In every sufferings you’ve encountered, there will be an opportunity to settle things in a right place. If that comes, grab it. Learn to forgive.

I also wanted you to realize that even though the pain will always be there, I’m living proof you can get past this. Right now I know it feels impossible, but one day you’ll look...

The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he...

When you adapt to someone, they become a part of your routine, a part of you. And when they’re taken away, you feel a bit lost. No matter how much you think it won’t affect...

Evil ethicists are the holocaust of humanity; if philosophy can be the instant sunlight to their endless vampirism, it will save more lives than all the doctors who have ever lived.

You’re beautiful, Jenna. i’m a man and I’m afraid to admit when I’m lucky enough to look at someone as beautiful as you.

Suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself–free and untrammeled, guiding us with...

Just easy. Life feels like it’s always hard. There’s never a calm way to get through it, to just breathe. Every day brings the same challenges, the same routines…the same everything. And as much as...

All we have to do is understand that we’re all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small and walk fearlessly, aware that...

When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray

Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened...

Life is flinching in the midst of breathing, gasping at the thought of dying. It’s climbing ropeless up sheer rock faces, groping for the next finger-hole of hope. Steady on! Only a thousand feet to...

Quitting on one’s dreams isn’t a way out, because all it does is to bring forth some sufferings and quilts in one’s life.

I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an...

I want you to see persecution and opposition and slander and misunderstanding and disappointment and self-recrimination and weakness and danger as the normal portion of faithful pastoral ministry.

Compassion means removal of suffering – suffering of the self and the others.

Why do we come to the world, only to suffer and depart? This is a unsolved misery.

Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in theworld. It’s like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens.

They have a choice to hurt us but we have a choice to be free from pain…

The point is, Jenna, no one is normal or perfect like that house you see across the street. Everyone suffers from their own struggles, whether they’re big or small.