It’s very important not to confuse serenity and apathy. One of the characteristics of a stable spiritual practice is not to be vulnerable to outer circumstances, whether favorable or unfavorable. The practitioner’s mind is likened to a mountain that the …

The thoughts of happiness and suffering, desire and aversion,
Are none else than the clear voidness of mind.
Without modifying whatever arises,
Look at its nature, and it will manifest as great bliss.

Now that you obtained this human existence,…

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the great Tibetan masters of the twentieth century, talks about the Buddhist concept of emptiness:

When a rainbow appears vividly in the sky, you can see its beautiful colors, yet you could not wear it …

When his mother dies, the remarkable nineteenth-century Tibetan yogi Shabkar sees the impermanence of all things, and the importance of practicing dharma:

When they placed in my hands my mother’s bones, I thought, “A ho! Things of this world really …

Matthieu Ricard is a member of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization that advances the collaboration between modern science and Buddhism. He is a participant, both as a subject and as a collaborator, in research programs on the effects …