Matthieu Ricard Suffering Quotations

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.

That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel - the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.

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

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

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.

Isn't it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering?

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.

Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else's happiness or success

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.

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