Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill
by Ricard, Matthieu · 184 highlights
we let ourselves be overwhelmed by our personal problems, no matter how tragic, we only increase our difficulties and become
If we let ourselves be overwhelmed by our personal problems, no matter how tragic, we only increase our difficulties and become
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.
When a powerful feeling of desire, envy, pride, aggression, or greed plagues your mind, try to imagine situations that are sources of peace. Transport yourself mentally to the shores of a placid lake or to a high mountaintop overlooking a broad vista. Imagine yourself sitting serenely, your mind as vast and clear as a cloudless sky, as calm as a windless ocean. Experience this calmness. Watch your inner tempests subside and let this feeling of peace grow anew in your mind.
if someone punches you, your irritation will be long-lasting. But consider the physical pain — it fades quickly and is soon imperceptible. The only thing that continues to hurt is the ego’s wound.
When we see the self as a mere concept and not as an autonomous entity that we must protect and satisfy at all costs, we react in completely different ways.
Most of the time it is not outward events but our own mind and negative emotions that make us unable to maintain our inner stability and drag us down.
Thoughts can be our best friends and our worst enemies.
Nothing is right outside because nothing is right inside.
The inability to manage our thoughts proves to be the principal cause of suffering.
The inability to manage our thoughts proves to be the principal cause of suffering. Learning to tone down the ceaseless racket of disturbing thoughts is a decisive stage on the road to inner peace.
When a painful emotion strikes us, the most urgent thing is to look at it head-on and to identify the immediate thoughts that triggered and are fanning it.
When a painful emotion strikes us, the most urgent thing is to look at it head-on and to identify the immediate thoughts that triggered and are fanning it. Then by fixing our inner gaze on the emotion itself, we can gradually dissolve it like snow in sunshine.
When a painful emotion strikes us, the most urgent thing is to look at it head-on and to identify the immediate thoughts that triggered and are fanning it. Then by fixing our inner gaze on the emotion itself, we can gradually dissolve it like snow in sunshine. Furthermore, once the strength of the emotion has been sapped, the causes that triggered it will seem less tragic and we will have won ourselves the chance to break free from the vicious circle of negative thoughts.
Instead of unleashing that avalanche, we can examine the angry thought itself and come to see that it has been nothing but smoke and mirrors from the start.
anger, for instance — what normally occurs? We are very easily overwhelmed by this thought, which multiplies into numerous new thoughts that disturb and blind us, and prompt us to utter words and commit acts, sometimes violent ones, that can make others suffer and soon become a source of regret. Instead of unleashing that avalanche, we can examine the angry thought itself and come to see that it has been nothing but smoke and mirrors from the start.
Thoughts emerge from pure consciousness and are then reabsorbed in it, just as waves emerge from the ocean and dissolve into it again.
From that moment, our thoughts have lost much of their power to disturb us.
To familiarize yourself with this method, when a thought arises, try to see where it came from; when it disappears, ask yourself where it went.
EXERCISE Resting in awareness Look at what is behind the curtain of discursive thoughts. Try to find a waking presence there, free of mental fabrications, transparent, luminous, untroubled by thoughts of the past, the present, or the future.