Matthieu Ricard

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.

Happiness is the main object of our aspirations, whatever name we give to it: fulfilment, deep satisfaction, serenity, accomplishment, wisdom, fortune, joy or inner peace, and however we try to seek it: creativity, justice, altruism, striving, completion of a plan or a piece of work.

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

We do all kinds of things to remain beautiful. Yet, we spend surprisingly little time taking care of what matters most - the way our mind functions.

Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment.

Knowledge does not mean mastering a great quantity of different information, but understanding the nature of mind. This knowledge can penetrate each one of our thoughts and illuminate each one of our perceptions.

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.

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

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

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.

Peace is not weak. Standing up to a tank is harder than dropping a suicide bomb

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

To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.

Transform our way of perceiving things, we transform the quality of our lives.

Negative emotions like hatred destroy our peace of mind.

We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.

Good and evil exist only in terms of the happiness or suffering they create in ourselves and others

Happiness can’t be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world—a profound fulfillment that suffuses every moment and endures despite inevitable setbacks.

The ultimate reason for meditating is to transform ourselves in order to be better able to transform the world.

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity, it is a state of being.

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