Matthieu Ricard has an audio book out that i think each and every person in the world should listen to. Called, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill, he reminds us what we should be doing with our lives. He reminds us that whatever goals we choose for ourselves, they should be good for us, meaning they should contribute to our welfare & happiness and the welfare & happiness of everyone else in the world.
He also gives this amusing example of how our perceptions of the world can and do affect our happiness. During a visit to Tahiti, he was relaxing one afternoon with a friend while sitting under a shade tree. Not only was the scenery spectacular, but there was a fine mist blowing across them, and he was thinking to himself how beautiful the situation was at the time — even the trees, because of the mist, were providing a type of air conditioning. Then someone came up and asked them what the heck they were doing? Those were pissing flies in the tree. They eat the sap in the tree and then piss to get rid of the residue. As Matthieu points out, it takes no imagination to realize that their interpretation of reality changed immediately. Suddenly, the scenery wasn't so idyllic.
A former French cell biologist and now Tibetan monk and translator for the Dalai Lama (he's still French, just no longer a biologist), Ricard went through the same process of questioning what he was doing with his life. In this CD he challenges us to look at our minds, to study them deeply. He exhorts us to ask those deep questions that will convince us that we can change who we are and what we are doing with our lives — at which point we should sit on our butts and work to strip away the scum and mud from the surface of our minds.
When you do that, your pristine beauty then has the chance to shine through.
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