If you want to be more zen, Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, “You Are Here,” is a good start.
I started reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s books and watching his talks in my mid-twenties and was a fan of his.
After his passing in early 2022, You Are Here went on sale on the Kindle and I decided to buy it.
I hadn’t read his books in a while but I had just started reading books on Stoicism and figured Zen and Stoicism -to my knowledge at the time- are close enough. So, I bought it.
What This Book Is About: Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist Zen monk and in You Are Here, he talks about the importance of being present and mindful. He also shares techniques for how to achieve this state of mind.
Here Are 15 Quotes and Notes From The Book:
Chapter 1: Happiness and Peace Are Possible
1) “Do not fight against pain; do not fight against irritation or jealousy. Embrace them with great tenderness, as though you were embracing a little baby. Your anger is yourself, and you should not be violent toward it. The same thing goes for all of your emotions.”
My Note: This is similar to Stoicism in that Stoics encourage you to let yourself feel natural human emotions. They just warn you to not let the emotions affect your thoughts or judgements or behaviour.
2) “Mindful breathing is a kind of bridge that brings the body and the mind together.”
My Note: This allows you to assess what you’re feeling and the thoughts associated with it.”
3) “Without suffering, we do not have the opportunity to cultivate compassion and understanding; and without understanding, there can be no true love.”
Chapter 2: The Heart of the Practice
4) “The Buddha said, ‘The past no longer exists, and the future is not here yet.’ There is only a single moment in which we can truly be alive, and that is the present moment. Being present in the here and now is our practice.”
My Note: This expresses the importance of being mindful. Also, similar to how Stoics teach you not to worry about the future because those concerns may or may not happen -you don’t know the outcome- so there is no point in worrying about it in the present moment.
5) “The Buddha said that our perceptions are very often false, and since error is there, suffering is also there. We must pay very close attention to this. We have to learn how to look at our perceptions without getting caught by them. We must always ask ourselves the question, ‘Is my perception accurate?’ Just asking that question is a big help.”
Chapter 3: Practicing Skillfully with Our Past
6) “With the practice of mindfulness, the situation changes. We come back to our pain, but now we are well equipped with the energy of mindfulness that has been generated by mindful breathing and by meditation. We use that source of energy to recognize and embrace our pain.”
My Note: Using mediation to assess past traumas.
Chapter 4: Healing Our Wounds and Pain
7) “Mindfulness is first of all the ability to recognize what is happening in the present moment. It is simple recognition -without judgment or criticism, without suppression or attachment.”
8) “Perhaps you too are the prisoner of your own notion of happiness. There are thousands of paths that lead to happiness, but you have accepted only one. You have not considered other paths because you think that yours is the only one that leads to happiness. You have followed this path with all your might, and so the other paths, the thousands of others, have remained closed to you.”
My Notes: Is this the right path? You have to be open-minded and experiment.
9) “You have to realize that happiness is not something you find at the end of the road. You have to understand that it is here, now. Mindfulness practice is not an evasion or an escape. It means entering vigorously into life -with the strength generated by the energy of mindfulness. Without this freedom and concentration, there is no happiness.”
Chapter 5: Cultivating True Love
10) “You don’t need to practice mantras in some foreign language like Sanskrit or Tibetan. You can practice in your own beautiful language: for if your body and mind are unified in mindfulness, then whatever you say becomes a mantra.”
My Note: Do you even know what the translation of the mantra is? Better to practice phrases that you understand.
Chapter 6: the Essence of the Buddha’s Teaching
11) “When looking at the nature of things with concentration, you discover that they are all impermanent. Everything is constantly changing. Nothing has a permanent identity.”
My Note: Our thoughts, situations, and life changes. Nothing remains the same and everything will eventually die, including us.
12) “Aimlessness means not setting an object or goal in front of you and running after it. That is exactly what everybody does. We want this, we want that, and as long as we haven’t got it, we think happiness will be impossible. We must bring about a revolution in our thinking: we must stop.”
My Note: You can be happy right now. You don’t have to wait until you reach your goal (which won’t guarantee happiness).
13) “The Dharma gives you the tools, but do not cling to the Dharma. Liberate yourself from it! You were provided with a raft to cross the river of suffering, but you should not worship it. It is necessary to use the raft with a great deal of intelligence to get to the other side, but once you’ve arrived there, you don’t need it anymore. You shouldn’t put the raft on your back and carry it around with you on land.”
My Note: Use the concepts and practices that you need and store the rest for later use. Also, don’t be afraid to use practices from other religions and schools of thought as well.
Chapter 7: Becoming Truly Alive
14) “A person who does not know how to die does not know how to live, and vice versa. You should learn to die -to die immediately. This is a practice.”
15) “Are you ready to die now? Are you ready to arrange your schedule in such a way that you could die in peace tonight? That may be a challenge, but that’s the practice. If you don’t do this, you will always be tormented by regret. If you don’t want to suffer, if you don’t want to be tormented by regret, the only solution is to live every minute you are given in a deep way.”
My Note: Quotes 1 and 2 are similar to the concept of Memento Mori (remember that you will die) in Stoicism.
Final Thoughts
This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn how to be more zen and mindful in their daily life.
It not only tells you why you need to be mindful, but also gives tips on how to be mindful.
You can click here (affiliate link) to buy a copy from Amazon.