Quotes from Matthieu Ricard

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

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.

Wisdom and compassion should become the dominating influences that guide our thoughts , our words, and our actions.

You can't be at the same time a spiritual master and someone who is always angry. It doesn't work.

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.

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.

Confidence is closely linked to how well our perceptions match reality

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.

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

What counts is not the enormity of the task, but the size of the courage.

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions.

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.

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.

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

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

The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. —GANDHI T

It is the only thing we can do. … Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate added to this world makes it still more inhospitable. — ETTY HILLESUM29

in its deepest sense, suffering is intimately linked to a misapprehension of the nature of reality. R

Love is the only thing that doubles every time it's given," said Albert Schweitzer.

Loving-kindness and compassion are the two faces of altruism. It is their object that distinguishes them: loving-kindness wants all beings to experience happiness, while compassion focuses on eradicating their suffering.

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.

A storm may be raging at the surface, but the depths remain calm. The wise man always remains connected to the depths. On the other hand, he who knows only the surface and is unaware of the depths is lost when he is buffeted by the waves of suffering.

the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.