Happiness A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

by Ricard, Matthieu; Goleman, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780316167253
• ISBN10: 0316167258
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-05
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Summary

In this groundbreaking book, Matthieu Ricard makes a passionate case for happiness as a goal that deserves at least as much energy as any other in our lives. Wealth? Fitness? Career success? How can we possibly place these above true and lasting well-being? Drawing from works of fiction and poetry, Western philosophy, Buddhist beliefs, scientific research, and personal experience, Ricard weaves an inspirational and forward-looking account of how we can begin to rethink our realities in a fast-moving modern world. With its revelatory lessons and exercises, Happiness is an eloquent and stimulating guide to a happier life. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, an author, translator, and photographer. He has lived, studied, and worked in the Himalayan region for over forty years. The son of French philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin, Matthieu was born in France in 1946 and grew up among the personalities and ideas of Paris' intellectual and artistic circles. He earned a Ph.D. degree in cell genetics at the renowned Institut Pasteur under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob.

In 1967, he traveled to India to meet great spiritual masters from Tibet. After completing his doctoral thesis in 1972, he decided to concentrate on Buddhist studies and practice. Since then, he has lived in India, Bhutan, and Nepal and studied with some of the greatest teachers of that tradition. He is the author of several books including The Monk and the Philosopher, a dialogue with his father; The Quantum and the Lotus, a dialogue with the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan; Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill; and Why Meditate? His books have been translated into over twenty languages.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xiii
Introduction	3	(117)
1. Talking About Happiness	17	(9)
2. Is Happiness the Purpose of Life?	26	(7)
3. A Two-Way Mirror: Looking Within, Looking Without	33	(7)
4. False Friends	40	(9)
5. Is Happiness Possible?	49	(10)
6. The Alchemy of Suffering	59	(21)
7. The Veils of the Ego	80	(17)
8. When Our Thoughts Become Our Worst Enemies	97	(11)
9. The River of Emotion	108	(12)
10. Disturbing Emotions: The Remedies	120	(17)
11. Desire	137	(9)
12. Hatred	146	(11)
13. Envy	157	(3)
14. The Great Leap to Freedom	160	(9)
15. A Sociology of Happiness	169	(17)
16. Happiness in the Lab	186	(16)
17. Happiness and Altruism: Does Happiness Make Us Kind or Does Being Kind Make Us Happy?	202	(9)
18. Happiness and Humility	211	(4)
19. Optimism, Pessimism, and Naiveté	215	(12)
20. Golden Time, Leaden Time, Wasted Time	227	(6)
21. One with the Flow of Time	233	(6)
22. Ethics as the Science of Happiness	239	(14)
23. Happiness in the Presence of Death	253	(5)
24. A Path	258	(9)
Acknowledgments	267	(2)
Notes	269