a minute to read this. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us how to savor the food we eat.
Read More »How To Savor The Food We Eat — An Apple Meditation from Thich Nhat Hanh
The Lifebuilder’s Creed
By Dale Witherington
Today is the most important day of my life.
Yesterday with its successes and victories, struggles and failures is gone forever.
The past is past.
Done.
Finished.
I cannot relive it. I cannot go back and change it.
But I will learn from it and improve my TODAY.
TODAY. This moment. NOW.
It is God’s gift to me and it is all that I have.
Tomorrow with all its joys and sorrows, triumphs and
troubles isn’t here yet.
Indeed, tomorrow may never come.
Therefore, I will not worry about tomorrow.
Today is what God has entrusted to me.
It is all that I have. I will do my best in it.
I will demonstrate the best of me in it —
my character, giftedness, and abilities —
to my family and friends, clients and associates.
I will identify those things that are most important to do TODAY,
and those things I will do until they are done.
And when this day is done
I will look back with satisfaction at that
which I have accomplished.
Then, and only then, will I plan my tomorrow,
Looking to improve upon Today, with God’s help.
Then I shall go to sleep in peace … content.
—— —— ——
Source: Today Matters by John C. Maxwell
“I like to walk alone on country paths,
rice plants and wild grasses on both sides,
putting each foot down on the earth
in mindfulness, knowing
that I walk on the wondrous earth.
In such moments, existence is a miraculous
and mysterious reality.
People usually consider walking on water
or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle
is not to walk either on water or in thin air,
but to walk on earth.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle
which we don’t even recognize:
a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves,
the black, curious eyes of a child–
our own two eyes.
All is a miracle.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh