The more frequently we assuage our desires, the more these images multiply, intrude, and constrain us. The more salt water we drink, the thirstier we become. Happiness by Matthieu Ricard.
Download Happiness by Matthieu Ricard. Copyright Disclaimer: This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately. Aside from these few instances, Ricard makes a tr I appreciate the mix of science and spirituality.
Aside from these few instances, Ricard makes a tremendous effort to mix Eastern and Western philosophies for his audience. I certainly learned! Mar 06, Kelsy rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction. This is a sort of holistic look at happiness from the perspective of a Buddhist monk who was originally formally trained as a scientist and grew up around philosophers. There's a lot to wade through, here, but at its heart, the main goal seems to be to convince us that meditation is really what we should all be doing to improve our general wellbeing.
I, for one, am totally sold on this. Ricard details various studies done where scientists are able to measure brainwaves of trained meditators vs. There's also a lot of anecdotal discussion of meditators dealing with extreme circumstances, specifically Tibetan monks who were imprisoned and tortured for years but showed very little psychological trauma upon their freedom.
The research presented is incredibly fascinating, indeed. The only real negative here is that at times this can get quite in the weeds, so to speak.
This is not a typical "pop psych" or "self help" book. There are a lot of very poignant sentences like, "What really matters is the nature of our living experience, whether it is optimal or afflictive. To be fair, I think all of this stuff is worth unpacking and would be worth a second readthrough, but some of the bits towards the end seem like they would be better looked at in depth in a separate book. I did notice that he has an entire book dedicated to altruism Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World , so perhaps that's where that ended up.
I did really enjoy the sections where Ricard details "afflictive mental states" such as hatred and envy and discusses how we can learn to deal with these emotions, using a combination of meditation and Buddhist philosophy. I find myself more intrigued by Buddhism now and want to pick up some more books on the topic. Ultimately, I imagine nearly everyone needs to read this book or one like it.
I say "one like it" because there are plenty of books out there telling you why you should really be meditating, so at this point, I think we all need to just convince ourselves to do it. I, personally, am going to attempt to go through Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World , which seems a little more "pop psych" and "self-helpy", and might be an alternative if you're not interested in all of the Buddhist philosophy bits. Feb 01, Vikas rated it it was amazing.
Well, this book did change my life - I ended up going to a somewhat intensive meditation retreat of 9 days as a consequence of events that were triggered from this book. And this is an activity I look forward to doing every year. I wasn't sad or depressed with my life - things were normal in the normal meaning of the word and neither was I looking forward to "happiness".
I'm happy this book found out me as it was an accidental book that I picked up from library simply because the author looked in Well, this book did change my life - I ended up going to a somewhat intensive meditation retreat of 9 days as a consequence of events that were triggered from this book. I'm happy this book found out me as it was an accidental book that I picked up from library simply because the author looked interesting a Buddhist monk with a PhD in molecular genetics under a Nobel prize winning scientist.
Just to ensure that I got everything the book said, I went through it the second time and then third time - this is the first book that I did and I'm sure I will be going through it again.
The book is not a traditional Buddhist book though it may have influences from Buddhist philosophy. Key points that I still remember: - Happiness is a skill, just like any other skill we develop through practice.
It has been shown in brain studies the effects of meditation on long term meditators that the structure of the brain itself changes. We always see that within the same situation, two people can behave in very different ways depending on their state of mind. Thank you Mathieu for writing this book. Sep 28, Beatrice rated it really liked it. Matthieu Ricard is very wise and clear in his articulation of philosophy--reading this I was inspired to change aspects of my own life, and truly believed in many of the things he shared.
This was a book that prompted me towards deep self-reflection. It provided me with clarity on topics I have intuitively been in touch with. I think this book is particularly important because of its incorporation of compassion and empathy. The fact it outlines that personal change is possible is widely encourag Matthieu Ricard is very wise and clear in his articulation of philosophy--reading this I was inspired to change aspects of my own life, and truly believed in many of the things he shared.
The fact it outlines that personal change is possible is widely encouraging, as anybody can acquire the "skills" discussed here. Jun 05, Christopher Jennings rated it it was ok. I have put this book aside for the meantime. It's good to remind yourself that happiness has very little to do with what society says it does, however, the author keeps patting himself on the back for being so awesome at least so far.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It touches on Buddhist themes, without getting too preachy or religious. Well worth the read for those aspiring to live a life at peace. Dec 12, Nick rated it it was amazing. One of the many things I love about Buddhism and Buddhist practitioners is that it's a practical religion.
