Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Matthieu Ricard
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: February 15
Bhikkhu
Geneticist
Monk
Philosopher
Photographer
Translator
Writer
Suffering
Buddhism
Spontaneity
Happiness
Gains
Openness
Freedom
Minds
Mindfulness
Sense
Importance
Inherent
Self
Return
Breaking
Parasite
Long
Lose
Qualities
Infected
Mind
Loses
Gain
Parasites
Quality
Simplicity
Altruism

More quotes by Matthieu Ricard

Image
We have known about the placebo effect for many years. This is a remarkable effect - placebo can cure 30 percent in many cases.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
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
Image
If there is a remedy or a cure, a solution to a problem or difficulty, why worry?
Matthieu Ricard
Image
It's not the magnitude of the task that matters, it's the magnitude of our courage.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
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.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
When you see those in healthcare who don't get this burn-out, they are very motherly, fatherly, or loving and attentive with the patients. [These] wonderful caretakers, doctors, and nurses don't get as much burn-out as people who are more defensive of the feelings and suffering of others.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
Changing your attitude has a curative effect... Maybe you can go directly to a change of mind, a change of attitude.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
When hearing a door creak, the optimist thinks it's opening and the pessimist thinks it's closing.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
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
Image
I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
A big part of pain is the subjective reaction of trying to revolt against pain. If it's there, it's better to deal with it. Most of it is I cannot stand it, and that component is enhancing pain so much.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
Peace is not weak. Standing up to a tank is harder than dropping a suicide bomb
Matthieu Ricard
Image
We vastly underestimate the power of transformation of mind.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
The ultimate reason for meditating is to transform ourselves in order to be better able to transform the world.
Matthieu Ricard
Image
Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else's happiness or success
Matthieu Ricard