Happiness: a guide to developing life's most important skill

Description

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.;Talking About Happiness -- Is Happiness the Purpose of Life? -- A Two-Way Mirror: Looking Within, Looking Without -- False Friends -- Is Happiness Possible? -- The Alchemy of Suffering -- The Veils of the Ego -- When Our Thoughts Become Our Worst Enemies -- The River of Emotion -- Disturbing Emotions: The Remedies -- Desire -- Hatred -- Envy -- The Great Leap to Freedom -- A Sociology of Happiness -- Happiness in the Lab -- Happiness and Altruism: Does Happiness Make Us Kind or Does Being Kind Make Us Happy? -- Happiness and Humility -- Optimism, Pessimism, and Naivete -- Golden Time, Leaden Time, Wasted Time -- One with the Flow of Time -- Ethics as the Science of Happiness -- Happiness in the Presence of Death -- A Path.