The Monk and the Philosopher Quotes

“the mind plays the essential role in satisfaction and dissatisfaction, happiness and suffering, fulfillment and failure. The mind is behind every experience in life. It is also what determines the way we see the world. The mind is the window from which we see ‘our’ world. It only takes the slightest change in our minds, in our way of perceiving people and things, for that world to be turned completely upside-down.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“Consideremos, por ejemplo, la omnipotencia, pues un creador ha de ser onmipotente: o bien el creador no decide crear, y en ese caso pierde su omnipotencia, pues la creación se hace sin el concurso de su voluntad, o bien crea voluntariamente y ya no es todo poderoso, porque crea bajo la influencia del deseo de crear.”
― Matthieu Ricard, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“Suffering is the result of ignorance, so it’s ignorance that has to be dissipated. And ignorance, in essence, is belief in a truly existing self and in the solidity of phenomena.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“De El libro tibetano de la vida y de la muerte, de Sogyal Rimpoché,[21] se han publicado casi un millón de ejemplares y ha sido traducido a veintiséis lenguas. J. F. – ¿Es un libro antiguo, un libro clásico? M. – No, no es una traducción del clásico Libro tibetano de los muertos, el Bardo Thödrol, que explica el estado de transición después de la muerte. El libro tibetano de la vida y de la muerte es una exposición clara y sencilla de”
― Jean Francois Revel, El monje y el filósofo

“Buddhism affirms that the ultimate nature of phenomena is emptiness and that emptiness carries within it an infinite potential of manifestation.”
― Matthieu Ricard, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“People who've been on the left for a long time no longer have a coherent doctrine for transforming society, and so they've seized hold of humanitarian action and the environment in order to continue tyrannizing their peers.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“So the pattern of our emotions is determined by the way we perceive reality.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“But the dominant idea today among scientists is that such dualism infringes the laws of conservation of energy by supposing that a nonmaterial object can influence a material system.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“Per poter aiutare gli altri, bisogna che non vi sia più alcuna differenza tra ciò che si insegna e ciò che si è.”
― Jean-François Revel, Il monaco e il filosofo: Laicità e buddismo a confronto: un dialogo tra padre e figlio sul senso della vita

“it’s a metaphysical choice that science makes when it states that with the help of our concepts we can discover the ultimate nature of a phenomenal world that exists independently of our concepts.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life