Matthieu Ricard's meditation on happiness shows that practicality. When defining happiness, he gets right to it, discussing what it might be and what it isn't in refreshingly simple, practical ways. Happiness, a state we all think we want, can't be dependent on external circumstances. If it's internal, then we all have to recognize what we conditions we need internally to be happy and "br One of the many things I love about Buddhism and Buddhist practitioners is that it's a practical religion.
If it's internal, then we all have to recognize what we conditions we need internally to be happy and "bring them together. It's not pleasure, because that becomes sated. It's "a state of being. It's not joy, for similar reasons. It's clarity of mind, loving-kindness, the withering of negative emotions, and "the disappearance of selfish whimsy.
Find inner peace through introspection. Recognize the reality of suffering. Recognize the causes of suffering -- ignorance, craving, malice, pride, and all the rest. Practice the path. Relax the mind to see beyond pain. Visualize sending peace and love out to all fellow beings. Balance the "I" with interconnectedness.
Let go of the ego. It's merely an idea. When the ego is hurt, you have one minute of actual pain, say, and then an eternity of mental suffering. So cultivate loving-kindness to counteract jealousy, anger, and envy. Matthieu Ricard shows that practising meditation can change our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. He talks us through its theory, spirituality and practical aspects of deep contemplation and illustrates each stage of his teaching with examples.
Through his experience as a… Expand. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Methods Citations. They will soon dissolve back into the ocean. Only a fool wants to go on suffering. Isn't it sad to knowingly imbibe poison? When the prince ascended to the throne, he said to his friend: "While I attend to the affairs of the kingdom, will you please write me a history of men and the world, so that I can draw the necessary lessons from it and thus know the proper way to act.
Five years later he presented himself proudly at the palace. Please, friend, condense your history. But the king was at war against the neighboring monarch. He was found on a mountaintop in the desert, directing the battle. Where would I find the time to read ten volumes? Abridge your history even further.
The king was now caught up in legislating. While you've been doing that, I've been debating taxes and their collection. Bring me tenfold fewer pages - I'll spend an evening mining them. But when the friend returned, he found the king bedridden, in dreadful pain. The friend himself was no longer young; his wrinkled face was haloed by a mane of white hair.
Some die when they've just been born; some when they've just given birth. Every second, people are murdered, tortured, beaten, maimed, separated from their loved ones. Others are abandoned, betrayed, expelled, rejected. Some are killed out of hatred, greed, ignorance, ambition, pride, or envy.
Mothers lose their children, children lose their parents. The ill pass in never-ending procession through the hospitals. The dying endure their pain, and the survivors their mourning. Some die of hunger, cold, exhaustion; others are charred by fire, crushed by rocks, or swept away by the waters.
This is true not only for human beings. Animals devour each other in the forests, the savannahs, the oceans, and the skies. At any given moment tens of thousands of them are being killed by humans, torn to pieces, and canned. Others suffer endless torments at the hands of their owners, bearing heavy burdens, in chains their entire lives; still others are hunted, fished, trapped between teeth of steel, strangled in snares, smothered under nets, tortured for their flesh, their musk, their ivory, their bones, their fur, their skin, thrown into boiling water or flayed alive.
These are not mere words but a reality that is an intrinsic part of our daily lives: death, the transitory nature of all things, and suffering. Though we may feel overwhelmed by it all, powerless before so much pain, turning away from it is only indifference or cowardice.
We must be intimately concerned with it, and do everything we possibly can to relieve the suffering. Pervasive suffering is comparable to a green fruit on the verge of ripening; the suffering of change, to a delicious meal laced with poison; and the multiplicity of suffering, to the eruption of an abscess on a tumor. Pervasive suffering is not yet recognized as such.
The suffering of change begins with a feeling of pleasure and turns to pain. The multiplicity of suffering is associated with an increase in pain. These correspond to three modes of suffering: visible suffering, hidden suffering, and invisible suffering. Hidden suffering is concealed beneath the appearance of pleasure, freedom from care, fun. A gourmet eats a fine dish and moments later is gripped by the spasms of food poisoning. A family is happily gathered for a picnic in the country when a child is suddenly bitten by a snake.
