Matthieu Ricard famous quotes

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

#Love Life #Essentials #Oneself

For a few moments, be aware of your potential for change. Whatever your present situation is, evolution and transformation are always possible. At the least, you can change your way of seeing things and then, gradually, your way of being as well.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Way #Evolution #Transformation

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

#Mind #Clarity #Moments

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

#Morning #Mind #Enemy

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Simple #Confusion #Hatred

The mind is malleable. Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Skills #Effort #Mind

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Children #Lying #Buddhism

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

#Buddhism #Suffering

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

#Yoga #Desire #States

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

#Yoga #Worry #Needs

Humility does not mean believing oneself to be inferior, but to be freed from self-importance. It is a state of natural simplicity which is in harmony with our true nature and allows us to taste the freshness of the present moment.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Believe #Mean #Humility

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

#Lying #Buddhism #Roots

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Suffering #Matter #Causes

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

#Compassion #Our Words #Our Actions

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Empathy #Brain #Suffering

By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Happiness #Mean #Healthy

Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time - toward the same object, the same person - want to harm and want to do good.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Hate #Opposites #Ideas

Knowledge does not mean mastering a great quantity of different information, but understanding the nature of mind. This knowledge can penetrate each one of our thoughts and illuminate each one of our perceptions.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Mean #Buddhism #Understanding

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

#Buddhism #Envy #Suffering

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Emotional #Compassion #Skills

Confidence is closely linked to how well our perceptions match reality
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Reality #Perception #Wells

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

#World #May #Way

Negative emotions like hatred destroy our peace of mind.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Hatred #Mind #Negative

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

#Order #World #Able

Although the optimist may be a little giddy when foreseeing the future, telling himself that it will all work out in the end when that isn't always the case, his attitude is more fruitful since, in the hope of undertaking a hundred projects, followed up by diligent action, the optimist will end up completing fifty. Conversely, in limiting himself to undertake a mere ten, the pessimist might complete five at best and often fewer, since he'll devote little energy to a task he feels to be doomed from the start.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Attitude #Work Out #Fifty

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

#Mind #Suffering #Translate

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Pain #Empathy #Feelings

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Happiness #Emotional #Profound

Happiness is the result of inner maturity. It depends on us alone, and requires patient work, carried out from day to day. Happiness must be built, and this requires time and effort. In the long term, happiness and unhappiness are therefore a way of being, or a life skill.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Maturity #Skills #Long

Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Yoga #States #Fulfillment

There is no such thing as good and bad in an absolute sense. There is only the good and bad- the harm in terms of happiness and suffering- that our thoughts and our actions do to ourselves and others.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Suffering #Our Actions #Ethics

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

#Mind #Looks #Want

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

#States #Authentic Happiness

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Beautiful #What Matters #Mind

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

#Mean #Buddhism #Ego

Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Mean #Buddhism #Suffering

When the mind is full of memories and preoccupied by the future, it misses the freshness of the present moment. In this way, we fail to recognize the luminous simplicity of mind that is always present behind the veils of thought.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Memories #Buddhism #Missing

The ultimate reason for meditating is to transform ourselves in order to be better able to transform the world or, to put it another way, to transform ourselves so we can become better human beings in order to serve others in a wiser and more efficient way. It gives your life the noblest possible meaning.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Life #Order #Giving

The goal of meditation is precisely to make your mind smooth and manageable so that it can be concentrated or relaxed at will; and especially to free it from the tyranny of mental afflictions and confusion
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Goal #Confusion #Meditation

Imagine a ship that is sinking and needs all the available power to run the pumps to drain out the rising waters. The first class passengers refuse to cooperate because they feel hot and want to use the air-conditioner and other electrical appliances. The second-class passengers spend all their time trying to be upgraded to first-class status. The boat sinks and the passengers all drown. That is where the present approach to climate change is leading.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Running #Air #Class

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

#Quality #Way

Happiness is the main object of our aspirations, whatever name we give to it: fulfilment, deep satisfaction, serenity, accomplishment, wisdom, fortune, joy or inner peace, and however we try to seek it: creativity, justice, altruism, striving, completion of a plan or a piece of work.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Creativity #Buddhism #Names

Anyone can be happy by simply training their brain
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Brain #Training

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

#Tree #Meditation #Brain

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

#Buddhism #Mind #Suffering

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

#Buddhism #Suffering #Size

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

#Trying #World #Temporary

If you see the humanity in the world, grains of sand that bring everything to a halt — it's corruption, clashes of egos, human factors more than resources. So, how to avoid that? There's a lack of human maturity. So it's not a vain or futile exercise to perfect yourself to some extent before you serve others, otherwise it's like cutting the wheat when it's still green. And nobody is fed by that. So we need a minimum of readiness to efficiently and wisely be at the service of others. So compassion needs also to be sort of enlightened by wisdom. Otherwise, it's blind.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Cutting #Exercise #Compassion

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

#Courage #Bravery #Matter

Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure as he is inflated by success. He is able to fully live his experiences in the context of a vast and profound serenity, since he understands that experiences are ephemeral and that it is useless to cling to them.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Broken #Profound #Serenity

In the freshness of the present moment, past is gone, future is not yet born, and—if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom—disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace. That is basic meditation.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Past #Meditation #Leaving

By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Buddhism #Self #Long

No change occurs if we just let our habitual tendencies and automatic patterns of thought perpetuate and even reinforce themselves, thought after thought, day after day, year after year. But those tendencies and patterns can be challenged.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Years #Patterns #Mindfulness

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Able #Way #Anticipation

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

#Thinking #Doors #Hearing

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.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Past #Way #Forget

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

#Suicide #Bombs #Tanks

Happiness can’t be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world—a profound fulfillment that suffuses every moment and endures despite inevitable setbacks.
-- Matthieu Ricard

#Profound #World #Way

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

#Evil #Suffering #Good And Evil

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

#Meditation #Research #Science Research