The Art of Living audiobook

According to Thich Nhat Hanh, the key to the art of living can be summarized in one word: Mindfulness. Or to use his words:Happiness is not something that arrives in a package in the mail. Happiness does not fall out of the sky. Happiness is something we generate with mindfulness.I am inclined to agree with him. For over a year, I have been attending weekly guided meditations on Thursdays at the Los Angeles Central Library conducted by the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) at UCLA. I was able to do this because my job was reduced from a full-time job to a part-time job. Curiously, I have been feeling better as a result, and my overall health has improved. On the other hand, two of my co-workers have died during the same period, and the remaining ones, incuding my boss, are incredibly stressed. There's a lot to this practice. Although Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk, his advice in The Art of Living is non-denominational. In every way, this a a highly useful book.

Common message, mindfulness....sounds easy but few achieve.

Todo lo que buscamos, todo eso que queremos experimentar, debe ocurrir justo aquí, en el momento presente. El futuro es tan solo una idea, una noción abstracta.El Arte de Vivir es un libro práctico y lleno de sabiduría. Sin embargo no voy a negar que me costó un poco de trabajo leerlo; dimensionar los conceptos y atraerlos a un ámbito personal, para así obtener un beneficio propio y social, requiere de mucha práctica. Para calificar un libro siempre me baso en si me deja algún aprendizaje y este me dio demasiados.Cualquiera puede llegar al despertar si trabaja en lo que realmente quiere. Lo más importante es ser unx mismx y vivir la vida propia de la forma más profunda y consciente posible. Para ello está la espiritualidad, que no es lo mismo que la religión, sino un camino para generar felicidad, comprensión y amor a fin de que podamos vivir profundamente cada instante de la vida.La meditación es sumamente importante en nuestro camino espiritual y consiste en observar profundamente y ver cosas que otros no pueden ver, incluso las nociones erróneas que subyacen en la base de nuestro sufrimiento. Cuando somos capaces de librarnos de las nociones, podemos dominar el arte de vivir felices, en paz y libertad. Las nociones erróneas son:1. Somos seres separados, sin conexión alguna con el resto del mundo.2. Defendemos que seamos únicamente este cuerpo y que al morir dejamos de existir.3. Aquello que buscamos solo puede ser hallado en el futuro distante y fuera de nosotrxs.Las prácticas que nos ayudan a librarnos de estas nociones nos hacen despertar de la realidad y nos ayudan a apreciar lo que ya tenemos para ser capaces de alcanzar una felicidad verdadera en el aquí y el ahora. Este es el arte de vivir. Otro aspecto muy interesante que Thich Nhat Hanh presenta es la teoría de los 8 cuerpos interconectados que, en conjunto, aguardan la energía. Estos cuerpos son: Cuerpo humano.Cuerpo de buda (capacidad de estar despiertxs y plenamente presentes, de ser comprensivos, compasivos y amorosos).Cuerpo de la práctica espiritual (arte de generar felicidad y manejar el sufrimiento). Cuerpo de la comunidad (necesitamos de amigxs espirituales que nos apoyen y nos nutran). Cuerpo exterior al cuerpo.Cuerpo de continuación (lo que producimos en forma de pensamientos palabras y acciones, continúa teniendo una influencia en el mundo). Cuerpo cósmico (engloba todo el mundo de los fenómenos).Cuerpo último (el más profundo nivel cósmico: la naturaleza de la realidad en sí, más allá de toda percepción, forma, signo o idea).Y por último me gustaría acabar con un pensamiento de Thich Nhat Hanh que me hizo reflexionar mucho: En ocasiones, no hacer algo es lo mejor que podemos hacer.

