Matthieu Ricard Blog http://www.matthieuricard.org/index.php en mat108@gmail.com Copyright 2010 2010-07-25T17:19:02+08:00 Innder Freedom -1 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/89_inner_freedom_1/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/89_inner_freedom_1/ To be free is to be master of oneself. For many people, such mastery involves freedom of action, movement and opinion, the opportunity to achieve the goals they have set themselves. This conviction locates freedom primarily outside oneself and overlooks the tyranny of thoughts. Indeed, it is a commonplace in the West that freedom means being able to do whatever we want and to act on the least of our whims. It’s a strange idea, since in so doing we become the plaything of thoughts that disturb our mind, the way a mountaintop wind bends the grass in every direction.

“For me, happiness would be doing anything I want with no one having to say anything about it,” said one young Englishwoman interviewed by the BBC. Can anarchic freedom, the only goal of which is the immediate fulfilment of desires, bring happiness? There is every reason to doubt it. Spontaneity is a precious quality so long as it is not confused with mental chaos. If we let the hounds of craving, jealousy, arrogance and resentment run amok in our mind, they will soon take the place over.  Conversely, inner freedom is a vast, clear and serene space that dispels all pain and nourishes all peace.

Inner freedom is above all freedom from the dictatorship of “me” and “mine,” of the ego that clashes with whatever it dislikes and seeks desperately to appropriate whatever it covets. Learning to find the essential and to stop worrying about the extraneous brings profound contentment over which the fantasies of the self have no hold. “He who experiences such contentment,” goes the Tibetan proverb, “holds a treasure in the palm of his hand.”

So being free comes down to breaking the bonds of afflictions that dominate and cloud the mind. It means taking life into one’s own hand, instead of abandoning it to tendencies forged by habit and mental confusion. If a sailor looses the tiller, let the sails flap in the wind and the boat drift wherever the currents take it, it is not called “freedom” – it is called “drifting”. Freedom, here, means taking the helm and sailing toward the chosen destination.

]]> 2010-07-25T17:19:02+08:00 A few recent glimpses from eastern Tibet-4 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/88_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_4/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/88_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_4/ imageCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmimageCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmimageCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mm

]]> 2010-07-19T17:45:29+08:00 A few recent glimpses from eastern Tibet-3 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/87_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_3/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/87_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_3/ imageCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmimageCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmimageCanon Mark III Ds, 24-70mm

]]> 2010-07-16T17:39:49+08:00 A few recent glimpses from eastern Tibet-2 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/85_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_2/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/85_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_2/ imageCanon Mark III Ds, 24-70mmimageCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmimageCanon Mark III Ds, 24-70mm

]]> 2010-07-12T17:20:22+08:00 A few recent glimpses from eastern Tibet-1 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/86_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_1/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/86_a_few_recent_glimpses_from_eastern_tibet_1/ imageCanon Mark III Ds, 100-400mmimageCanon Mark III Ds, 12-24mm (Sigma)imageCanon Mark III Ds, 24-70mm

]]> 2010-07-08T17:29:52+08:00 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/82_sur_le_gout_de_la_nouveaute/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/82_sur_le_gout_de_la_nouveaute/ French Only 2010-07-06T13:39:33+08:00 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/81_attitude_face_a_la_mort_7_suite_et_fin/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/81_attitude_face_a_la_mort_7_suite_et_fin/ French Only 2010-06-30T13:10:53+08:00 True potential http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/83_true_potential/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/83_true_potential/ Every being has the potential for perfection, just as every sesame seed is permeated with oil. Ignorance, in this context, means being unaware of that potential, like the beggar who is unaware of the treasure buried beneath his shack.

Actualizing our true nature, coming into possession of that hidden wealth, allows us to live a life full of meaning. It is the surest way to find serenity and let genuine altruism flourish.

]]> English Only 2010-06-29T13:43:08+08:00 http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/80_attitude_face_a_la_mort_6_suite/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/80_attitude_face_a_la_mort_6_suite/ French Only 2010-06-23T04:42:34+08:00 True novelty http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/82_true_novelty/ http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/index.php/MR/blog/82_true_novelty/ If you’re always looking for novelty, you’re often depriving yourself of the most essential truths. The antidote to suffering and to the belief in a self consists of going to the very source of your thoughts and recognizing the ultimate nature of the mind. How could such a truth ever grow old? What novelty could “outmode” a teaching that lays bare the very workings of the mind? If we get tired of such truths and run after endless ephemeral new ideas, we’re only getting further from our goal. Attraction to novelty has one good side, and that’s the legitimate desire to discover fundamental truths, to explore the depths of the mind and the beauty of the world. But in absolute terms, the novelty that’s always “new” is the freshness of the present moment, of nowness, of clear awareness that’s not reliving any past or imagining any future.

The negative side of the taste for novelty is the vain and frustrating quest for change at any price. Very often, fascination with things that are new and different is a reflection of inner impoverishment. Unable to find happiness within ourselves, we desperately look for it outside, in objects, in experiences, in ever stranger ways of thinking and acting. In short, we get further away from happiness by looking for it where it simply isn’t to be found. The risk with that is that we may completely lose any trace of it. At the most ordinary level, the longing for novelty arises from an attraction to superfluity, which erodes the mind and disturbs its serenity. We multiply our needs instead of learning not to have any.

If the Buddha and many of those who’ve followed him really attained ultimate wisdom, what could we hope for that would be better and “newer” than that? The novelty of the caterpillar is the butterfly. Everyone’s goal is to develop the potential for perfection within. To attain that goal, we need to take advantage of the experience of those who’ve already trodden that path. That experience is far more precious than the invention of any amount of new ideas.

So to summarize, I’d say that unlike running after novelty, the spiritual life makes it possible to rediscover simplicity, something for which we’ve rather lost the taste. To simplify our lives by no longer torturing ourselves in order to obtain things we don’t really need, and to simplify our minds by no longer always turning over the past and imagining the future.

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