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

Matthieu Ricard

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Matthieu Ricard
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: February 15
Bhikkhu
Geneticist
Monk
Philosopher
Photographer
Translator
Writer
Anticipation
Opening
Hearing
Thinks
Door
Creak
Doors
Pessimist
Thinking
Optimist
Closing

More quotes by Matthieu Ricard

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What counts is not the enormity of the task, but the size of the courage.
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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You're not insensitive or indifferent, but you're also not vulnerable to the upheavals that cause emotional stress because you can buffer that... So that's the result of meditation you could call that emotional balance.
Matthieu Ricard
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You can't be at the same time a spiritual master and someone who is always angry. It doesn't work.
Matthieu Ricard
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We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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Wisdom and compassion should become the dominating influences that guide our thoughts , our words, and our actions.
Matthieu Ricard
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While it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.
Matthieu Ricard
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If there is a remedy or a cure, a solution to a problem or difficulty, why worry?
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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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
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It's not the magnitude of the task that matters, it's the magnitude of our courage.
Matthieu Ricard
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To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.
Matthieu Ricard
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Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else's happiness or success
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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Changing your attitude has a curative effect... Maybe you can go directly to a change of mind, a change of attitude.
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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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