Ricard Wisdom

Wisdom pearls of Matthieu Ricard

"~ Truth is strong enough by itself to convince, and should never be imposed by force.
~ The goal of nonviolence is specifically to diminish violence. It’s not a passive approach.
~ Evil has no more existence than a mistake; it is only an incorrect perception of reality.
~ The great virtue of sin is precisely that it doesn’t have any true existence. There’s therefore no negative action or thought that can’t be dissolved, purified, or repaired.
~ The idea of man’s true nature can be understood as a state of balance, while violence is a state of imbalance.
~ It’s obvious that unless a sense of responsibility develops in all the individuals sharing this planet, it’ll be very difficult to apply any democratic ideals.
~ Enlightenment is the discovery of the ultimate nature of both oneself and phenomena.
~ Mastery of oneself, like so many other qualities, is only something of true value when it’s based on the right motivation and metaphysical principles.
~ What Buddhism calls meditation is a gradual discovery, over years of practice, of the nature of the mind and how mental events appear in it.
~ It doesn’t make much sense to think that because a truth is an ancient truth it’s no longer worth bothering about.
~ In spiritual practices the difficulties come at the beginning, and in worldly practice the difficulties come at the end.
~ Without wisdom, reason will just argue about human happiness without ever actually bringing it about. Education needs to be more than just the accumulation of knowledge; it should really be education on how to be."

Photo - Ricard with his father, the philosopher Jean-Francois Revel, on the day of Revel’s reception at the French National Academy in Paris