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Who really said it

Your true home is in the here and the now

Attributed to Thích Nhất Hạnh 1926–2022 · Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist and author
Attributed In copyright

Credibly credited to Thích Nhất Hạnh, and squarely his central teaching on dwelling in the present moment. Wikiquote’s sourced section traces this exact wording to his essay “Returning Home” in Shambhala Sun (March 2006). We could not read that essay — the cited address is dead and no copy was reachable — so the citation stands on Wikiquote rather than on the page it points to.

Last verified 9 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Your true home is in the here and the now” Thích Nhất Hạnh. Wikiquote sources this wording to his essay "Returning Home," Shambhala Sun, March 2006; that magazine page is no longer online and the primary text is unverified. — Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Your true home is in the here and the now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality, or race.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Thích Nhất Hạnh’s estate and/or the publisher of Shambhala Sun). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Thích Nhất Hạnh — Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, poet and peace activist. Theme: "Your true home is in the here and the now". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Your true home is in the here and the now". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work
Returning Home
Published in
Shambhala Sun (March 2006), per Wikiquote
Status of the primary
Not readable — the cited shambhalasun.com address no longer resolves
Wider passage
The sentence opens a longer paragraph that continues “Your true home is not an abstract idea…”

Your true home is in the here and the now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality, or race. Your true home is not an abstract idea. It is something you can touch and live in every moment. With mindfulness and concentration, the energies of the Buddha, you can find your true home in the full relaxation of your mind and body in the present moment. No one can take it away from you. As printed by Wikiquote

This is the passage as Wikiquote prints it, not as we read it in Shambhala Sun. The quotable first sentence is almost always lifted out of this longer paragraph.

Wikiquote’s sourced entry for Thích Nhất Hạnh

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s page for Thích Nhất Hạnh ↗ carries this sentence in its sourced quotes, with the citation “Returning Home,” Shambhala Sun (March 2006). We fetched the page source and confirmed the wording and the citation sit together.
  • That citation’s link is dead. The host shambhalasun.com no longer resolves at all, and neither a live successor copy nor an archived snapshot could be reached from here, so the essay itself remains unread. We are recording that gap rather than presenting the citation as checked.
  • Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh ↗ is catalogued at the Internet Archive as a Shambhala collection of 365 daily teachings (Boston, 2011, ISBN 9781590309261, with Melvin McLeod as associated editor). Its title repeats this phrase, which is an observation about the phrase’s standing in his work, not a page citation — we could not search inside the book.
  • Wikipedia ↗ confirms his life dates and that he founded the Plum Village tradition of engaged Buddhism.
In copyright

The work Wikiquote names is a 2006 magazine essay, far later than 1931, so this line is in copyright on any reading. We have not established who holds those rights today, so the holder above is stated as the likely parties rather than a verified assignment. Nothing here is public domain.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Context

Why it mattered

Thích Nhất Hạnh spent most of his adult life unable to go home: exiled from Vietnam for campaigning to end the war, he was refused re-entry for decades. Read against that, the line is not a soft piece of mindfulness advice but a claim made under pressure — that a home which can be taken from you by a border was never the real one.

The paragraph it comes from makes the political edge explicit. It ends by saying that others can occupy your country and even imprison you, but they cannot take away your true home and your freedom. The quotable first sentence is usually clipped off from that.

A home a border can revoke was never the real one.

Read the full story

The phrase became a kind of shorthand for his teaching. Shambhala published a 365-day collection titled Your True Home in 2011, and the sentence circulated widely again after his death in 2022.

Our caution here is narrow and specific. There is no sign the line is misattributed, and nothing we found contradicts it; what we could not do is read the magazine essay Wikiquote cites, because the page is gone from the web. That is the whole distance between “attributed” and “verified” on this record.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Time Happiness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Thích Nhất Hạnhen.wikiquote.org

The sourced entry carrying this sentence and the Shambhala Sun (March 2006) citation.
Your True Home (Shambhala, 2011)archive.org

The 365-teaching collection whose title repeats this line. Catalogue record only — we could not search inside it.
Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothersarchive.org

A 2000 book of his on the same “true home” theme, catalogued at the Internet Archive.
Thích Nhất Hạnhen.wikipedia.org

Life dates, the exile years, and the Plum Village tradition of engaged Buddhism.

The author

About Thích Nhất Hạnh

Thích Nhất Hạnh

1926–2022 · Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, poet and peace activist

Thích Nhất Hạnh — born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo in Huế, Vietnam, in 1926 — was a Thiền Buddhist monk, poet and peace activist who became one of the most widely read Buddhist writers in the English language. Exiled from South Vietnam in 1966 for refusing to take a side in the war, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. the following year, founded the Plum Village monastery in southwest France in 1982, and is credited with coining the term “engaged Buddhism.” His gift was rendering Buddhist teaching in plain, warm English — which is why a line like this one travels so far from the page it was printed on.

For writers & researchers

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The primary source (Chicago)

Thích Nhất Hạnh, “Returning Home,” Shambhala Sun, March 2006, as cited in Wikiquote. The essay was not available to consult; no page number is given by the citing source.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Your true home is in the here and the now’?” Last verified 9 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/your-true-home-is-in-the-here-and-the-now/

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