Matthieu Ricard Quotes

People say I have a distorted lens. I think I see things as they really are.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

I'm able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are.

Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong

I know I am delusional at times, but I'm not completely-out-of-touch delusional.

I recognise a distinction between dream life and real life, between appearances and actualities. I confess to an over-powering desire to know whether I am asleep or awake--whether the environment and laws which affect me are external and permanent, or the transitory products of my own brain.

We are what our thoughts have made us

Perception and reality are two different things.

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.

The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.

The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

We usually think of ourselves as sitting the driver's seat, with ultimate control over the decisions we made and the direction our life takes; but, alas, this perception has more to do with our desires-with how we want to view ourselves, than with reality.

If you keep examining your mind, you'll come to see that thoughts of who you are and how it all is are creating the reality you're experiencing.

If you're wondering if you're dreaming, you're dreaming.

Our perceiving self is nowhere to be found in the world-picture, because it itself is the world-picture.

Regain your senses, call yourself back, and once again wake up. Now that you realize that only dreams were troubling you, view this 'reality' as you view your dreams.

Individuals who were submerged in reality, merely feeling their needs, emerge from reality and perceive the causes of their needs.

To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.

It is as easy to deceive one's self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.

Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.

It is remarkable how liberating it feels to be able to see that your thoughts are just thoughts and that they are not 'you' or 'reality.' For instance, if you have the thought that you have to get a certain number of things done today and you don't recognize it as a thought but act as if it's the 'the truth,' then you have created a reality in that moment in which you really believe that those things must all be done today.

When we're deluded there's a world to escape. When we're aware, there's nothing to escape.

When anyone says they often think something, it means they've just thought of it now.