The Art of Living by Thich Nhat Hanh Does Zen master, global spiritual leader, poet and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh need any further introduction?For me it is the first of his books I have read and it wont be the last. I enjoyed his clear and simple way of writing and explaining. (Is that because he writes his insights after -walking- meditation and with a brush in short calligraphy phrases?) It helped me to understand the Buddha’s teachings and the basics of mindfulness a little better. I gladly share some of Thich Nhat Hanh’s insights with you:Time is life and life is love.Love is a long-term commitment made know to my family and friends.The four basic elements of true love are loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness.When you start a relation with someone you should also need to find out what their dreams are and also need to help them understand your dream.My happiness depends on my mental attitude not on external conditions.Seven concentrations (and the seven chapters of this book)1. Emptiness, means to be full of everything but empty of a separate existence.2. Signlessness ‘a cloud never dies’death is essential to making life possible, death is transformation, death is continuation.We should take time to understand living and dying and free our self from anxiety, fear and sorrow.3. Aimlessness ‘you already are what you want to become’ ‘the way out is in’It is the quality of our life that is important, not how long we live. Spiritual practise is the art of knowing how to create happiness and handle suffering.Your dream is now. What can I do today to realize my dreams? Realize your dreams with joy, ease and freedom. Our dream gives us vitality, it gives meaning to our lives.4. Impermanence, thanks to impermanence everything is possible.When we agree with the truth of impermanence we have to behave according to that truth. You do everything you can and you do it now. Make the person you love happy, live the kind of life you would like to live. Make it a living insight that is with us every day.(don’t exercise to get fit or be healthier, do it because you enjoy being alive) Take good care of your garden, so you can help your beloved take care of theirs.Cultivate flowers of peace, compassion, gratitude, understanding and joy,and you can offer, patience acceptance, understanding and compassion,and grow together.Our suffering is impermanent and that is why we can transform it, and because happiness is impermanent that is why we have to nourish it.5. Non Carving (you have enough)As soon as we realize that in this very moment we already have enough and we already are enough true happiness becomes possible.Mindfulness can only help reduce our stress and tension if it provides us with insight.Our spiritual practice (meditation) has the power to transform the roots of our suffering and transform the way we live our daily life. It is insight that helps us calm our restlessness, stress and craving.True happiness depends on our capacity to cultivate compassion and understanding and bring nourishment and healing to ourselves and our loved ones.It is possible to learn to sit in peace, breath in peace and walk in peace. To be at peace is an art we cultivate with daily mindful practice.As we nourish and heal ourselves, our understanding of the meaning of life will deepen day by day.We can become a victim of our success but never of our happiness.6. Letting go. Our idea of happiness may be the very obstacle of our happiness.Peace, freedom and happiness can be found right here in this very life, if only we can learn the art of handling our suffering.Happiness and peace are born from transforming suffering and pain. If there was no mud, how could a lotus grow.A meditator is both an artist and a warrior.7. Nirvana is nowNirvana is a pleasant state of coolness and freshness that we can all touch in this very life.As we learn to handle our suffering we are learning to generate moments of nirvana.Awakening can be found right in the heart of suffering. So it’s okay to suffer, we just need to learn how to handle it.time is life an time is loveThis is my life and I want to live it deeply.The five Remembrances of the Buddha:I am of the nature to grow oldThere is no way to escape growing oldI am of the nature to have ill healthThere is no way to escape ill healthI am of the nature to dieThere is no way to escape deathAll that is dear to me and everyone Ilove are of the nature to changeThere is no way to escape being separated from themMy actions are my only true belongingsI cannot escape the consequences of my actionsThey are the ground upon which I stand

I think The Art of Living is Thich Nhat Hanh’s latest book. It is based on talks he gave in 2014. Later that year he got a severe brain hemorrhage and still hasn’t gained the power of speech again, so this might be his last book too. In most ways a continuation of what he has been writing about in other books I’ve read by him, Buddhism, and how to live well. But he is also writing about dying, and he deals with that in quite an interesting way. He was born in 1926, so one might assume that he is coming to terms with his own mortality. However I look at it, I find it an interesting book, and often beautifully written, like so much of his other writings I’ve read.

Excellent book. Everyone should read this who wants to try to live a more mindful existence. Can not put into words the feeling this book has given me. I borrowed the book from the library but just purchased it as i feel it needs to be read many times in order to fully absorb the words to help incorporate into everyday life. Excellent.