Partygoers are merrily dancing at the county fair when the tent abruptly catches fire. This type of suffering may potentially arise at any moment in life, but it remains hidden to those who are taken in by the illusion of appearances and cling to the belief that people and things last, untouched by the change that affects everything.
There is also the suffering that underlies the most ordinary activities. It is not easy to identify or so readily localized as a toothache. It sends out no signal and does not prevent us from functioning in the world, since, on the contrary, it is an integral part of the daily routine.
What could be more innocuous than a boiled egg? Farm-raised hens may not have it so bad, but let's take a brief look into the world of battery farming. Male chicks are separated at birth from the females and sent straight to the grinder. The hens are fed day and night under artificial lighting to make them grow faster and lay more eggs.
Overcrowding makes them aggressive, and they continually tear at each other's feathers. None of this history is apparent in your breakfast egg. Invisible suffering is the hardest to distinguish because it stems from the blindness of our own minds, where it remains so long as we are in the grip of ignorance and selfishness.
Our confusion, born of a lack of judgment and wisdom, blinds us to what we must do and avoid doing to ensure that our thoughts, our words, and our actions engender happiness and not suffering.
This confusion and the tendencies associated with it drive us to reenact again and again the behavior that lies at the source of our pain. If we want to counteract this harmful misjudgment, we have to awaken from the dream of ignorance and 62 HAPPINESS learn to identify the very subtle ways in which happiness and suffering are generated.
Are we capable of identifying ego-clinging as the cause of that suffering? Generally speaking, no. That is why we call this third type of suffering invisible. Selfishness, or rather the feeling that one is the center of the world - hence "selfcenteredness" - is the source of most of our disruptive thoughts. From obsessive desire to hatred, not to mention jealousy, it attracts pain the way a magnet attracts iron filings.
So it would seem that there is no way to escape the suffering that prevails everywhere. Prophets have followed upon wise men and saints upon potentates, and still the rivers of suffering flow. Mother Teresa toiled for fifty years on behalf of the dying of Calcutta, but if the hospices she founded were to disappear, those patients would be back on the streets as if they'd never existed. In adjacent neighborhoods, they're still dying on the sidewalks.
We gauge our impotence by the omnipresence, magnitude, and perpetuity of suffering. Buddhist texts say that in the cycle of death and rebirth, no place, not even one the size of a needle's point, is exempt from suffering. Can we allow such a view to drive us to despair, discouragement, or worse yet, indifference?
Unable to bear its intensity, must we be destroyed by it? According to Buddhism, suffering will always exist as a universal phenomenon, but every individual has the potential for liberation from it. As for human beings in general, we cannot expect suffering to simply vanish from the universe, because, in the Buddhist view, the universe is without beginning or end. Nothingness is a word that allows us to picture for ourselves the absence or even nonexistence of worldly phenomena, but a mere idea cannot give birth to anything at all.
As for a real end, in which something becomes nothing, it is equally impossible. As it happens, wherever life exists in the universe, so does suffering: disease, old age, death, separation from loved ones, forced coexistence with our oppressors, denial of basic necessities, confrontations with what we fear, and so on.
Despite all that, this vision does not lead Buddhism to the view held by certain Western philosophers for whom suffering is inevitable and happiness out of reach. The reason for that is simple: unhappiness has causes that can be identified and acted upon. It is only when we misidentify the nature of those causes that we come to doubt the possibility of healing.
The first mistake is believing that unhappiness is inevitable because it is the result of divine will or some other immutable principle and that it will therefore be forever out of our control. The second is the gratuitous idea that unhappiness has no identifiable cause, that it descends upon us randomly and has no relation to us personally.
The third mistake draws on a confused fatalism that boils down to the idea that whatever the cause, the effect will always be the same. If unhappiness had immutable causes, we would never be able to escape it. The laws of causality would have no meaning - anything could come from anything else, flowers could grow in the sky and light create darkness and, as the Dalai Lama says, it would be easier "not to go to all the trouble of constantly ruminating over our suffering.
