Matthieu Ricard Quotes

Worries are pointless. If there's a solution, there's no need to worry. If no solution exists, there's no point to worry.

Nothing goes right on the outside when nothing is going right on the inside.

To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.

Happiness is a skill, emotional balance is a skill, compassion and altruism are skills, and like any skill they need to be developed. That's what education is about.

Let us live simply in the freshness of the present moment, in the clarity of pure awakened mind.

The basic root of happiness lies in our minds; outer circumstances are nothing more than adverse or favourable.

We deal with our mind from morning till evening, and it can be our best friend or our worst enemy.

We all have the ability to study the causes of suffering and gradually to free ourselves from them....it is not the magnitude of the task that matters, it's the magnitude of our courage.

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity, it is a state of being.

Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.

Transform our way of perceiving things, we transform the quality of our lives.

Genuine fearlessness arises with the confidence that we will be able to gather the inner resources to deal with any situation that comes our way.

Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily and heartily: they have nothing to lose and hope for little. In renunciation lies a delicious taste of simplicity and deep peace.

Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree. It completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are.

While it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

It's not the magnitude of the task that matters, it's the magnitude of our courage.

Confidence is closely linked to how well our perceptions match reality

Enlightenment is eliminating mental confusion, eliminating hatred, jealousy, mental toxins, cravings. That's very simple and straightforward. Whether you can do it or not is another matter.

Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else's happiness or success

The ultimate reason for meditating is to transform ourselves in order to be better able to transform the world.

Anyone can be happy by simply training their brain.

To grant forgiveness to someone who has truly changed is not a way of condoning or forgetting his or her past crimes, but of acknowledging whom he or she has become.

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

True freedom means freeing oneself from the dictates of the ego and its accompanying emotions.

Wisdom and compassion should become the dominating influences that guide our thoughts , our words, and our actions.

Whatever you train, you change your brain.

When hearing a door creak, the optimist thinks it's opening and the pessimist thinks it's closing.

Negative emotions like hatred destroy our peace of mind.

Isn't it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering?

If you want to know the future, look at what is in your mind

We do all kinds of things to remain beautiful. Yet, we spend surprisingly little time taking care of what matters most - the way our mind functions.

Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment.

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions.

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

Placebos are like the lollipop of optimism, but we can do much better by dealing directly with the mind... And it works!

There is definitely openness to others' suffering that is dealt not with distress but with compassion.

We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.

Peace is not weak. Standing up to a tank is harder than dropping a suicide bomb

There is a dilemma, to reconcile three time scales: in the short term, the economy; in the middle range, global well-being generally; and, in the long range, the environment.

That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel - the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.

The way you experience [pain] can change so much depending on your attitude.

I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation.

You should really stop worrying, develop the real wish to live and with a good motivation, [such as] "I have a better life and I can put that life at the benefit of others."

Neuroscience has proven that similar areas of the brain are activated both in the person who suffers and in the one who feels empathy. Thus empathic suffering is a true experience of suffering.

What counts is not the enormity of the task, but the size of the courage.

We cannot study everything at the same time.

Good and evil exist only in terms of the happiness or suffering they create in ourselves and others

Meditation is about cultivating constructive emotions, like altruism, compassion.

It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love.

The Dalai Lama has been extremely interested in science since his childhood.