Cuong Lu > Quotes

“The only way to overcome fear is to accept everyone and everything,”
― Cuong Lu, Happiness Is Overrated: Simple Lessons on Finding Meaning in Each Moment

“It is important that you not fight against your suffering. Your suffering needs understanding. It won’t help to ignore it or fight against it.”
― Cuong Lu, Happiness Is Overrated: Simple Lessons on Finding Meaning in Each Moment

“If you think you have nothing to give, it isn’t true. Be generous. No one is too poor to give.”

Excerpt From: Cuong Lu. “Wait.” iBooks.”
― Cuong Lu

“I want to stop suffering, and I want you to stop suffering. We can all stop the needless killing if we slow down and take the time to understand each other. Even if you have just one more minute to live, you can live it peacefully. You can be the one to turn the tide, to help create a world where people stop killing each other, where love and happiness thrive.”
― Cuong Lu

“Understanding the mind can help us overcome suffering, ignorance, and violence”
― Cuong Lu, Happiness Is Overrated: Simple Lessons on Finding Meaning in Each Moment

“Wait, for now. Distrust everything, if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven’t they carried you everywhere, up to now? Personal events will become interesting again. Hair will become interesting. Pain will become interesting. Buds that open out of season will become interesting. Second-hand gloves will become lovely again; their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old. Wait. Don’t go too early. You’re tired. But everyone’s tired. But no one is tired enough. Only wait a while and listen: music of hair, music of pain, music of looms weaving all their loves again. Be there to hear it, it will be the only time, most of all to hear the flute of your whole existence, rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion. —GALWAY KINNELL”
― Cuong Lu, Wait: A Love Letter to Those in Despair

“I was already dead. I didn’t have a dream. I didn’t know who I was or what I was looking for. I didn’t see a future. I was lost, just trying to survive. My days were empty.”
― Cuong Lu, Wait

“If you think you have nothing to give, it isn’t true. Be generous. No one is too poor to give.”
― Cuong Lu, Wait

“Bullets always hit two people, the shooter and the one shot.”
― Cuong Lu, Wait

“Mindfulness helps us to be awake and to celebrate life, but it is through the wisdom of interbeing, a term he introduced, that we can see that happiness and suffering are one.”
― Cuong Lu, Happiness Is Overrated: Simple Lessons on Finding Meaning in Each Moment

“As soon as a child (or an adult) “knows” something, they begin to pay attention only to the boxes of their mind, disconnecting from raw mind’s native wisdom.”
― Cuong Lu, Happiness Is Overrated: Simple Lessons on Finding Meaning in Each Moment

“Suppose your beloved says she doesn’t love you anymore. If you listen only on the surface, you think she’s had enough of you and wants to leave. Of course, that makes you sad. But if you listen deeply, with all your heart, you might hear something else—that she’s suffering and her needs are not being met, perhaps her needs for attention and connection. Rather than feeling hurt or attacked and storming off, you can try harder to be deeply present at such a critical moment. If you do, you might uncover truths that neither of you realized.”
― Cuong Lu, Wait: A Love Letter to Those in Despair

“A wise person knows their ignorance.”
― Cuong Lu, Happiness Is Overrated: Simple Lessons on Finding Meaning in Each Moment