It would be better just to think about something else, go to the beach, and have a nice cold beer! But everything that occurs does have a cause. What inferno does not start with a spark, what war without thoughts of hatred, fear, or greed? What inner pain has not grown from the fertile soil of envy, animosity, vanity, or, even more basically, ignorance? Any active cause must itself be a changing one; nothing can exist autonomously and unchanging.
Arising from impermanent causes, unhappiness is itself subject to change and can be transformed. There is neither primordial nor eternal suffering. We all have the ability to study the causes of suffering and gradually to free ourselves from them.
We all have the potential to sweep away the veils of ignorance, to free ourselves of the selfishness and misplaced desires that trigger unhappiness, to work for the good of others and extract the essence from our human condition.
It's not the magnitude of the task that matters, it's the magnitude of our courage. There he taught the Four Noble Truths. The first is the truth of suffering - not only the kind of suffering that is obvious to the eye, but also the kind, as we have seen, that exists in subtler forms.
The second is the truth of the causes of suffering - ignorance that engenders craving, malice, pride, and many other thoughts that poison our lives and those of others. Since these mental poisons can be eliminated, an end to suffering - the third truth - is therefore possible. The path is the process of using all available means to eliminate the fundamental causes of suffering. In brief, we must: Recognize suffering, Eliminate its source, End it By practicing the path. The latter depend on external circumstances, while unhappiness is a profound state of dissatisfaction that endures even in favorable external conditions.
Conversely, it's worth repeating that one can suffer physically or mentally - by feeling sad, for instance - without losing the sense of fulfillment that is founded on inner peace and selflessness. There are two levels of experience here, which can be compared respectively to the waves and the depths of the ocean. A storm may be raging at the surface, but the depths remain calm.
The wise man always remains connected to the depths. On the other hand, he who knows only the surface and is unaware of the depths is lost when he is buffeted by the waves of suffering. But how, you might ask, can I avoid being shattered when my child is sick and I know he's going to die? How can I not be torn up at the sight of thousands of civilian war victims being deported or mutilated? Am I supposed to stop feeling? What could ever make me accept something like that?
Who wouldn't be affected by it, including the most serene of wise men? The difference between the sage and the ordinary person is that the 66 HAPPINESS former can feel unconditional love for those who suffer and do everything in his power to attenuate their pain without allowing his lucid vision of existence to be shaken. The essential thing is to be available to others without giving in to despair when the natural episodes of life and death follow their course. For the past few years I've had a friend, a Sikh in his sixties with a fine white beard, who works at the Delhi airport.
Every time I pass through, we have a cup of tea together and discuss philosophy and spirituality, taking up the conversation where we left off several months earlier. One day he told me: "My father died a few weeks ago. I'm devastated, because his death seems so unfair to me. I can't understand it and I can't accept it. As gently as possible, I told him the story of the woman who, overwhelmed by the death of her son, came to the Buddha and begged him to restore the boy to life.
The Buddha told her that in order to do so, he needed a handful of earth from a house that had never experienced any death. Having visited every house in the village and come to see that none had escaped bereavement, the woman returned to the Buddha, who comforted her with words of love and wisdom.
I also told him the story of Dza Mura Tulku, a spiritual master who lived in the early twentieth century in eastern Tibet. He had a family, and throughout his life he felt a deep affection for his wife, which she reciprocated.
He did nothing without her and always said that if anything should happen to her, he could not long outlive her. And then she died suddenly. The master's friends and disciples hurried to his side.
Recalling what they had heard him say so often, none dared tell him the news. Finally, as tactfully as possible, one disciple told the master that his wife had died. The master looked at them and said: "Why do you look so upset? How many times have I told you that phenomena and beings are impermanent? Even the Buddha had to leave the world. It was more important for him to pray serenely for the deceased and to make her an offering of that serenity.
Remaining painfully obsessed with a situation or the memory of a departed loved one, to the point of being paralyzed by grief for months or years on end, is evidence not of affection, but of an attachment that does no good to others or to oneself.
If we can learn to acknowledge that death is a part of life, distress will gradually give way to understanding and peace. The best tribute you can pay to me as a mother is to go on and have a good and fulfilling life. So the way in which we experience these waves of suffering depends a great deal on our attitude.
It is therefore always better to familiarize ourselves with and prepare ourselves for the kind of suffering we are likely to encounter, some of which will be unavoidable, such as illness, old age, and death, rather than to be caught off guard and sink into anguish.
