Matthieu Ricard Quotes - Page 4

Changing your attitude has a curative effect... Maybe you can go directly to a change of mind, a change of attitude.

If there is a remedy or a cure, a solution to a problem or difficulty, why worry?

[You] can dramatically change [your emotions] to be more altruistic, more loving, more compassionate, more attentive, and especially to have an inner sort of confidence and strength that you know that you have the resources to deal with whatever comes your way.

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.

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.

You should really stop worrying, develop the real wish to live and with a good motivation, [such as] "I have a better life and I can put that life at the benefit of others."

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.

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.

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

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.

You get [something] in your body that is the suffering or the problem, and then you [add] a second one, which is worry. In both cases, [it is] pointless.

Too much involvement with one's feeling [is destructive]. If they have too much self-centered feelings, they get in trouble.

I think if your direction in life is clear and if you develop the wish to accomplish/have a fulfilled life and to contribute something to others, I think that definitely gives you such a strength to want to be alive, that that would be the best placebo.

Meditation is about cultivating constructive emotions, like altruism, compassion.

[Some of the people I'd met] were wonderful people as human beings, and some people were more difficult. I could not see a correlation between their particular genius in playing chess and music and mathematics, etc. ... with human qualities. Some were really good, wonderful people, and some were difficult characters, but there was no clear correlation. But when I met some spiritual masters, [I thought that] there had to be a correlation, and it turned out to be true.

If you see the humanity in the world, grains of sand that bring everything to a halt - corruption, clashes of egos, human factors more than resources. So, how to avoid that? There’s a lack of human maturity. So it’s not been a fertile exercise to perfect yourself to some extent before you serve others, otherwise it’s like cutting the wheat when it’s still green. And nobody is fed by that. So we need a minimum of readiness to efficiently and wisely be at the service of others. So compassion needs also to be sort of enlightened by wisdom. Otherwise, it’s blind.

I was born in France. My father was a renowned French philosopher and journalist, and my mother was a painter. So I grew up in Parisian intellectual circles.

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

We have known about the placebo effect for many years. This is a remarkable effect - placebo can cure 30 percent in many cases.

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

I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation.

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

Placebos are like the lollipop of optimism, but we can do much better by dealing directly with the mind... And it works!

The Dalai Lama has been extremely interested in science since his childhood.

It is in learning music that many youthful hearts learn to love.