In Search of Wisdom: A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on What Matters Most

by Matthieu Ricard

All humans are alike: we have to work hard to be better.

Even the greatest spiritual progress is meaningless if it does not make us feel more closely connected with each other, if it does not bring us closer to our neighbor.

There is certainly such a thing as spiritual egotism. If we forget about others, we inevitably end up crashing and burning ourselves; we turn the very means that could save us into a trap.

ALEXANDRE There is only one really urgent thing, and that is to engage fully in one’s practice, to cultivate in oneself a burning desire to make progress, and to realize that we are capable of escaping from the prison of our conceptual mind. People can theorize all they want about practice, but what really counts is living it day by day.

The moment we wake up we should ask ourselves if we can make “at least one person happy” today.

Ideas are useful for clarifying our thinking, for helping us know where we’re going, for determining the principles of our actions, but if we don’t put them into practice, they’re not good for anything.

If this development takes place solely within the bubble of our ego, it will feed the ego, polish it, ornament it with reassuring ideas, and so on. But all this will be within a very limited and narrow framework, and it will totally miss what we are aiming for — because the only way to achieve fulfillment is through compassion and openness toward others.

Either you try to transform yourself for the sake of serving others and everybody wins, or you stay inside the bubble of ego and everybody loses.

It’s true that the spectacle of everyday life and the most rudimentary self-observation reveal a thousand faults, such as jealousy, bad-mouthing, mockery. These are defects that are hard to root out. But all of that isn’t enough to make me lose my belief in the grandeur of being human. That just means that we must double our efforts to reunite with the fundamental ground of all grounds, the profound nature of our being that is beyond these emotional mechanisms.

As I see it, there are two kinds of books: those that provide help and those that are only there to entertain.

a hundred blades of grass, each by itself, cannot accomplish much, but if you put them together to make a broom, you can do some housekeeping.

ALEXANDRE Humans have a mysterious ability to deceive themselves and supply the necessary delusions. It is super-honest to recognize that our desires are not always very clear-cut, and sometimes, with the pretext of saving others, we are mainly seeking recognition and gratitude, something to bind our wounds with.

Stop filling out questionnaires, turn off your computer, and ask yourself what you really want to do in this life; let the answer come from deep inside you.”

I want to cultivate wisdom or altruistic love, both the path and the goal will be satisfying. The trouble is that we often delude ourselves by pursuing illusory goals, such as wealth, fame, physical beauty, more possessions — all of which is just smoke and mirrors and does not truly contribute to our development.