Matthieu Ricard

very clever and tireless our consumer society is at inventing countless bogus pleasures, laboriously hyped stimulants designed to keep us in a state of emotional tension capable of triggering a kind of mental anesthesia.

Just as it is the mind that translates suffering into unhappiness, it is the mind’s responsibility to master its perception thereof.

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.

like well-being, is essentially an interior state. Understanding that is the key prerequisite to a life worth living

phenomena exist in an essentially interdependent mode and have no autonomous and enduring existence.

Sukha is the state of lasting well-being that manifests itself when we have freed ourselves of mental blindness and afflictive emotions

Ignorance, in the Buddhist lexicon, is an inability to recognize the true nature of things and of the law of cause and effect that governs happiness and suffering

true happiness: clarity of mind, loving-kindness, the gradual withering of negative emotions, and the disappearance of selfish whimsy.