Top 101 Quotes & Sayings by Matthieu Ricard

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.

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

Negative emotions like hatred destroy our peace of mind.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

At each point in our lives, we are at a crossroads. We are the fruit of our past and we are the architects of our future... If you want to know your past, look at your present circumstances. If you want to know your future, look at what is in your mind.

Happiness is not the endless pursuit of pleasant experiences - that sounds more like a recipe for exhaustion - but a way of being that results from cultivating a benevolent mind, emotional balance, inner freedom, inner peace, and wisdom. Each of these qualities is a skill that can be enhanced through training the mind.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Whatever you train, you change your brain.

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

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

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

Confidence is closely linked to how well our perceptions match reality

In a way, there's nothing wrong with playing the piano, but it's not a huge trauma if you don't.

Meditation gives you more inner strength and confidence, and if you don't feel vulnerable, you can put that to the service of others. So it's not just about sitting and cultivating caring mindfulness. It's building up a way of being and then using it for the service of others.

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.

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.

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 state of inner fulfillment.

If we dedicate a certain amount of time each day to cultivating compassion or any other positive quality, we are likely to attain results, just like when we train the body... Meditation consists of familiarizing ourselves with a new way of being, of managing our thoughts and the way we perceive the world. Through the recent advances in neuroscience it is now possible to evaluate these methods and to verify their impact on the brain and body.

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.

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

If contemplation of other people's pain just increases distress, then I think we should see it in another way. If we don't center too much on ourselves, then [we] increase our courage and our determination to remedy the pain, not our distress. If we have unconditional compassion, then it increases our courage. So that's the difference, self-centered motivation versus altruistic motivation.

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.

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

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

I don't often get into a bad mood, since it does not help anything and clouds my judgment, but I can certainly see that sometimes things go terribly wrong. We need to understand the reasons for this and work towards building new conditions that will bring about better circumstances.

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

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.

When faced with adverse circumstances, if you can do something, do it and there is not need to worry. If you can't do anything, then there is no point to worry. So in either case, worrying is an added suffering. But this does not mean of course that we should not be unhappy about injustice, abuse and other kinds of behavior that brings suffering upon others.

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.

When you see a Tibetan doctor taking care of a patient, first of all, of course there are many wonderful medicines that come from [there in the past] 2,000 years. But this doctor is usually so attentional, so kind, and so careful of what you really feel and then [he sees] you as a human being instead of running you through some quick tests. So that itself, the trust and confidence in someone that cares for you is of course so invigorating... that someone cares.