Published on FRANCE 24 (http://www.france24.com/en)
Meet Mr Happy: French geneticist turned Tibetan monk
By blade
Created 02/11/2012 - 20:33
As he grins serenely and his burgundy robes billow in the fresh Himalayan wind,
it is not difficult to see why scientists declared Matthieu Ricard the happiest
man they had ever tested.
The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the Dalai Lama, is passionately
setting out why meditation can alter the brain and improve people's happiness
in the same way that lifting weights puts on muscle.
"It's a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just
blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and
therefore changes what you are," the Frenchman told AFP.
Ricard, a globe-trotting polymath who left everything behind to become a
Tibetan Buddhist in a Himalayan hermitage, says anyone can be happy if they
only train their brain.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard's skull with 256 sensors at the
University of Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on hundreds of
advanced practitioners of meditation.
The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard's brain produces a
level of gamma waves -- those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and
memory -- "never reported before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson said.
The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain's left prefrontal cortex
compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for
happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe.
Research into the phenomenon, known as "neuroplasticity", is in its infancy and
Ricard has been at the forefront of ground-breaking experiments along with
other leading scientists across the world.
"We have been looking for 12 years at the effect of short and long-term
mind-training through meditation on attention, on compassion, on emotional
balance," he said.
"We've found remarkable results with long-term practitioners who did 50,000
rounds of meditation, but also with three weeks of 20 minutes a day, which of
course is more applicable to our modern times."
The 66-year-old, accompanying other senior Tibetan monks at a festival in the
remote Nepalese Himalayan region of Upper Dolpa, has become a globally
respected Buddhist and is one of the religion's leading western scholars
But he has not always been on the path to enlightenment.
Ricard grew up among the Paris intellectual elite as the son of celebrated
French libertarian philosopher Jean-Francois Revel and abstract watercolour
painter Yahne Le Toumelin.
"All these people used to come around, most of Paris intellectual life. We had
all the French painters and I was myself interested in classical music so I met
a lot of musicians," he said.
"At lunch we'd have three Nobel Prize winners eating with us. It was
fantastic... Some of them were wonderful but some could be difficult."
By the time he got his PhD in cell genetics from the Institut Pasteur in Paris
in 1972 he had become disillusioned with the dinner party debates and had
already begun to journey to Darjeeling in India during his holidays.
Eschewing intimate relationships and a career, he moved to India to study
Buddhism and emerged 26 years later as something of celebrity thanks to "The
Monk And The Philosopher", a dialogue on the meaning of life he wrote with his
father.
"That was the end of my quiet time because it was a bestseller. Suddenly I was
projected into the western world. Then I did more dialogues with scientists and
the whole thing started to spin off out of control.
"I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation."
A prominent monk in Kathmandu's Shechen Monastery, Ricard divides his year
between isolated meditation, scientific research and accompanying the Dalai
Lama as his adviser on trips to French-speaking countries and science
conferences.
He addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos at the height of the financial
crisis in 2009 to tell gathered heads of state and business leaders it was time
to give up greed in favour of "enlightened altruism".
His other works include "Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important
Skill" and several collections of photographs of the landscape, people and
spiritual masters of the Himalayas.
Ricard donates all proceeds of his books to 110 humanitarian projects which
have built schools for 21,000 children and provide healthcare for 100,000
patients a year.
He was awarded the French National Order of Merit for his work in preserving
Himalayan culture but it is his work on the science of happiness which perhaps
defines him best.
Ricard sees living a good life, and showing compassion, not as a religious
edict revealed from on high, but as a practical route to happiness.
"Try sincerely to check, to investigate," he said. "That's what Buddhism has
been trying to unravel -- the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a
science of the mind."
AFP
Lifestyle
Source URL:
http://www.france24.com/en/20121102-meet-mr-happy-french-geneticist-turned-tibetan-monk
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