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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

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Matthieu Ricard
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: February 15
Bhikkhu
Geneticist
Monk
Philosopher
Photographer
Translator
Writer
Smile
Meet
Resonate
Suffering
Resonance
Pain
Joyful
Feelings
Faculty
Others
Empathy
Someone
Witness
Suffer

More quotes by Matthieu Ricard

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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.
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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Good and evil exist only in terms of the happiness or suffering they create in ourselves and others
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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.
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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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
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I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation.
Matthieu Ricard
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Whatever you train, you change your brain.
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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Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity, it is a state of being.
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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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.
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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Just be free, and at least you will go through adversity with a stronger mind, and therefore, you'll be less affected, and pain will affect you less.
Matthieu Ricard
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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
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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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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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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
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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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If you don't have altruism, inner strength, inner peace, attention, then it's a trauma. It makes a difficult life for you and for others.
Matthieu Ricard