Matthieu Ricard
Encyclopedia
Shechen Monastery
The Shechen Monastery is one of the primary monasteries of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, in Tibet. It is located in Derge between Nangdo and Dzogchen Monastery...
in Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
.
Born in Aix-les-Bains
Aix-les-Bains
Aix-les-Bains is a commune in the Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.It is situated on the shore of Lac du Bourget, by rail north of Chambéry.-Geography:...
, Savoie
Savoie
Savoie is a French department located in the Rhône-Alpes region in the French Alps.Together with the Haute-Savoie, Savoie is one of the two departments of the historic region of Savoy that was annexed by France on June 14, 1860, following the signature of the Treaty of Turin on March 24, 1860...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, he is the son of the late Jean-François Revel
Jean-François Revel
Jean-François Revel was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française from June 1998...
(born Jean-François Ricard), a renowned French philosopher, and grew up among the personalities and ideas of French intellectual circles. He first travelled to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
in 1967.
His mother is the lyrical abstractionist painter Yahne Le Toumelin, who has been a Buddhist nun since 1968.
He worked for a Ph.D. degree in molecular genetics
Molecular genetics
Molecular genetics is the field of biology and genetics that studies the structure and function of genes at a molecular level. The field studies how the genes are transferred from generation to generation. Molecular genetics employs the methods of genetics and molecular biology...
at the Institut Pasteur. After completing his doctoral thesis in 1972, Ricard decided to forsake his scientific career and concentrate on the practice of Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
.
He lived in the Himalayas studying with the Kangyur Rinpoche and some other great masters of that tradition and became the close student and attendant of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche until his passing in 1991. Since then, Dr. Ricard has dedicated his activities to fulfilling Khyentse Rinpoche’s vision.
Ricard’s photographs of the spiritual masters, the landscape, and the people of the Himalayas have appeared in numerous books and magazines. Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
has said of his work, "Matthieu’s spiritual life and his camera are one, from which springs these images, fleeting and eternal."
He is the author and photographer of Tibet, An Inner Journey and Monk Dancers of Tibet and, in collaboration, the photobooks Buddhist Himalayas, Journey to Enlightenment and recently Motionless Journey: From a Hermitage in the Himalayas. He is the translator of numerous Buddhist texts, including The Life of Shabkar.
The dialogue with his father, Jean-Francois Revel
Jean-François Revel
Jean-François Revel was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française from June 1998...
, The Monk and the Philosopher, was a best seller in Europe and was translated into 21 languages, and The Quantum and the Lotus (coauthored with Trinh Xuan Thuan
Trinh Xuan Thuan
Trịnh Xuân Thuận is a Vietnamese-American astrophysicist.Thuận was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. He completed his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. He has taught astronomy at the University of Virginia since 1976, and is a Research Associate at the...
) reflects his long-standing interest in science and Buddhism. His 2003 book Plaidoyer pour le bonheur (published in English in 2006 as Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill) explores the meaning and fulfillment of happiness and was a major best-seller in France.
He has been dubbed the "happiest person in the world" by popular media. Matthieu Ricard was a volunteer subject in a study performed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's on happiness, scoring significantly beyond the average obtained after testing hundreds of other volunteers.
He co-authored a study on the brains of long-term meditators, including himself, who had undergone a minimum of three years retreat. The abstract to that study is available online.
A board member of the Mind and Life Institute
Mind and Life Institute
The Mind and Life Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism as methodologies in understanding the nature of reality...
, which is devoted to meetings and collaborative research between scientists and Buddhist scholars and meditators, his contributions have appeared in Destructive Emotions (edited by Daniel Goleman
Daniel Goleman
Daniel Jay Goleman is an author, psychologist, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, specializing in psychology and brain sciences. He is the author of more than 10 books on psychology, education, science, and leadership.-Life:Goleman was born in Stockton,...
) and other books of essays. He is engaged in research on the effect of mind training on the brain, at Madison-Wisconsin, Princeton and Berkeley.
He received the French National Order of Merit for his humanitarian work in the East. For the last few years, Dr. Ricard has dedicated his effort and the royalties of his books to various charitable projects in Asia, that include building and maintaining clinics, schools and orphanages in the region. Since 1989, he has acted as the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama.
Teaching activities and appearances
Matthieu Ricard has been a speaker at the World Happiness Forum conferences held in SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, San Francisco and Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
.
External links
- Official website
- Karuna-Shechen website - fundraiser for Matthieu Ricard's humanitarian projects in Tibet, Nepal, and India.
- The Independent (UK): "The Happiest Man in the World?"
- "Change your Mind, Change your Brain: The Inner Conditions for Authentic Happiness" “Subtitulado en Español” Video of a lecture given at Google on Mar 15, 2007
- Mind and Life Institute
- "Matthieu Ricard on the habits of happiness" Via the TEDTED (conference)TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
web site. - "The Elements of Metaphor" an interview with ascent magazine
- Shambhala Sun Magazine Interview conducted by Richard Gere
- Ode Magazine - "The world's happiest man"