„The number of days we have to live is not so important. What matters is how we live them.“Beautiful book, extremely important in times of not appreciating our own life, pretending to live the life of someone else, of pleasing others. We are forgetting the true values of our life!„As soon as we realize that in this very moment we already have enough, and we already are enough, true happiness becomes possible.“The book contains simple steps that can bring your life back on track, everyone in the world knows these steps and pearls of wisdom but, somehow, my book is full of notes and highlights."Impermanence is just as capable of bringing about happiness as it is of bringing about suffering.“Live in this very moment and appreciate it no matter whether it is positive or negative because nothing is here forever. „True happiness depends on our capacity to cultivate compassion and understanding and bring nourishment and healing to ourselves and our loved ones.“I will definitely re-read this book many times in the future just to refresh and to remind myself that life is so precious."We cannot create happiness in a place where there is no suffering, just as we cannot grow lotuses without mud....Lotuses cannot grow on marble."

Thoughtful, thought-provoking advice to help one advance on your spiritual journey through life. You'll need to own your copy because there is so much to highlight & underline! I've already referred back to my marked passages several times.

Awesome way to live our lives - being mindful!!

Calm your mind. Open yourself to what is arising and passing. If you stir up the mud at the bottom of a lake, the water will be unclear. But when you let the water be as it is, not trying to flatten the ripples or scoop out all the mud, the lake will settle down. Then you will see not only the still water, but a reflection of the mountains on the surface. When you watch the rain, you are the rain just as much as the rain is you. Rather than feeling that you are a separate observer, passively watching each droplet fall down, there is only the splash, splash, splash. There is a rain beyond your words. Beyond your images and concepts and memories. Yet you often divide yourself from the rain, creating an idea of you, an idea of the rain, an idea of how the rain sounds, an idea of how you should feel when you see the rain, and so on. You forget to smell the rain because you are attached to what you think you know. You often separate your experiences into endlessly finer categories. You discriminate between what you see as good and bad, black and white, ugly and beautiful, life and death, young and old. You organize and measure and judge. Your universe is placed into a mental filing system. Yet as Alan Watts said, “You confuse the menu for the meal.”When you are mindful, when you let go, you can come back to the purity of who you are. You can harmonize with nature. Breathing in, breathing out. You are here. Like a bow sliding across a violin, you are open to the continuous hum.You are not alienated from the rest of life. You inter-are. You are made up of relationships. A flower cannot bloom without being connected to non-flower elements like the soil beneath it or the sun above it. For the petals of a rose to glisten with dew, there first needed to be a Big Bang. Conditions before that flower existed helped that flower to be. When the rose wilts back into the old earth, another plant will take its place. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed.Just like a flower, you are made up of non-you parts. You cannot exist without the oxygen you breathe or your ancestors or the gravity of the planet. You cannot exist without the water from the oceans or the clouds drifting above you. There is no you apart from anything else.“You cannot step into the same river twice,” as Heraclitus once said. Your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are changing. You will not be the same person at five or fifteen or eighty. You may feel the same, and believe that you will remain young forever, but you are a constellation of processes, transforming in every moment. You are dying and being reborn. You are changing with the conditions of the universe.Don’t attach yourself to one view of life and claim that is the best view to have. When you cling to your beliefs and refuse to open yourself up, you will suffer. Your dogmatism will cause other beings to suffer too.You are all the lives you have influenced. You are all the ancestors who survived for you to be born and all the descendants who will grow old after you have decomposed.You are the sun and water and trees and moon. Without them, there is no you.Your interconnection with all living beings will help you to see beyond yourself. With awareness, you don’t have to judge everything outside your flesh as separate from you. You don’t have to look for ways to isolate yourself from other beings. Clinging to rigid beliefs, avoiding alternative perspectives, and not empathizing with the vulnerable, will only cause you to suffer. You are in others as others are in you.It’s up to you