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

Categorized in : Skills Emotional Inner Peace

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

transformation evolution way

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

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

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

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 oneself essentials

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

Matthieu Ricard

buddhism wisdom 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

healthy happiness mean

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 skills compassion

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.

Matthieu Ricard

mind want past

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

Matthieu Ricard

may looks 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.

Matthieu Ricard

buddhism simplicity memories

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

Matthieu Ricard

clarity moments mind

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

Matthieu Ricard

buddhism roots lying

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

buddhism suffering mean

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

leaving meditation past

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

serenity broken profound

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

tasks suffering matter

Anyone can be happy by simply training their brain.

Matthieu Ricard

training brain

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

giving life order

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

Matthieu Ricard

worst-enemy mind morning