A physical or moral pain can be intense without destroying our positive outlook on life. Once we have acquired inner well-being, it is easier to maintain our fortitude or to recover it quickly, even when we are confronted externally by difficult circumstances. Does such peace of mind come simply because we wish it to? We don't earn our living just by wishing to.
If we let ourselves be overwhelmed by our personal problems, no matter how tragic, we only increase our difficulties and become a burden on those around us. If our mind becomes accustomed to dwelling solely on the pain that events or people inflict on it, one day the most trivial incident will cause it infinite sorrow. As the intensity of this feeling grows with practice, everything that happens to us will eventually come to distress us, and peace will find no place within us.
All manifestations will assume a hostile character and we will rebel bitterly against our fate, to the point of doubting the very meaning of life. It is essential to acquire a certain inner sense of well-being so that without in any way blunting our sensitivities, our love, and our altruism, we are able to connect with the depths of our being.
It is hard for them to find a place of peace and love within themselves and consequently to trust others. Sometimes, however, they develop the healing and empowering faculty of resilience, which makes them less vulnerable to difficult situations and helps them to transform such situations into personal strengths and to find their way in life.
But they may also carry these wounds for a long time in their relationships. It is well established that newborns and infants need a great deal of loving-kindness and affection to grow in an optimal way. Bulgarian and Chinese orphanages, where infants are rarely touched by their caretakers, let alone given affection and love, offer well-known and tragic evidence that the brains of neglected infants do not develop normally. I have witnessed extraordinary changes in infants from Nepalese orphanages, who at first seemed like inert, "absent" 69 MATTHIEU RICARD little beings and blossomed into wonderfully lively children within months of having been adopted by loving parents who constantly related to them with affection, touched them, and spoke to them.
Whether or not we benefit from affection and love at an early age thus greatly influences our ability to give and receive. If we consider the categories first described by Mary Ainsworth and applied by Phil Shaver and his colleagues to adolescents and adults,!
She is open to emotions and memories, exhibits high "coherence of mind," and is nonhostile during disagreements with others and able to compromise. She generally copes well with stress. An "anxious and insecure" person will lack selfconfidence and doubt the possibility of encountering genuine benevolence and affection, while yearning deeply for it. Such a person will be less trusting, more possessive and jealous, and will fall prey to nagging suspicions, often on a purely imaginary basis.
She is excessively ruminative and vulnerable to depression, and tends to become overly emotional when stressed.
An "insecurely avoidant" person will rather keep others at bay than risk further suffering. Such a person will avoid becoming too intimate with others, either in a fearful way or by silencing all emotions in his mind and retreating within the cocoon of self-absorption. He has high self-esteem, but his self-esteem is defensive and brittle; he isn't very open to emotions and memories, and is often bored, distracted, "compulsively self-reliant," and not very caring.
According to Shaver and his colleagues, the emotional style of parents, principally the mother, influences considerably that of the child. The same is true for the secure and anxious styles. The best gift one can thus give to a child is to manifest loving, open, and peaceful qualities oneself and to let the emotional alchemy work its way.
Are such emotional styles acquired during the first years of life engraved in the stone of unchanging traits? Fortunately not. Phil Shaver and his colleagues have also shown that insecure anxious and avoidant persons can change considerably toward a more secure emotional style precisely by being exposed to affection and other positive emotions. By giving them enough love so that some peace and trust can grow in their hearts. How can they help themselves?
By engaging in a meaningful dialogue with a human and warmhearted psychologist using methods that have proven to be efficient, such as cognitive therapy, and by cultivating loving-kindness, compassion, and mindfulness. Suffering can provide an extraordinary lesson capable of making us aware of the superficiality of many of our daily concerns, of our own fragility, and, above all, of what really counts deep down within us.
Having lived several months on the verge of death in terrible pain, Guy Comeau, a Canadian psychiatrist, finally "let go. I was plunged into nameless beatitude. A vast fire of love burned within me.
I only had to close my eyes to partake of it, long and satisfying draughts. And then I understood that love was the very fabric of this universe, the common identity of each being and each thing. This study investigates the effects of two type of meditation - open presence and focused - on a meditator's defensive response to a startle stimulus during the meditation.
This paper presents a Buddhist perspective on the achievement of durable happiness and the nature of afflictive and nonafflictive emotions.
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