to be kind, compassionate, and loving.Every moment is a chance for you to deepen your practice. Talking about philosophy is not enough. Your life is your message. Your teaching.When you are mindful and compassionate, your peaceful presence will influence the people around you. Everyone you meet is a continuation of you. Your practice is a practice not only for you, but for your siblings, parents, children, neighbors, and the rest of your community.When you think you are separate from the rest of the world, you will try to run from the world. You will seek pleasure and avoid pain. You will look for comforting answers to the mystery of your existence. You will hide from unpleasant truths. Rather than hiding from what you don’t like or attaching yourself to abstractions, look within yourself. See yourself in the world just as the world is seen in you. You are not only the blood in your body, but the stars in your blood. You don’t have to climb a mountain to find what is already here. You only need to see.If you walk in a park, do you notice the leaves falling from the trees? Do you feel the breeze brushing against your skin? Do you exhale as you step on the soft soil? Look for lessons in what is already an intimate part of you. There is more wisdom in a crumbling leaf than in a thousand words about impermanence.When you walk, walk. When you sit, sit. When you breathe, breathe. Rather than seeking to become important or achieve something outside of yourself, rather than dwelling on your regrets or rushing off to do the next thing, continue to do what you are doing, but with total freedom.Be present with what you are doing. When you nourish yourself, you will nourish other sentient beings. You will care for those who are suffering, who need someone to be there for them. You are not only working toward an end goal of compassion, peace, and kindness. You are those things. Every step can be a step of peace.When you live in the present, you will begin to see the impermanence in all things. A flower blooming in spring and withering in the autumn sun, a lover with age spots on her hands, a flash of lightning in the clouds. Without impermanence, a child can never mature into an adult and an acorn can never grow into a tree. For there to be birth, there has to be death. When you are aware of your impermanence, every moment is precious, a fleeting miracle. You can care for all things in your life, while knowing that nothing ever lasts.Pain and anger will fade away just like joy and happiness. Seemingly unstoppable empires will collapse as civilizations develop. Everyone you know will die and break down into the dust of bones. Plants will grow over your forgotten tomb.When you know the truth of your impermanence, you will be grateful for what you have while knowing that it won’t be yours forever.There is no you that remains the same. Your perceptions, thoughts, feelings, moods, and behaviors all change over time. From the cells in your fingers to the bacteria in your gut, from the wrinkles on your skin to the hormones in your glands, from the neurons in your brain to the oxygen that you inhale, you are transforming. You are not alone. You are not an unchanging entity, apart from the rest of the universe. You are the same, but also different.Life is like a garden that you can cultivate. You can water the seeds of hatred and ignorance and greed or you can water the seeds of peace and joy and compassion. You have the freedom to choose. It is entirely up to you.When you tend to yourself, you tend to others. When you tend to others, you tend to yourself. You must be wise enough to select the most wholesome seeds to water. Sometimes in relationships, you may fall into negative habits. You may forget to be grateful and engaged. As the weeds grow in your garden and theirs, both of you will suffer. But it is never too late to cut away the weeds, to plant new seeds again.Rather than chasing after abstract notions of success, pleasure, power, and reputation, see these cravings for what they are. When you desire to taste the bait, biting down with all your force, you will get hooked. Only when you can let go, mindful of your suffering, will you be free.Be aware of your fear, your need for intimacy, your sorrow, and your compulsion to survive. You are connected with this earth. You can show compassion to your suffering while nourishing your love. Smile because you are alive on this beautiful earth. You are here for only a short time.

Very comprehensive and deep teachings from Thich Nhat Hahn. I think this may well be one of my favourites. I especially found the teachings on emptiness and signlessness particularly helpful and insightful. This has a little more depth than what I usually find in Hahn’s books. Definitely be reading this again.

Ugh, I feel like I have a long long way to go to get to the peace espoused in this text.

A book that everyone should read regardless of their religion.

Not a one-time listen!This is definitely a little book of lessons to be listened to and put into practice often, working towards habits, conduct and way of life.